Can you tell me how to get back to Sesame Street?

[wendyzski]

In those days before pre-school, Sesame Street was designed to teach kids things like their alphabet and numbers (English AND Spanish), colors, and concepts like bigger/smaller and "next to". It premiered in 1969, when I was just turning 3, so I was pretty much the target audience.

I saw a documentary on PBS last night about how Sesame workshop plans and produces Sesame programs in other countries. This show touched briefly on the South African show (famous for introducing Kami, the HIV+ muppet). They also featured efforts to get productions up and running in Bangladesh and Kosovo. I suppose I never thought much about how much thought would have to go into something like this - to avoid accusations of "cultural imperialism", etc. The Bangladeshi show has an area where characters more like traditional Indian puppets live, and they had a lot of discussion on the Kosovo one if there would be two street signs (one in Albanian and one in Serbian) or one with both names on it. Apparently European countries seem to want to have their own Big Bird like character (in Mexico it's a parrot and in Germany a bear) while many Asian countries want to know "Why won't you let us have Big Bird?"

I'm not too fond of the current Sesame Street - I loathe 'Elmo's World' with a passion. It's loud, and ugly. It reminds me of when I was little I was afraid of the beginning of 'The Electric Company' because it was too loud. I know Big Bird was supposed to be the POV character, but I related more to Grover and Oscar. I remember when Mr. Hooper died, and when Bob and Maria had their baby. I remember the guy falling down stairs with the piles of baked goods, and how no one else could see Snuffalupagus. I miss that.

I was a little young for 'The Electric Company' when it came out - like I said above it was a little too loud for me at first. But it was funny, and I wanted to be Fargo North, Decoder. There was another special on this show the other night, and I realized I never made the connection between the famous people who worked on the show and their characters. I knew that Tom Leher wrote a lot of songs, and who Rita Moreno and Bill Cosby were, but I don't think I ever realized that Easy Reader and Mel Mounds were played by Morgan Freeman! Or that Gene Wilder was Letterman (narrated by Joan Rivers) and the villain was Zero Mostel. Sigh - my pop culture void is showing itself again.

All I can say is that my kids TV beats the hell out of Barney and the Teletubbies (bunnies notwithstanding)!

Comments

[socratesthecat.livejournal.com]

I've caught it a few times, very very late at night Noggin will play the old Sesame Street episodes. Its kind of a weird feeling because when your in that insomniac state of mind it's almost like a time machine.

[msimon777.livejournal.com]

You can still catch a lot of the better skits on youtube.
I managed to show Jacob all 10 of the "guy falling down the stairs" series