sesame street cred (redux)

Hey kids! Instead of making a Part 2 for the original article, I decided to rewrite it from scratch to make it 500% more readable and coherent. Which isn’t saying much–it’s still a bunch of rambling jabberwocky. But hey, whatever! Read this article before proceeding, folks.

Done? Good. For people who were too “cool” (read: lazy) to follow the link, the article discusses how the early episodes of Sesame Street (now on DVD and cleverly dubbed “old-school”) was deemed too edgy by today’s parents because of shocking scenes such as Cookie Monster pigging out on cookies and wooden pipes and Oscar the Grouch being… well, grouchy–scenes which they fear would be a bad influence for their children. As a result, we now have Cookie Monster uncharacteristically going cold turkey on cookies and eating nothing but healthy snacks, and Oscar the Grouch being more amiable than Mister Rogers and Bob Ross combined. (OK, I exaggerated on that last one. But you get my point.)

While I believe these changes are just a wee bit excessive (as if the network execs were trying to suck up to today’s parents–don’t get me started on Elmo), there’s a bit of merit in these efforts. After all, making Cookie Monster the next spokesperson for veggies (right after Popeye) has obvious positive benefits. There’s also this interesting story behind Snuffleupagus‘ transition from imaginary friend to actual character that was the focus of a controversial (but ultimately logical) decision by the CTW. But sometimes, these parents–and today’s adults in general–tend to go overboard and see malice where there isn’t any. For instance, Cookie Monster’s pipe-munching gag. I mean, do you really think kids are that stupid? Do they really think kids will start smoking by seeing Cookie Monster eat a lit pipe? (Or worse yet, will they start eating pipes themselves?)

But what really crumbles my cookie is how adults always have to bring the complexities of political correctness into the simple, earnest world of children’s programming. Do they do it because they don’t want children to be ignorant of real-life issues? Heck no! It’s to prevent the parents and their jaded minds from being offended, that’s why. Consider what the article hilariously points out here:

Back then… a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything.

Complement that with the parents’ reactions of shock during a home screening mentioned in the article. “What did they do to us?” quoth one mother, recalling her days watching the old Sesame Street. I admittedly can’t tell from the article whether this was an earnest reaction from these parents or if they were just being sarcastic (as the article’s author seems to be), but it’s not hard to believe if indeed the reactions were real. These must be the same people who think Harry Potter turns kids into devil worshippers and junkies (with the latter involving this weird conspiracy theory about the terms “Potter” and “muggle”)… I’m thinking Kitty Farmer from Donnie Darko. Jeebus.

On the other end of the spectrum these same people were complaining, even way back in the ’70s, that Sesame Street was an overly sanitized misrepresentation of an inner-city neighborhood (and therefore, not politically correct). Kids need to be saved from ignorance and be shown how the ghetto life really looks like, right? Yet somehow I doubt that the addition of crack-sniffing characters lying in puddles of their own urine next to Oscar’s garbage can would fly well with the kiddies. So which is it gonna be, parents?

Welp, enough with the rambling! Time to get my unemployed butt a job before I die of starvation. Visit Atelier Zemzelett and read my comics, future employers! Brought to you by the letters W, O, R and K.