On Demand
Beware Big Bird
Monday, November 19, 2007
Virginia Heffernan, who writes "The Medium" column and blog for The New York Times Magazine, looks at the reissue of early Sesame Street episodes on dvd -- with a warning label for children!
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I received the Sesame Street Volume 1 DVD set last year as a nostalgia-themed birthday present (I'm in my early 30s), and was taken aback by the warnings on the packaging and the DVD itself. However, they made perfect sense as I started to watch. Here's an excerpt from an Amazon review that I'd written shortly after receiving the set:
"While the Muppets are undeniably cute, this is a package that is squarely aimed at adults. There is an interesting disclaimer in the booklet as well as an animated introduction on disc 1 that explains how teaching methods have changed dramatically in the last 30 years, and that some components and ideas are no longer necessarily suitable for today's young audiences to watch on their own. For example, in the first episode, school teacher Gordon is walking home alone with one of his newly-arrived young students after school and giving her a tour of Sesame Street. His wife invites the little girl to come over later for milk and cookies, and she accepts immediately. Her parents are nowhere to be seen, and are never consulted. In another episode, a little lost girl uses a dime to call home for help, but a well-meaning SuperGrover forcibly carries her away, ostensibly to save her mom the trip. And of course, there's the issue of the grownups not believing Big Bird even though he's telling the truth about the Snuffleupagus. "
That said, these DVDs are a lot of fun. Look forward to hearing the segment!
My goodness... "a well-meaning SuperGrover forcibly carries her away, ostensibly to save her mom the trip." And "there's the issue of the grownups not believing Big Bird even though he's telling the truth about the Snuffleupagus."
Listen, if you really think that the psychological state of children is so fragile, can that kids can be so easily corrupted by words or images, then our society simply can not afford to tolerate anything approaching freedom of speech.
So let's all petition the government to repeal the first ammendment. I'm sure we will have no trouble getting it accomplished rather quickly.
"For adults only" labels? Sounds like a "Wonder Showzen" thing.
great laughs thanks. i'll have to put the dvd on my yule list
Sesame St. was originaaly conceived to reach inner city preschoolers and give them exposure to reading readiness skills that other children in more priviledged area were getting vis preschool. I think the original conceit was to depict a more familiar inner city environment, including people and places. So the young chioldren who this was intended for, would relate to the environment , characters and places. As the show grew in popularity, its mass appeal has now the job to appeal to preschoolers in general and reflect a more sinister time.
Puh-leeze. I was born in '66 and am the "demographic" for the original sesame street. What sticks is learning about equality as a sense of fairness & justice, the importance of creativity and that TV, far from being dumb to be fun, can be provacative and imaginative. Go figure. For the record, my kids, now teenagers, called the changes to sesame street in the late 90s/early 00s dumbing down and were and still are appalled. The raters must assume we can't think for ourselves.
Oh my god! I need to get into get into therapy as possible! I’m 39 and I grew up with Sesame street. I’m not a drug induced child molester yet according to the warning on the reissue of sesame street, I should be locked up by now. Can common sense ever win over the PC thugs in today’s society? Or does all of society’s ills come from 40 years of Sesame street?
Does anybody else remember the completely inept Buddy and Jim? And the waiter who always fell down a flight of stairs carrying a pile of trays? They completely warped me and my brother. :P
The criticism I'm hearing right now is basically an assault on my childhood. The "problems" with the show being mentioned are exactly the things that I think made it superior to a terrible show like Barney the Dinosaur. Not only will any amount of Barney cause a parent to become violently ill thus removing the possibility of adult-child interaction while watching the show, but it turns kids into sanitized, brain dead cream puffs that they will either rebel against later in life or will cause them to simply implode when they try to take that attitude into the real world.
Me know. Me have problem.
Me love cookies. Me tend to get out of control when me see cookies. Me know it not natural to react so strongly to cookies, but me have weakness. Me know me do wrong. Me know it isn't normal. Me see disapproving looks. Me see stares. Me hurt inside.
BY ANDY F. BRYAN
I did my Master's Thesis on the development of the CTW and Sesame Street.
IT WAS THE INTENTION OF CTW to present characters who HAD the quirks of normal people, weren't happy all the time, the idea was to teach kids ABOUT THE REAL WORLD, and how to process differences!
OOy!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not opposed to the warning label, but I think the only people it will be useful for are the parents who pop on the DVD so they don't have to do any actual parenting. Yes, I understand the danger of a child thinking they can just go off with strangers, but this will only happen if the parent doesn't bother to lay down the rules on strangers. So if that warning label comes up after the DVD has started, the parent who really NEEDS that label has probably already stepped out of the room for a smoke anyway.
You mention a "druggie" aesthetic on the old Sesame Street-- I'm more appalled by the pharmaceutical aesthetic of the Elmo-ized version. Is no one allowed to be grouchy anymore? How exhausting it is to endure Elmo's high-pitched cheerfulness! What an unrealistic portrayal of human existence! How sterile, how banal. I purchased the "Old School" DVDs expressly to share with my toddler-aged children-- and they love them. We love the cows-- the slow pace of that sequence was revelatory and refreshing! We love the dynamic between the silly Ernie and the overly serious Bert (a dynamic that is evident in all relationships I've ever observed-- we're always playing Bert to someone's Ernie, or the other way around). We love the intensity and creativity of the rhythms and images evident in the animated sequences. The difference between Old School Sesame Street and the Elmo stuff that's on now is the difference between life as it's really lived and life as a focus group run corporation might want it to be lived-- between human life in all its grouchy, dirty, beautiful splendor and corporate life in all its sterile cleanliness. Thank God for those early Sesame Streets! They give us permission to be human with one another. You'll get no such permission from that chipper tyrant, Elmo.
I am a member of the first "Sesame Street" generation; I was in kindergarten when it came on.
I must have been one stupid kid, since I took at face value Ernie and Bert's "relationship" - you know, one cranky, one kind of goofy and happy. Grover was a "protagonist" as well, even though he wasn't really on during the first year. I thought the Big Bird/Snuffleupicus (sp?) bit was hilarious and took it at face value as well. I didn't realize that Snuffy was actually supposed to be just a figment of his imagination.
Nobody mentioned the "Anything People"; they were PUPPETS, for cryin' out loud (*smile*), so I wasn't frightened when the adults changed the muppets' faces on camera; many adults thought this might be so.
By the way, it's not, "one hundred twenty-three Sesame Street," it's "1-2-3 Sesame Street," you know, counting? Leave it to a critic to screw that up.
Here's a clip from the first movie I ever saw as kid: http://youtube.com/watch?v=cqi5F5MqqTQ
It's from "The Adventures of Mark Twain", with a nice bit of existentialism from the lips of Satan.
The problem here is not with any material issue with Sesame Street, but with overprotective, satellite parents to whom every misread word is Dyslexia, every cough is oncoming Pneumonia and all "playdates" must be properly vetted by council.
Frankly, sometimes two male roommate handpuppets are just two male roommate handpuppets.
DwD
I was in kindergarten when "Sesame Street" premiered in 1969. I must have been one stupid kid, taking the Big Bird/Snuffy thing at face value (that didn't come into play for another couple of years, btw), seeing Ernie and Bert as two quirky roomates and friends who were polar opposites but otherwise really liked each other ("Odd Couple", anyone), etc. The "Anything People" weren't mentioned in your radio piece, but even at 5 I understood they were muppets (they were called thid on the program) and so not frightened when the adults demonstrated this fact by switching face parts on camera, though many real life adults were convinced otherwise.
I played my "Sesame Street" record endlessly, singing along with those "drugged" tunes (*rolling my eyes*) and I'm suprised it still plays.
I'd love to see those DVDs!
BTW, it's not "One hundred twenty-three Sesame Street," it's "1-2-3 Sesame Street"; you know, counting? Leave it to a critic to screw that up.
Well, and the other thing about Bert and Ernie is that we are REALLY projecting our thoughts onto children here. When I look at Bert and Ernie today, I have that gay joke present in the back of my mind, and I don't think I would need to have someone point it out to me. But I certainly didn't look at it as a model for homosexual relationships as a child (nor do I today). I mean, it's almost as ludicrous to believe that a small child would see the purple teletubby as gay. These are stereotypes which we inherent much later in life.
Yes, I remember Buddy and Jim - I loved them! And tell me that Elmo's crayoned room isn't any less "drugged out" than anything we saw back then!
Jeffrey Slott:
"Listen, if you really think that the psychological state of children is so fragile, can that kids can be so easily corrupted by words or images, then our society simply can not afford to tolerate anything approaching freedom of speech."
I don't think that at all! My point (and I realize that I wasn't clear in my first post) was that the context of the scenes has changed in the last thirty years (e.g., don't go home alone with the teacher after school for cookies without telling anyone), and yeah, parents today might want to be aware of what their kids are watching. Not to go crazy with censoring and trying to shield them from life, but to put things in a perspective that they can understand. You know, "parent" them.
I'm not a hypersensitive person when it comes to raising kids, but I can see why certain things aimed at children in the 60s have sadly changed in the last 30+ years. What's wrong with pointing that out and letting parents be the judge from there? These are fun DVDs, just as enjoyable as they were then and just as fun for kids today. I think you misread the intention behind my original post.
My children (7 and 4) continually ask me when Elmo and Baby Bear are going to start Speech Therapy...
For the record, it's the red Teletubby...
...I'm far too young to have seen these eps of Sesame St. (born in '83, my Sesame St. golden years were '85-'90), but in my own lifetime it's easy to perceive a different trend in public children's programming. I adored and was well-served by shows like Square 1 T.V. and 3-2-1 Contact whose emphasis on academics--math in the former, science in the latter--while entertaining maintained a fairly serious degree of rigor. I will never forget when I contradicted my kindergarten teacher about the existence of numbers lower than zero, having watched a segment on Square 1 about a man so bad at Olympic diving, figure skating, and other rated events that his scores were "less than zero" ("he's an anntii-hero!") The programming today seems maybe to be better about such topics as feelings, and getting along with others, but the effect of programming that encouraged such inquisitiveness--to get the jokes, you had to think about the math--perhaps is the casualty in this push.
i grew up on the street and i have to tell you i was disappointed when my younger sister (11 yrs younger) started watching a very 'new' (dare i say gentrified) street. i always took it as that's the way life is...people are grumpy sometimes they know why (like oscar) sometimes they don't (like bert). sometimes you will tell the truth to your parents (like bird about snuffy) and they won't believe you so you have to stick to your guns. as a kid growing up in a city (2 million pop.) where pre-school introduced me to the idea that not all kids are nice just as not all adults are nice, it was nice to come home in the afternoon and watch how the characters on the street worked through it.
my street syllogism:
bert and ernie are friends so it made since to me that they would live together (age 5-7). bert and ernie are lovers who self imposed in the closet (college years). bert and ernie live in nyc and will never be able to afford an apartment with the same amount of square footage so they live together as many straight men do in the city (post college yrs).
I agree with Ruth Sarlin. This show was intended for inner city and poor kids, so they could enter kindergarten with the same skills as their more affluent peers, who had the benefit of pre-school and nursery school experience. It was TV's version of Head Start. And it worked! Like many other aspects of innery city culture, it was co-opted by the middle class. It is too bad if it becomes "Disney - fyed" and loses character. Adults need to stop reacting to children's "stuff" with their adult biases. Children are way more open minded and resiliant!
Bert: No Prozac.
Argh!
Elmo: Prozac.
Ahh!
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