I learned it by watching you!
"Like Father, Like Son" also known as I learned it by watching you! was a large-scale United States anti-narcotics campaign by Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Launched in July, 1987, the campaign used a televised public service announcement.
The PSA features a father confronting his son (Reid MacLean) in his bedroom after finding a box containing an unspecified controlled substance and drug paraphernalia. After his father angrily asks him how he learned to use drugs, the son shouts, "You, alright?! I learned it by watching you!" As the father recoils by realizing the error of his ways, a narrator then intones, "Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs."
It was listed by Time as one of the top ten PSAs of all time.[1]
In popular culture
Much like another infamous PSA, This Is Your Brain on Drugs, the campaign is notorious in modern internet culture for its confusing premise and lack of lasting effect and notability, and has been parodied multiple times.
A Mad TV spoofed the PSA, with a mother and father confronting their teen about his cotton swab addiction. The teen admits he got his addiction from his parents.
It was parodied in a 2005 episode of Robot Chicken called "Toy Meets Girl" as a sketch called "Watching You" where the son screams at his dad that he learned about crossdressing from watching his father.[2]
It was also parodied in a 2007 Xavier: Renegade Angel episode "Pet Siouxicide." In the episode, Xavier extracts Native American blood from an Indian burial ground and injects it into an oil baron. Later, the oil baron is seen injecting himself with Native American blood. When Xavier asks him where he learned to do that, he replies, "From you alright, I learned from watching you."[3]
See also
- War on Drugs
References
- Top 10 Public-Service Announcements, Time
- "I Learned It From Watching You". YouTube. Retrieved 2018-12-30.
- "Xavier: Renegade Angel - Pet Siouxicide". Adult Swim. Retrieved 2015-10-02.