Starsky & Hutch Stuff

[frescadp]

My friend Mortmere [links to tumblr] [M's LJ here] and I have been wondering about (and researching) some of the stuff on the sets of Starsky & Hutch.
Like, what's this weird dog?


I rummaged around and discovered it’s a carnival prize, a bulldog made out of “chalkware”. They were usually handpainted (with water-soluble paint), so each one’s a little different.
Like this one:

From Collector’s Weekly:
“Made out of plaster of Paris, chalkware was used to create inexpensive versions of decorative objects such as animal figurines—so many small figurines were given away as prizes at carnivals, the pieces became known as “carnival chalk.”
“The heyday of the material was the early 19th to mid-20th centuries…”

So, OK, but what it is doing in-universe?

Comments

[frescadp.livejournal.com]

Hey, Mortmere--
Your instincts about the dog being from the '40s were spot on!
To give credit where it's due, my (our!) friend Lucinda suggested it was carnival prize.

WHat you say here is so exciting to me:
S&H is "not really trying to present a polished, fashionable image of its own era but shows the world as it is (even today): a jumble of material from the last few decades".

You've nailed what I was trying to say about movies (like 2016's "The Nice Guy") set in the 70s---they make it ALL 1970s design, and it feels fake, because that's not how we live--
we live with our grandmother's Tupperware and our neighbor's old brass lamp we got at a garage sale, etc., as well as the modern things of our era.

And yes---we ourselves, individually and culturall, are a mashup of earlier influences--ideas and emotions and relationships that shaped us aren't so easy to shake off, as you say, even if we want to.
Star Trek TOS is such a great example of that--even trying its hardest to show a future of equality, unconscious biases of course kept turning up.

Same for us now---I wonder what I will cringe at when I look back in twenty years (godwilling)...