u/Legal-Exchange-5931

I missed this when it was on TV, but heard about the infamous shower scene, so I figured it was just exploitation trash. But it popped up on Prime so I checked it out. It was way better than expected! Linda Blair did a good job of portraying a girl who really was innocent, smart, wanted to make something of herself and was torn between escaping her abusive family and needing their love. The scene was near the beginning so a lot of people probably stopped watching at that point, but the rest of the movie was worth it.

It's a shame that there were so few movies about girls back then, and most of them showed them as sex objects or drug addicts or runaways. The message was that girls weren't interesting unless they were in trouble.

I clearly recall watching the live coverage on PBS and cringing along with my parents ("yeah Mom that's really an actual hit single right now...) It set off a bunch of newspaper editorials like this one. Ah the 70s!

As an alternative to "teacher hit me with a ruler", a Mad magazine ode to all the Bicentennial merch.

This is from the TV Guide I shared yesterday. Happy 4th!

From a TV Guide my parents kept. Baltimore-DC area. It was Saturday night, but no SNL so I must've been watching Fail Safe!

I wanted to look like Cher in Moonstruck, and ended up more like a Brillo pad.