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Scared Straight

Some may remember when they aired the show, Scared Straight, on prime-time national television in the late 1970’s. I remember my parents having my brother and I watch it in our living room. At first Dave and I were horrified because of the build up to it and the fact our parents were so insistent that we watch it. Eventually, though, the horror turned to macabre fascination.

My parents were good people, they talked to us about what we were seeing, and I am certain they had the most sincere intentions, but the social experiment that was being conducted didn’t accomplish what it had intended. I feel there was a whole generation of us who had been forced to watch Scared Straight and saw through the farce of hype that the media and that society was throwing at us. Many of us were, a few years later, equally fascinated as we watched the 1984 movie Suburbia. But this time it was our story, it was our message that was being told. That movie scared the adults and parents who watched it. Right back in their face. Punk was good for a lot of things. It gave many of us a feeling that we belonged to something we controlled. Punk scared parents straight.

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