One of the frustrations of my new job is that I hear about great things that I want to write up for the blog but can’t. This story is one of them.
Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.
Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
Let that one settle in for a bit. “May not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Two things come to mind: One, what exactly was so dangerous about these early episodes that they need to be hidden from the kids today, and Two, how are the “needs of today’s preschool child” so different from the needs of the preschool child circa 1972?
I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”
The obesity “crisis” strikes again! But it’s more than that — apparently, today’s preschoolers must be protected from all depictions of adultish behavior, for fear, I suppose, that they’re going to take to the pipe (and swallow it) by the time they hit first grade.
Something to consider about Original Recipe Sesame Street — it was created with adults in mind, because research showed that kids learned better if their parents and older siblings were involved. And it was created for a particular segment of kids — inner-city kids of color, who were lagging behind white kids in preparation for school. Without that adult humor, the adults and older kids in the house would be far less interested and engaged in helping the younger ones learn. And some of the bits on Monsterpiece Theater were quite sophisticated, while still presenting goofy characters and simple lessons. Not only that, that multilayered presentation gives kids something new to discover as they get older and continue to watch the show, and keeps adults involved. I mean, back in 1972, I didn’t get all the adult references, either, but I look back on it now and I can see them (sort of like how I didn’t get all the Cold War humor in “Rocky and Bullwinkle” until I started watching it as an adult — up until then, it was just a goofy moose and squirrel).
Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.
God forbid preschoolers might be exposed to some complexity. I presume that Oscar has mellowed over the years; to be perfectly honest, I never really cared for him. But at least he’s not that insipid Elmo.
Snuffleupagus is visible only to Big Bird; since 1985, all the characters can see him, as Big Bird’s old protestations that he was not hallucinating came to seem a little creepy, not to mention somewhat strained. As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.
Snuffleupagus was a little after my time, so I don’t have much to say about him, but let’s talk about Cookie Monster. I understood, even as a little kid, that he was not someone to imitate. He was over-the-top, a rampaging Id. I was discussing this article with the guys I work with, and they had both understood that as well. Are “today’s preschoolers” so impressionable that they will follow his example, zombie-like?
I find it interesting that the change in Cookie Monster’s food choices came about in the 2000s (Monsterpiece Theater was a 1980s-90s skit), just as the moral panic about the obesity “crisis” started reaching a fever pitch in the media. But consider: so he’s eating fruits and vegetables now instead of just cookies. Does that make his behavior any different? Isn’t it wrong to simply switch out the food without changing the habits (unless, of course, they have, which means they might as well just dump the character altogether).
The dumbing-down, sanitization and Elmo-ization of the show, however, might have more to do with competition from “Blue’s Clues” than anything else. I have unfortunately loaned out my copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point so I have to go by memory, but Gladwell discussed the development of “Sesame Street” and later “Blue’s Clues” in terms of “stickiness,” meaning how much attention kids were giving the show and each of its segments. The linked excerpt shows how “Sesame Street’s” stickiness was somewhat accidental and haphazard and the show wound up succeeding in spite of itself. “Blue’s Clues” was the result of far more sophisticated research methods (including tracking eye movements) and has become very popular with preschoolers, who love the simplicity, long cuts, repetition (the same episode is repeated for five days straight) and leisurely pace. Even if it drives their parents nuts and they won’t be searching out videos from the show 35 years hence.
Via Julie, who says:
But what do I know, I buy my daughter candy cigarettes.
Just don’t call CPS on me, okay?
Hide the children! Inappropriate videos ahead!
Read More…Read More…