regression therapy with Punky
Aug. 21st, 2006 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zenithblueI turned twenty-seven yesterday, so it made me quite happy to come to work at the library today and find my hold--season one of Punky Brewster--waiting for me.
Many of you know my longstanding eighties nostalgia obsession, which is at heart pure and simple regression therapy. This is the same impulse that led me to purchase several My Little Ponies well into my early twenties and that has led to not one, not two, but three separate Eighties Fantasy Film Fests at various dorms/apartments/houses in the last several years. After being teased and lured bypunkybrister69's icon for a while, I finally decided it was time for a spin back through comfy territory.
Punky Brewster was the first television program I watched religiously. I believe Punky was intended to be my age at around the time the show came on--maybe a little older--and it was one of the only children-oriented live-action shows of the time. My aesthetic sensibility was informed by her clothing choices long, long after it was even remotely appropriate (indeed, I have a theory that the grunge movement was a result of teenagers with Punky in their collective unconciousnesses). Also she was one of the first heroines I encountered who "looked like me" (even though the resemblence stopped at brown hair/eyes and freckles).
I remember far more of this show, without re-watching, than anyone could care to read about. So I will not go into the blissful rantings that I have been promulgating at my cats for the past hour. The cats have to listen to me. You can un-friend me.
Here, though, if you care, is a brief list of the obsessions and values that can be traced back to my early obsessive love of this show:
1. Foster families--tI'm not sure why this caught my sympathy and imagination so much, but I've written tons of fiction that seems to revolve around transitional homes or foster parents.
2. Unlikely connections. In the adult world we read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter or Mary Gaitskill or Flannery O'Conner. But as a six-year-old, the idea of this tiny perky orphan and a curmudgeon loving each other and changing each other was deeply affecting.
3. Mis-matched socks and shoes and clothing is always stylish.
4. Pigtails, also, are cool. Even as an adult.
5. Pain and sadness are appropriate material even for children--especially for children. Seriously, I think the number one thing that grabbed me about this show was the fact that the characters all had genuine heartbreak, and while of course the aesthetic was sanitized and cute, the fact that the program ventured into a very real abandoment fear I suspect I was not alone in, and the fact that all the families and characters were damaged and truly sad, was pretty ballsy of the producers. This is at heart a story about making the best of what you have, finding love not necessarily where you look for it. This is a theme that I obsess on, that every story I write seems to be about, and I half wonder if I can thank my early exposure to something that challenged me to truly understand tragedy.
Also: she has a super-cute animal companion that at one point she calls back from the brink of death with the Power of her Wuv. Totally the best.
So: I will stop horning in on your territory now,punkybrister69. ;) I do have you to thank for reminding me this is a good idea.
Many of you know my longstanding eighties nostalgia obsession, which is at heart pure and simple regression therapy. This is the same impulse that led me to purchase several My Little Ponies well into my early twenties and that has led to not one, not two, but three separate Eighties Fantasy Film Fests at various dorms/apartments/houses in the last several years. After being teased and lured by
punkybrister69's icon for a while, I finally decided it was time for a spin back through comfy territory. Punky Brewster was the first television program I watched religiously. I believe Punky was intended to be my age at around the time the show came on--maybe a little older--and it was one of the only children-oriented live-action shows of the time. My aesthetic sensibility was informed by her clothing choices long, long after it was even remotely appropriate (indeed, I have a theory that the grunge movement was a result of teenagers with Punky in their collective unconciousnesses). Also she was one of the first heroines I encountered who "looked like me" (even though the resemblence stopped at brown hair/eyes and freckles).
I remember far more of this show, without re-watching, than anyone could care to read about. So I will not go into the blissful rantings that I have been promulgating at my cats for the past hour. The cats have to listen to me. You can un-friend me.
Here, though, if you care, is a brief list of the obsessions and values that can be traced back to my early obsessive love of this show:
1. Foster families--tI'm not sure why this caught my sympathy and imagination so much, but I've written tons of fiction that seems to revolve around transitional homes or foster parents.
2. Unlikely connections. In the adult world we read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter or Mary Gaitskill or Flannery O'Conner. But as a six-year-old, the idea of this tiny perky orphan and a curmudgeon loving each other and changing each other was deeply affecting.
3. Mis-matched socks and shoes and clothing is always stylish.
4. Pigtails, also, are cool. Even as an adult.
5. Pain and sadness are appropriate material even for children--especially for children. Seriously, I think the number one thing that grabbed me about this show was the fact that the characters all had genuine heartbreak, and while of course the aesthetic was sanitized and cute, the fact that the program ventured into a very real abandoment fear I suspect I was not alone in, and the fact that all the families and characters were damaged and truly sad, was pretty ballsy of the producers. This is at heart a story about making the best of what you have, finding love not necessarily where you look for it. This is a theme that I obsess on, that every story I write seems to be about, and I half wonder if I can thank my early exposure to something that challenged me to truly understand tragedy.
Also: she has a super-cute animal companion that at one point she calls back from the brink of death with the Power of her Wuv. Totally the best.
So: I will stop horning in on your territory now,
punkybrister69. ;) I do have you to thank for reminding me this is a good idea.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2006-08-22 03:16 am (UTC)I loved Punky growing up (and Clarissa!). I used to dress quite like her in Jr. High, as I recall.
no subject
on 2006-08-22 03:26 pm (UTC)I never caught the Clarissa thing (we didn't have cable), but I did wear a Punkyesque bandanna tied around my leg for a few years. And I wore an awful lot of bright clashing colors.
Punky was an iconoclast. I was just...well, a geek. : )
no subject
on 2006-08-22 06:33 am (UTC)I forget, is the episode where Brandon gets sick in the first season? I couldn't believe that 1) the incredibly amazing BEAH RICHARDS was a guest star on that episode and 2) how incredibly sad that whole episode is.
It's really a rather dark show looking at it overall. I can't imagine something like it being popular these days unless they watered it down.
no subject
on 2006-08-22 03:23 pm (UTC)Another show I loved much later, and for similar reasons to those that drew me to Punky, was Freaks and Geeks, which was written more for teens/adults, and also had some dark and sad territory. There were a few episodes of that they wouldn't show because they were "too depressing"--stuff about broken homes and family trauma. There's this whole idea that people only watch TV to escape and that something that is more genuine is anathema. I hate TV producers.
I guess I should be thankful it's not an industry I have to work in.
no subject
on 2006-08-22 03:58 pm (UTC)