The end of the end of an era...

...or, "Cancelling the Future." 

I too watched this on VHS as a child, thanks to a PBS affiliate station which syndicated the series from the then-new cable networks; it was one of the first TV programs to have been written for the format that soon went on to dominate the world with its prepackaged, carefully manicured "universe in a box" concept from which we have more or less been struggling to escape, vainly, ever since. What struck me most poignantly, seeing this as an adult, is twofold: One, the presence of Matthew Broderick (appearing here as the unwitting poster child for the John Hughes makeover of Hollywood under Reagan) and two, the titular heroine opposite played by an almost breathlessly energetic Jennifer Beals, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago. It's quite unlikely that many children, myself included, could have understood what this choice of characterization might have suggested to audiences at the time.    

But it is now obvious, with the full benefit of hindsight, that somebody must have been paying attention. There is no doubt considerable irony in the realization that the systematic defunding of Public Broadcasting in the United States by right-wing extremists may have been due, in no small measure, to the unease felt by certain self-appointed defenders of what are alleged to be "traditional values", that (among other programs) a harmless and indisputably traditional fairy tale might actually succeed in inculcating in children the authentic sense of fairness or justice those values are meant to embody. Or... maybe it was the way the wicked stepsisters' only responsibilities - namely the curation of their grotesquely and unredeemably porcine profiles - too closely resembled the chief preoccupation of the first, but certainly not the last, public administration to play itself on television? 

Whatever their primary motive, it's clear that for all their talk about freedom, the new authoritarians have little tolerance for anything other than endless reruns of their own navel-gazing Christmas special where even poor old Charlie Brown might be a closet commie. Some conservatives, it should be noted, have even managed to maintain these or similar levels of paranoia for decades, often without the aid of any drugs whatsoever (other than alcohol, presumably): A truly impressive feat, to be sure. 

Either way, it's bleedingly obvious by this point that there is no princess, and none of us are invited to the demolition derby hosted by the world's richest and most powerful. Rather, it seems we might just have to host one of our own!