Punky Power & Me

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAiYcyyhAw

On this start of April, the day of foolishness and games, I am mindful to reminisce, backwards in time to college and then further back to my carefree days of childhood.  Starting with childhood, one of my earliest loves of eighties TV shows was that of Punky Brewster and until very recently I did not know just how much that show and its titular character, Punky, had such an influence on me through and through.  One April Fools Day in my college experience, my best friends and I crashed a free box and adorned ourselves with all matter of crazy assortment of outfit, then happily skipped down the street for pizza, laughingly nicknaming ourselves the "April Fools".  

The storyline of Punky Brewster was of a very young girl, abandoned by her mother, forced to survive on her own until rescued and adopted by the loveable old miser yet doting, Henry.  In Tuesday's entry, Pop Culture & Les Miserables, I compared Punky to the character of Cosette in that Punky's original sense of self, boldness to be her and pursue her best life was emboldened by the stability from the great love of those who cared for and helped raise her.  Thus, the foundation of love was such that made her character strong enough to be truly herself, without fear of judgment or reprisal, wherein she was able to truly embody to the fullest her "Punky Power".  

For women of my age, Punky Brewster was an icon, yet even more than that.  During the month of March 2021, Punky Brewster was rebooted with Soliel Moon Frye reprising her iconic role as well as with other familiar faces.  

Along with the reboot, Soliel Moon Frye released a documentary, Kid90, which featured all the footage she shot while growing up an adolescent, teenager, and twenty something in the nineties, with images of more recent times in the final scenes as Soliel brought about the conclusion.

Having not had a chance to watch the reboot of Punky Brewster yet, I did watch Kid90 twice.  As I watched this, taking in all who Soliel had been after she wrapped Punky Brewster as a child, hearing her story of the awkwardness of growing into adulthood and trying to assert herself as Soliel and not Punky, a sense of calm and peace washed over me.  

Here was the woman I had followed as a young child, the woman who had seemingly disappeared from the media focus for some time, and here she was back again as if she never left.  

No one could play Punky but Soliel for she is Punky, but even more so, because of how she portrayed Punky, there is a Punky Brewster in all fans of the beloved show.  Punky Brewster showed us it was okay for us to be us, she showed us we were worthy of love, indeed it was not selfish to love oneself and ask for it from others.  Rather, that the stable foundation of unconditional love is the true facet in being fully oneself and embracing one's own personal Punky Power.

All of my life, I've had an original sense of style, humor, interests, and creative pursuits.  Until the return of Soliel, I did not realize how much my girlhood fandom had gone inward, never left, and truly influenced me.  The college age me was no doubt expressing the Punky Brewster influence as she dumpster dived through the free box of clothing.  Furthermore, no matter all the hardships I have experienced throughout my life, the mad mad Bipolar years, battling PTSD from damaging relations a plenty, the crazy years of being manipulated in a mainstream cult, and so much more, I have survived because of two little words taught to me in my tender years: Punky Power!  I had it then, throughout all the struggles, trials, and even the joys, and I still have it now.

As I watched Kid90, as Soliel laid bare all of her goings on throughout the years, as if showing her fans what she had been dealing with, how she had occupied her life since, a smile of gratitude traveled across my face.

After all we have been through in recent years, my friends, rest assured that 2021 is gonna be more than all right for, 

Punky Brewster is back.

Every 80's kid gotta have it!

Pop Culture & Les Miserables

 

Les Misérables Female Characters & Their Pop Culture Counterparts (IMO)

Eponine

As we have described, Eponine is the classic unrequited love story that has been such a focus impressed upon our impressionable hearts for eons, from classic novels such as this one down through the ages with Hollywood media.  Love is not real if there is not the suffering, the heartbreak and longing over something unattainable, yet perhaps a way to avoid true connection and intimacy by disappearing into our own dysfunctions ending in the death of our souls needing to be reborn.

Rachel Green

Rachel Green, a beloved character from the hit 

90's TV show, Friends, is my choice for a 

pop culture equivalent of an Eponine.  Reflected in

how adored she was, her hairstyle replicated, her clothing, and the obsessive following of her storyline which was a boost to the ratings.  Fans loved to watch her love life evolve and explode, because it resonated with their own dysfunctional outlook on

love and relations.  In the beginning of the series, she

escaped on her wedding day, running from the mate who

did not truly fit her desire for who she wanted to be intimate with

as well as who she truly wanted to be.  We watched as she

pined after Ross, while not knowing that he felt the same,

their overly romanticized storyline of coupling left her

struggling with doubts, insecurities, unhappiness within the confines of

the relationship once secured.  She broke it off, not due to his lack, but

her own degree of seeking outward for validation.  Until she found within

approval and self worth, she would never find happiness and security in love without,

which as we know from the series finale, she did eventually.

On My Own

Fantine

Recall the story of Fantine, her downfall after falling for a man who could not fulfill, who left her in despair with a young child to care for, in a time when a single woman with child was looked down upon.  Through her heartbreak was unending love and devotion for her child and she did what she could in life and in her death for Cosette.  This was not before her dark night of the soul, broken, penniless, in utter agony of soul, she cried out with longing for the hope she once believed in, finally allowing herself the peace of dying to self.  As the light of dawn approached, a new Fantine emerged.

Britney Spears

Love her or hate her, Britney was the pop star, 

bubble gum icon of the late nineties and early 2000s.  

However, in 2007, the image all came crashing down for us, but more so for her as she 

began losing control publicly and, even more,

privately.  We cannot truly understand the 

depth of the nightmare Britney was experiencing

or the true reasons why she acted the way she did,

 but we can examine these actions in light of 

the dark night of the soul of Fantine.  As Fantine's

journey into the darkness of heartbreak was stimulated

by her loss of hope and idealism, so to Britney's loss of

the idealism of youthful desires of life coupled with the

relenting media obsessions reflected that of the depth of

the Fantine storyline.  Through her suffering, the strength

 of Britney, her willingness and perseverance to endure, to 

overcome, and the joy she has found within the journey has become

increasingly apparent.  She stands now a different woman than the girl

we met, because of her falling into her dark night of the soul, she is more 

deeply loved and appreciated.

I dreamed a dream

Cosette

As described previously, Cosette is the character least followed of the three yet the character with the most secure sense of self worth.  The reasons, as previously explained, was that Cosette, despite her early life struggles, never felt without a sense of

unconditional love at any phase of her life.  Even in the dire times of her early childhood, she still felt a deep connection and trust from her mother.  Upon meeting Jean Valjean, she found a real example of a dedicated father who unconditionally loved and supported her as if she was his own daughter.  This afforded her the best of relationship with a mother, despite Fantine's struggles, and a father which allowed her to have a deep abiding security within which allowed her to be comfortable with herself, never lonely, and to be able to express herself within and without.  Although we may desire to obsess over the stories of Fantine and especially Eponine, these will only perpetuate our dysfunctions.  It is Cosette we must eventually become in our journeys toward healing and wholeness.

Punky Brewster

Children of the 80's generation 

recall forever in our hearts the true

meaning of "Punky Power".  For me,

Punky Brewster, played expertly by

the beloved Soliel Moon Frye, represents the pop culture reality of Cosette.  Abandoned at a very tender age by her mother yet Punky was not afraid and through her natural born ingenuity she survived possibly reflecting that deep down 

she felt the unconditional love of her mother.  

This brought her stability, willingness

to open her heart and trust to others, and in fact she did when

she was discovered by Henry, who adopted her.  Thus, like

Cosette, she was raised by a very open, tender-hearted older man

who treated her with unconditional love and support, which 

allowed to explore and express her true self without judgment.

I must express my limitations in listing these pop culture references, in one instance I am showing my age as the majority of these are from the eighties or nineties.  Secondly, all of these women reflect a white, cis-gender heterosexual narrative which is a reflection of my personal history.  I do not want to dissuade or deny the reality of others' history and viewpoint, so please if you have a different worldview, such as POC, LGBTQA+, gender fluid or non-binary, share your thoughts below in conjunction with the topic of relating pop culture references to that of the Les Misérables characters. 

In My Life

The House On The Corner

In my neighborhood as a young child, there was this old house, long since abandoned by its original owners. 

Let me back track, I grew up in a rural country club environment, emphasis on the rural.  When I say 'country club', don't let your mind run crazy with the golf club, the private meals, focus solely on the country part of it and you are basically right there.

But like any country club type deals, we had a lot of families that owned second homes in our neighborhood and up they would trek from the faraway city of San Francisco and its surrounding areas (well, its really only about an hour north, but for a smallish child that's a trek), for the summer months and weekends.

We called them the "weekenders".  We were pretty creative with our nicknames, weren't we? True to form, we were called the "year-rounders".  Oh, the depths of our creativity!  See,  we described someone as such, "Oh so and so, they are a weekender" meaning we only see them on certain weekends or lengths of time during the summer months, and otherwise their house is empty and so very very alone.

That said, for the smattering of kids that were like me, year-rounders, we had free roaming rights of the neighborhood.  Thus, we are the ones that truly can say we grew up there.  Yes, my friends from childhood that were, in fact, weekenders, or big city snobs as I jokingly called my friend, Matt, can say they spent their childhood in my neighborhood called, "The Vineyards" (which at the time there was no single person with a 'vineyard' and Sonoma County, at the time, was yet to truly become the booming wine industry it is today, so why someone decided that's what it should be called was a mystery that alluded discovery in my childhood).  But its us 'year-rounders' who survived not just the flood of '86, and again, '95, and then once again for good measure, '97, who also suffered the boredom of trying desperately to fill up the time when there was just nothing to do, no one to talk to, until maybe that sporadic moment when something unusual happened like a friend appeared, or someone moved in that you'd never seen before, and you spent all sorts of time speculating on them and not actually talking to them.  It wasn't the weekenders, like Matt, who came up in the summer and who was entertained by our silly country ways, found fishing, sailing, swimming, and endless hours of Speed (the game not the drug) fascinating.  (Um, Matt, if you are reading this, sorry, dude, I don't mean to be picking on you, you are just a representation of that breed of human called "weekenders", we cool?). Most of our daily lives back then were spent watching tv shows like Punky Brewster, Night Court (for me especially), and Saved By The Bell.  Our life was a tame, very quiet existence, where we spent most of it imagining what life was like in big wildness of the city.  (Or was that just me?)  We dreamed of a way out...

Sometimes throughout the year, there would be parties held at the clubhouse in the center of the neighborhood, smack dab next to the community lake (did I mention the lake?).  The best of these was of course the Halloween Party.  We got to roam pretty freely about the neighborhood in our costumes acquiring our loot of candy, without any fear of the kind of stuff one worries about today, and then afterwards down to the clubhouse for the fun of a very teeny haunted  house, a friendly neighbor lady dressed up as a palm reader, bobbing for apples, oh the fun never stops.

Okay, now back to the mysterious house on the corner.  It was one of the first houses built in the "Vineyards".  It was, and is, a deep grey house set back into a wooded tree lined driveway.  Trees grew up through both the front and back porch.  What's more, furniture, books, a tv, a radio all were left as they had been when the owners had been there.  The electricity was still connected, the phone still rang, off the hook.  It still  had a phone number you could call, and call we did.  (Remember when I said there wasn't much to do?)  As wee young folk, we'd peek in the windows, trying to out scare each other with the mysterious hauntings we would see.  "Look, there's a ghost!"  "Where?" "There."  "Oh I see it."

Later on, in my pre-teen years, I told my friends a ghost story about a young girl who had lived there that had a heart shaped birthmark on her cheek.  She fell in love with a guy that died under somewhat strange circumstances, some random war perhaps, and she just waited and waited for him in a tree on  the front porch, wouldn't get down, did not eat or anything, grew more and more pale, the heart shaped birthmark increasing in its redness until one day, she fell to her death, like four feet.  See, I'd say, here's the mark where her head crashed into the brick killing her instantly.  Sometimes at night you could see her ghostly presence sitting there, singing and waiting, waiting and singing.  The little neighbor boy down the street from my house (Bobby was his name, See Matt, you aren't the only one I am choosing to pick on) had nightmares because of it.  And, even though I stole the story from a L.M. Montgomery novel I had read, I still thought I saw her from time to time when I walked home in the evening from a friend's house (most likely Corinne, see another friend I'm picking on, Matt!) or randomly walked through the neighborhood late at night empowered by the spirit of the moon.

We found out that the original family had built the house, raised their kids as "weekenders", and then when the kids had grown, had divorced.  Thus, the house just sat full of all of its trappings and memories for us to speculate, ruminate, imagine.

In my early teens, it was rented out by a girl about my age, another weekend-only family, and I struck up a friendship with for the sole purpose of being able to go into that amazingly epic house with all its mystery attached.  I'd invite her to come over on the Saturday evenings when she was in town, when I saw the thrill of the lights on, to get in good with her.  We'd watch my current obsession of a movie, Wayne's World.  (I watched that movie a gazillion times just on my own, in all fairness, until the video itself wore out.  Yeah, I'm old enough that we only had videos for watching movies, so bite me!)

The house represented something untouchable, unattainable.  Like the big city from which Matt hailed (ha ha) and the world beyond, it was something we had yet to see but were always reaching towards, seeking discovery.

Then one day, in early teenage years, we got our wish.  One of our friends, a weekender, discovered that we could all slip through the doggy door at a side door and in we went.  We excitedly and with an air of danger moved through the house, calling to one each other, when we found something interesting.  One friend opened up a closet and joked, "All the skeletons fall out."  I remember that specifically for some reason.  Later on when the colder, bare months of winter would set in, the year-rounders would crawl inside, turn on the heater a bit, and make phone calls.  (We were an inventive rebellious and perhaps a bit odd bunch.)

In my neighborhood as a young child, there was this old house, long since abandoned by its original owners. 

I'd like to dedicate this blog to the aforementioned "Bobby", "Corinne,  the girl who I used to watch Wayne's World and struck up a friendship so I could find out what it was like to live in said house, and to give my heartfelt thankfulness to "Matt" without my ability of picking on him the story could not have been told (well, it could have been, just not in an interesting fashion.)