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Punky Brewster
1984 · TV series · 23 min episodes · 4 seasons
Created by David W. Duclon
An abandoned waif and her dog are taken in by a cranky apartment manager who becomes her guardian in this family-friendly sitcom.
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3 comments on Hacker News
As a child there were commercials showing birds and other animals tangled up in the plastic 6-pack rings. I still cut those up as a result of those commercials 40 years ago. Everyone I know from that era does the same… even people who generally laugh at the idea of environmentalism and throw recyclable cans with a deposit it the trash, because they can’t be bothered.
I always think of Punky Brewster and get a little anxious any time I see someone get in a refrigerator. Even though I know modern refrigerators don’t have the issues of Punky’s, it still feels incredibly risky to get into a fridge thanks to that one episode of a TV show I saw one time 30+ years ago.
You never really know what people will latch onto that will change behavior decades later.
I watched Captain Planet as well. While I don’t know if it was directly responsible or not, I have a hard time throwing stuff away that still seems good. I always try to sell or donate it. I don’t want to be the one that adds massive amounts of stuff to the landfill. If I have more than one bag to throw away for the week, I feel a little embarrassed. I avoid retail therapy, in part, for a similar reason. Was it Captain Planet, was it the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle commercials? Maybe a little of both.
Except BTTF doesn't mention gays or trans people. If it did, you'd see a lot more of the major cultural shifts, especially surrounding trans rights and trans acceptance.
It also doesn't focus as much on television, except to the extent that people in 1955 apparently didn't know what a "rerun" was. (Did they in reality? Honestly don't know.) The other side to that is, back in 1985, if you wanted to see an old episode of I Love Lucy or Gunsmoke (which had actually gone off the air by then, I believe) you either caught the rerun of the one episode some network was broadcasting or you were SOL. I'm not sure anyone was even selling video tapes of episodes back then, even assuming you were one of the comparatively few people to have a VHS or Beta player. Your cultural library for recent-ish pop culture was about a millimeter deep, compared to now.
So, yes, 1985 is closer to 2015 than 1955 was to 1985 in some key ways. Some of that is because you can only repeal Jim Crow laws once. Some of that is because Netflix has Punky Brewster on demand. Some of that is because most people are neither gay nor trans.
Well, I did learn not to hide in discarded refrigerators from Punky Brewster.
That's funny; another of Mr. Lucas' fine films taught me that you can survive a direct nuclear explosion by hiding in a discarded refrigerator.