Bunny boiler?

[calieber]

Familiar with the phrase; American, mid-30s, never saw Fatal Attraction.

You can probably use it in such a way that the meaning is clear from context even to people who don't understand the reference, but it seems to me there's a not insignificant number of people who find the term misogynist.

That doesn't mean don't use it, just recognize that it might have that effect.

[WriterDude]

A mixed bunch of reactions. I think its fair to say I can use it in dialogue, but in the narrative is stretching it.

Regards

[Plot Device]

Originally Posted by Buffysquirrel

Depends what your purpose is in using it. I'm familiar with the term, and vaguely recall it refers to a character who turned a family pet into stew. I haven't seen the film and have utterly zero desire to see it, tbh.

Fatal Attraction is actually a culturally important film. In America, prior to that film, wives everywhere were counselled by our entire culture to just chill out if they quietly discovered that their husbands were having an affair. They were told "Look, it's no big deal. He's a man. Let him get it out of his system. He'll grow tired of her eventually. All men need to do this at last once. Don't worry about it."

But then this film showed that it was possible for a man's 7-year itch to threaten the very lives of everyone in the household. So "the rules" changed after this film. It was no longer just "Don't even think of allowing your mistress near our children." The new rules were "Don't even think of having a mistress. Ever."

After this film came out and rocked the American middle class, men everywhere began to crank call the screenwriter in the middle of the night and say some variation on: "Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us!" and then hang up. It happened to the writer, to the director, and even to actress Glenn Close.

And this change in "the rules" was not just a brief fad that settled back into the old ways again after the film faded from memory. And that's because the film did NOT fade from memory. Instead the film has remained a landmark in shaping social and cultural opinion on infidelity. Ths the expression "bunny boiler." So "the rules" have remained changed to this day all because of this film.

[calieber]

Originally Posted by WriterDude

A mixed bunch of reactions. I think its fair to say I can use it in dialogue, but in the narrative is stretching it.

Maybe if it's 1st or close 3rd. Then it reflects the character's view of women.

[Roxxsmom]

Originally Posted by WriterDude

Can i use the term bunny boiler, as the narrator to describe an unseen character? Or is it too obscure or cliche pop reference?

I've never heard the term used the way you describe. For me (in my late 40's), it conjures up that horrible image from that 80's era Glenn Close movie, Fatal Attraction. Is that where it comes from? If so, that movie was a long time ago now, and it doesn't seem to have become a classic movie that gets shown on TV a lot, so people who are in their 30's or younger may not get it.

[Pladams777]

@ Plot device. That's fascinating thank you for sharing.
@ WriterDude. I've never heard the term but as a 43-year-old woman who saw the film when it first came out and once or twice since I would've easily got the reference. And probably been proud of myself for figuring it out. But I agree I wouldn't use it in the narrative unless it was first person or someone's italicized thoughts in third person limited.

[jaksen]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

Not any wives I know. Before, during, or after that film, most wives I know who caught their husbands cheating kicked the bum out fast. If my wife ever caught me, I'd be the one boiling in the pot.

Hell, as popular as that film was, only a relatively few people watch it on a percentage basis, and I don't know very many women who even liked it.

You're giving way, way, way too much credit to this film, and certainly aren't looking at the hundreds of thousands to millions of marriages that broke up because of infidelity long before the film was ever made.

Seriously, I never, ever met a woman who thought that way before Fatal Attraction. I do know a lot of women who kicked their husbands out for cheating, even when the cheating didn't go all the way to sex, long before FA.

I agree with James.

And Plot Device, I think you're giving far too much credit to this one movie. My mother divorced her first husband in the 1940's and no one ever told her to 'get over it' and that this (his cheating) was normal behavior.

(I am talking staid, working and middle-class, conformity-driven, New England people here, who cared very much what 'everyone thinks.' Despite that, she was the wronged party, that's how people saw it. She divorced him and no one told her to put up and shut up. Later she married my Dad.)

I saw the movie in the theater with friends as a young, married woman and we enjoyed it and laughed at the fact that it might make 'some of our friends' uncomfortable. But that was that.

Over the years I hadn't even thought of it much unless I saw a Glenn Close interview or similar on TV.

I don't doubt the crank calls, but that might have been exaggerated. In fact, I know a number of women in my mother's generation (born 1920's) who divorced husbands for the same reason. I worked with some as a young teacher; others were my parents' friends and acquaintances. In some cases the wife was the cheater. I never felt nor heard that it was 'culturally acceptable' for a man to cheat and get away with it. Even my grandfather, born 1904, had an opinion on it and that was 'good for her, good for her' if the woman kicked the man out.

[BethS]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

Hell, as popular as that film was, only a relatively few people watch it on a percentage basis, and I don't know very many women who even liked it.

You're giving way, way, way too much credit to this film, and certainly aren't looking at the hundreds of thousands to millions of marriages that broke up because of infidelity long before the film was ever made.

This. And what Jaksen said. FA was a movie that got people talking, but it was not anything approaching a seminal cultural event. It had an outrageous, larger than life plot that some people found entertaining. But the world Plot Device described as existing before the movie--where women were expected to put up with cheating husbands--I don't recognize at all.

[Ralyks]

I've never heard it and assumed it was a euphemism for mulling over fanfiction plot bunnies in your mind.

[Roxxsmom]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

Not any wives I know. Before, during, or after that film, most wives I know who caught their husbands cheating kicked the bum out fast. If my wife ever caught me, I'd be the one boiling in the pot.

I agree. Although in the 1980's there were (and there certainly still are) women who hunker down and pretend like they don't know their husbands are having affairs for all kinds of reasons, there were plenty of books out there in the pop culture that told women not to ignore affairs or to be doormats. I'm in my late 40's, so I know darn well this is true. There were certainly plenty of women who didn't tolerate cheating by this time, and I think most regarded it as a serious breach of their relationship's trust (remember, the Hite report came out in the 80s, and while it revealed that a lot of men cheat, it also revealed that a surprisingly large number of women do too, so the idea that it was just something "men have to do and women have to ignore" was very much on its way out by then).

The movie actually scared some of the guys I knew, because it reminded them that indiscriminate playing around could be physically dangerous for them too (something every woman in our society is taught from the get go).

But whether or not the movie is cinematically important, it seems that there are a lot of younger people around who never saw it, so if you want to use the term as an "in character" thing someone in her 40s might think about another person, you should provide a little context.

[Kittens Starburst]

Everyone, young or old, would know the phrase straight away where I come from. In fact, there's a character called Bunny Boiler on Balls of Steel. I prefer Annoying Devil.

[James D. Macdonald]

I doubt that FA changed the rate or incidence of adultery by as much as one percentage point one way or the other.

A more important point is that this movie is set in the world of publishing and if you believe what you see in the film you'll get a very twisted view of the industry. (In general, Hollywood types don't have a clue.)

The next important point is that the totally ludicrous ending was thanks to test audiences that didn't like the original ending. In the original ending the Glenn Close character commits suicide in such a way that it implicates the Michael Douglas character, leaving him ruined.

[Bufty]

The phrase 'bunny boiler' meant -and means- nothing to me.

Originally Posted by Kittens Starburst

Everyone, young or old, would know the phrase straight away where I come from. In fact, there's a character called Bunny Boiler on Balls of Steel. I prefer Annoying Devil.

[Kittens Starburst]

Originally Posted by Bufty

The phrase 'bunny boiler' meant -and means- nothing to me.

That really surprises me. I must just hang out with a lot of bunny boilers in Fife.

I'd take it as meaning a woman who excessively pursues a rather less enthusiastic man. It's sometimes applied to men too.