Thoughts On Sesame Street: Some Will Suggest That This Post Comes Twenty-some Years Too Late

[Editor’s Note: Burrito Girl gave me a Sesame Street DVD, featuring episodes from the 1970s, for Decemberween. The Nachoboy and I watched for a long time last night, inspiring me to update some Sesame Street thoughts I first posted in 2005.]

I’m through with Sesame Street.

The Nachoman grew up with the venerable PBS institution, of course. In fact, on occasion in college I and my friends would watch episodes of Sesame Street for fun, and this was well before I had a kid. I had a couple of tapes of classic 1970’s episodes, when the show was heavy with improv, when the scripts weren’t particularly preachy, when muppet man Jim Henson was still alive and creatively active. Some of the bits are so fun to watch: an adult would sit and talk to some kids and some muppets about, say, the letter B. The kids, though, would be trying to pull Ernie’s hair, or to hug Oscar the Grouch… and the bit would continue, as the actors and muppet controllers deftly steered around any distraction.

Then, in 1985, there was the Snuffle-Upagus Decision.

Mr. Upagus, as you may or may not remember, was Big Bird’s “imaginary” friend. Part of the show’s backstory was that Mr. Upagus was a real person, or at least a real woolly mammoth sort of thing. But, only the kids ever saw him; he would always go home a moment before an adult showed up.

Now, cultural philistine I may be, but it seems to me that English professors have a descriptive phrase for this literary device: it’s called a running gag. Even the Nachoman, when a mere Nachoboy of five years, recognized that Snuffy’s existence or nonexistence was being played for comic value. But some brilliant PBS wonks decided that Mr. Upagus’s plight sent the wrong message to children. Children must not feel that adults don’t believe them! It must be shown that the Children were right about Mr. Upagus’s existence all along! So, Snuffy became real.[1]

Then, there was the whole hideous fiasco about Bert and Ernie’s sexual orientation. A faction of idiot parents and activists bombarded PBS with complaints: it seemed to them that Bert and Ernie were gay. That’s funny, the sexual preference of two silly muppets hadn’t been particularly relevant to me when I was little Nachoboy, nor was it relevant to any other little kid friends who watched the show.

Now, if I were a PBS public relations person faced with such complaints, I would invite a contingent of these activists to the set of the show. I would bring them straight to Bert and Ernie, and I would invite the activists to conduct a thorough physical examination to see if they (the muppets) had any sexual organs with which to be gay, or even straight. If that exercise didn’t serve as a hot steamy bowl of sanity-flavored oatmeal, then I perversely might be tempted actually to out Bert and Ernie on a specially-created episode to be shipped to these activists on videotape.[2]

But, no, the PBS wonks decided to make Ernie and Bert sleep separately from then on, and to be sure that there were no more bathtub scenes involving both characters, caving to the anti-gay-muppet lobby.

And in 2005, for the icing on the cake, or at least the low-fat ranch dressing on the celery:

According to a new generation of parental watchdogs and activists, Cookie Monster is teaching children to be obese. So, PBS wonks have decided that Mr. Monster will from now on emphasize that cookies are only a “sometimes” food, and he will not gluttonously gobble cookies.

Huh. I note that when my very own Nachoboy was only two, he found Mr. Monster humorous in the extreme; the way the young Nachoboy imitated Cookie Monster was by growling while eating, even while eating cheerios or carrots. I never noticed any particular monster-inspired need on the boy’s part for cookies. Interestingly, this was the same point made by the parent of another two year old – Cookie Monster’s influence has been limited to silly growly gobbly noises at the dinner table. Real parents of two year olds are thankful for such influence, as sometimes we are happy that the kid is willing to eat anything at all.

[1] No one thought about the fact that Sesame Street was then sending the message that it’s not really okay to have an imaginary friend. I wonder how many poor kiddies suddenly were cruelly traumatized when their own imaginary friend failed to be recognized by adults.
[2] Now you see why the Nachoman is a physics teacher and not a public relations professional.