My elderly father is an obsessive fan of the Andy Griffith Show, a sitcom set in the American south in the 1960s. The stories are light-hearted, idealized peeks into life during that era.

You never see a black person. Women are almost all housewives.

One thing I’ve noticed is that as the sheriff of the small town, Griffith concerns himself with domestic violence in a rather matter of fact way. In one episode, a character acknowledges that small town law enforcement has little to do other than deal with “chicken thieves and wife beaters.”

It was a laugh line.

In another episode, the local newspaper gossip columnist made light of the sounds she’d heard coming from a house where a man was beating his wife.

I can think of much similar content in various episodes. To me, this is intriguing. People KNEW there women sometimes suffered violence at the hands of men. They just didn’t think it was very serious.