Premature Adulthood: Alcoholic Moms and Teenage Adults in the ABC Afterschool Specials

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Notes

1. I list the mid-1990s as the end point for the series. Martin Tahse and After School Specials scholars point to different dates for the end of series, between 1972–1995 (Elman, “After School Special Education: Rehabilitative Television, Teen Citizenship, and Compulsory Able-Bodiedness,” in Television & New Media, p. 260); 1972–1997 (Pike, “Lessons in Liberation: Schooling Girls in Feminism and Femininity in 1970s ABC Afterschool Specials,” in Girlhood Studies, p. 95). Tahse stated in an interview that he thought they “went off the air in 1990 or 1991” (Janisse, “The ABC After School Specials: An Interview with Martin Tahse,” in Criminal Cinema, para 32). He also produced similar programs for the CBS's Schoolbreak Specials.

2. Rushnell, “Specials and Mini Series.” TV & Teens: Experts Look at the Issues, p. 36.

3. Woolery, Children's Television: The First Thirty-Five Years, 1946–1981. Part II: Live, Film, and Tape Series, pp. 3–4.

4. Elman, After School, p. 261.

5. Ibid., p. 284.

6. Ibid., p. 261.

7. Ibid., p. 270.

8. Pike, Lessons in Liberation, p. 96.

9. Ibid., p. 109–110.

10. Ibid., p. 110.

11. Elman, After School, p. 284.

12. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, p. 7.

13. Weiss, “The Strange Afterlife of the After School Specials,” p. N1.

14. Woolery, Children's Television, p. 4.

15. Bell, “Young Adults and What TV Is Doing For Them,” in English Journal, p. 82.

16. Ibid.

17. Raw, “Form and Function in the 1950s Anthology Series: Studio One,” in Journal of Popular Film & Television, p. 91; Hersey, “The Televisual Hitchcockian Object and Domestic Space in Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, pp. 723–733.

18. Kraszewski, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Twilight: Rod Serling's Challenge to 1960s' Television Production,” in New Review of Film and Television Studies, p. 345.

19. Rapping, The Movie of the Week: Private Stories/Public Events, p. ix; Smith, “A Form in Peril? The Evolution of the Made-for-Television Movie,” in Beyond Primetime: Television Programming in the Post-Network Era, pp. 138–155; Kraszewski, Do Not Go, p. 343–345.

20. Rapping, The Movie of the Week: Private Stories/Public Events, pp. 34–35.

21. Weiss, The Strange Afterlife, p. N1.

22. Stemm-Wade, “Careless Girls and Repentant Wives: Gender in Postwar Classroom Films,” in Journal of Popular Culture, p. 611.

23. Garrison, “The Teenage Terror in The Schools: Adult Fantasies, American Youth, and Classroom Scare Film During the Cold War,” p. 15.

24. Rushnell, Specials and Mini Series, p. 36.

25. Bell, Young Adults, p. 84.

26. Janisse, ABC After School Specials, para 17.

27. Tillapaugh, “AIDS: A Problem for Today's YA Problem Novel,” in School Library Journal, p. 22.

28. Trites, Twain, Alcott, and the Birth of The Adolescent Reform Novel, p. 150.

29. Patel, Youth Held at the Border: Immigration, Education, and the Politics of Inclusion, pp. 68–69.

30. Kokkola, Fictions of Adolescent Carnality: Sexy Sinners and Delinquent Deviants, p. 37.

31. Lesko, Act Your Age! A Cultural Construction of Adolescence, p. 146; p. 141.

32. Hunger Games Trilogy (Collins, The Hunger Games; Catching Fire; Mockingjay); Petrone, Sarigianides, and Lewis, “The Youth Lens: Analyzing Adolescence/ts in Literary Texts,” in Journal of Literary Research p. 522; emphasis original.

33. Elman, After School Special, p. 287.

34. Janisse, ABC After School Specials, para 22. I would have included the third Tahse special on alcoholism, “Just Tipsy, Honey” (March 16, 1989) but I have been unable to locate or obtain it. The synopsis of the Special on the Internet Movie Database describes it as a similar story to his other two Specials on the same subject: “Teenage girl is in denial about her mother's drinking problem” (imdb.com).

35. Alateen—Hope for Children of Alcoholics, pp. 3–9.

36. Alateen, pp. 265.

37. O'Connor, “TV: Life With an Alcoholic Mother.,” in New York Times, p. C31.

38. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, p. 18.

39. Haenfler, Subcultures: The Basics, p. 16.

40. Ibid.

41. An interesting note between the Tahse's Afterschool Special adaptation of Anne Snyder's novel First Step. In the book the students rehearse and perform “Peter Pan,” yet in the television special the play remains unnamed. The specials here depict premature adulthood in characters that attempt to live their lives far ahead of their social age or maturity. The character of Peter Pan, in contrast, never wants to grow up at all, and goes far out of his way to achieve that goal.

42. Pike, Lessons in Liberation, p. 110.

43. Elman, After School, p. 265.

44. Ibid., p. 283.