If your adolescence was anything like mine, Saturdays were all about the orange couch. I’m talking SNICK – Nickelodeon’s primetime line-up geared at then-preteens (now tweens) and teens. It opened with Clarissa Explains It All. She was funny and dressed in crazy outfits like Stacy and Claudia in The Babysitter’s Club. Then came Ren & Stimpy, a weird cartoon that did not age well (“Space Madness” is an exception, and singing the opening of the Log theme song is the surefire way for a serial killer to identify my hiding place). I tended to channel surf during variety show Roundhouse.
Finally came my personal favorite, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, a horror anthology series that featured before-they-were-famous performances by – holy crap, I really need to go back and find old episodes – Ryan Gosling (just Ken), Jewel Staite (Wonderfalls, Firefly/Serenity), Neve Campbell (Party of Five, Scream), Hayden Christianson (Star Wars), and Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek, Twelve Monkeys) to name a few. When I wasn’t glued to the TV, I was reading R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, and L.J. Smith (never made it past the first Vampire Diaries episode). My YA collection of short stories Silly Little Monsters has even been favorably compared to Goosebumps (a middle grade series after my time – I grew up with Fear Street).
Before that mini-explosion of YA horror, I read a lot of Nancy Drew (the action-packed ones published in the 80s and 90s, not so much the originals). My big stack of books from the library also included Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley High, even the college years before they got too depressing. I’d remember Elizabeth’s struggles in particular when I finally went to college myself. But it was television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer that followed me from high school to college, and helped me through that suckfest (no vampires, but some definite drains on my mental health).
Other beloved shows from my childhood included Hey Dude! and Salute Your Shorts (I’d never lose my sunglasses if I could remember their last location as well as I remember the Salute Your Shorts theme song). And MTV still had more music videos than reality programming in those days, but also cartoons like Beavis and Butthead and the very tonally different spinoff Daria. I was often a lonely kid so I found more companionship in books and television.
Apart from BtVS (which I’ve written about in the past), the only childhood memory that’s been tainted (so far) by problems behind the scenes is Ren and Stimpy. Before Dan Schneider was outed as an abusive showrunner on Nickelodeon sitcoms during the 2000s, the creator of Ren and Stimpy was outed as an abusive showrunner himself. John Kricfalusi was also accused of grooming and sexually abusing a couple teen girls who wanted to become animators. To date, no sexual abuse allegations have been made against Schneider, but a dialogue coach Brian Peck was arrested in 2003 for sexually abusing a child actor on one of his shows and people question the closeness of Schneider’s relationship with then-child actress Amanda Bynes.
I find it dizzying the way some people defend abusive behavior in leaders and question things like intimacy coordinators, even as many of those same people assume everyone in Hollywood is a predator. Abuse is wrong even before it crosses the line into sexual abuse, and I doubt a child would have been pressured to kiss an adult on one of Schneider’s shows had intimacy coordinators already been an industry standard. I’m also troubled people ignore abuse in their own backyards to fixate on Hollywood. I’m glad these issues are coming to light and changes are being made, but it needs to happen outside Hollywood, too, because abuse is not exclusive to Hollywood.
I recently saw someone say it’s great social media allows parents to film their kids’ shows to keep them safe. The first thing I thought of was Ruby Franke and those instagram accounts I mentioned last month. Then I considered statistics on child abuse and sexual assault. The abusers are often family or other trusted adults. And just as a lot of celebrities disappointed their fans by defending sexual abusers like Brian Peck, many regular people do the same thing when people they like or admire stand accused. People in general don’t show everyone the same face, abusers even less so. Many can appear kind, even charming. All choose their victims carefully and isolate them.
The bullying “friend” who tried to rape me in college was charmless, but I didn’t have any other friends and later found out he lied to me and others to keep it that way. I used to beat myself up over it, but I was physically and mentally unwell so apart from that key moment when a burst of adrenaline and pent up rage helped me defend myself, I wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders. I also hadn’t learned to set boundaries so I was used to letting people walk all over me as the price of friendship. I started to get better, but it was a years long process, not an event.
Different things compel me to write. In this case, I want others to feel less alone or know how to prevent abuse and support victims. Watch. Listen. Be there. Especially when they struggle being there for themselves.
