What follows is a brief excerpt from a truly reprehensible 1970s American television show, The Dating Game. In this show, a woman is invited to choose between three "bachelors" who vie for her favors with sleazy sexual innuendoes. Why this would have been considered attractive is anyone's guess -- hey, it was the 1970s.
The host sets the tone with double entrendres creepy enough to drive you into the priesthood:
Since I was a pre-teen at the time this show ran, I tried to catch every episode -- which wasn't easy, considering my mother, who knew soul-corrupting sleaze when she saw it, was watching me like a hawk to prevent just that. Yet I sometimes won the deadly game of cat and mouse. Nothing like figuring out why the audience is laughing at a seemingly innocent "darkroom" reference to stretch young male minds!
What's special about this episode is "Bachelor Number One", a/k/a Rodney Alcala. He is, namely, a serial killer who, at the very time this episode was filmed, was in the middle of a cross-country sex murder spree. He's already on death row in California, and has just been indicted for the murders of two women in New York in the 1970s.
I'm no novelist, but if I think this is a metaphor for something.
The sound is mostly on the right channel. Maybe you can change your setup to get that channel? And did you try another browser?
Posted by: noribori | January 28, 2011 at 04:09 PM
No, restarting did not help. It's just this particular video for me; the sound is very very low and so distorted as to be unintelligible.
Posted by: Marcellina | January 28, 2011 at 12:36 AM
Of course there also was a german version of this show called "Herzblatt".
The "Monsters of Liedermaching" made a good song about the show, Herzblatthubschrauber:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMdwrB22REY
Posted by: Alex | January 27, 2011 at 10:51 PM
Well, there certainly is sound. Restart your computer.
„The Dating Game“ host, Chuck Barris, „confessed“ in his „memoir“ that the „show“ was only „cover“ for his „secret CIA activities“ which included killing a lot of people („spys“). Made into the 2002 movie Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", directing debut of George Clooney.
I don't know if this is a metapher, too, or only a case of too many quotation marks.
Posted by: noribori | January 27, 2011 at 06:31 PM
And producer Chuck Barris...there was a creepy story, too.
Posted by: The Honourable Husband | January 27, 2011 at 06:14 PM
Hmmm, there is no sound to this vid.
Re inuendos to stretch the teenage mind, we watched The Match Game. Which, when I caught a re-airing last summer, is as much a swingers' party as it is a game show! I can't believe we got away with watching any of it.
Posted by: Marcellina | January 27, 2011 at 06:09 PM