Big Bird is in trouble. Again. It seems that in a recent Sesame Street segment he was vaccinated for the Coronavirus even though real six-year-olds—his perennial age—are not yet approved to get it.
But that minor anomaly was not what caused Texas Senator and buffoon Ted Cruz’s head to explode. It was that the large ambling avian got the shot at
all—proof, he
claimed, that the PBS staple was just a propaganda shill of the Biden
administration and a tool for brainwashing toddlers and their mommies. He smelled a whiff of conspiracy in the
air. On cue the whole Repugnant messaging
machine spring into action.
The echo chamber was never louder. One Fox
News host even challenged “cowardly” Muppets to a debate on his show. He should be careful what he wishes
for. On an off
day Elmo would demolish him before you could count to ten.
These hair-on-fire
attacks are hardly new.
Big Bird and the show that made him a star have attracted conservative wrath from the beginning. As we shall
see, attempts to ax the show and its most iconic character have routinely backfired. But despite
their legendary on message appeals to their base hyper
conservatives have routinely shot
themselves in the foot over it.
Muppet
creator Jim Henson died long ago. In
2017 original cast member Bob
McGrath was unceremoniously dumped by producers. The next year Caroll Spinney who was Big
Bird and Oscar the Grouch retired and then died in 2019. Children’s
Television Workshop took heat for making a deal to show new
episodes of the program on HBO weeks
before they aired for the freeloading rabble on Public Television as well as for relentless
merchandising of iconic
characters. But after 52 years Sesame
Street rolls unstoppably
along.
It first came on the air on November
10, 1969 on the broadcasting ghetto of National Educational Television (NET), the home of study-at-home
instructional programs, stultifying documentaries, and it’s-good-for-you
highbrow cultural castor oil. There
was little hope that the main target audience—urban preschoolers from the kind of homes
where books were far rarer than unpaid bills—would ever find the
damn thing. Low and behold some of them
did—along with millions of unexpected middle
class kids and their parents. They
all found their way to Sesame Street.
The show began to take shape more
than two years earlier in a do-gooder’s conversation with a potential deep
pockets donor. Joan Ganz Cooney was a television
producer unhappy with her job and her medium. She tended to agree with Newton Minnow’s famous assessment that despite of its early
promise, TV fare had deteriorated to “a vast wasteland.” Why not, she asked Lloyd Morrisett, vice
president of the Carnegie
Foundation, create a program aimed at very young children which would
“master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them?”
Cooney agreed and the two soon
founded something called the Children’s
Television Workshop (CTW) to make that vision a reality. For two years they commissioned all sorts of academic
studies of how children learn, consulted with educators and
experts, commissioned tests and surveys. They also raised money—a ton of
it. Not only from Cooney’s Carnegie
Foundation, but big grants from the Ford
Foundation and the Federal
Government, $8 million in all or about half of what it took Disneyland to open in 1955.
The show would reflect all of that
research and money. Catering to the
short attention spans of the target audience, segments would be brief—almost
all under 2 minutes—colorful, musical, and varied. Animated lessons in counting and the ABCs
were broken up by films snips often of children in a real big city
riding busses, crossing busy streets with their parents,
visiting neighborhood parks.
Children and families in those clips were purposely drawn from
different races and ethnicities.
These segments would loosely be tied up by live actor/hosts portraying residents of a typical New York City brownstone block, a little rundown at
the heels, anchored by a friendly neighborhood store.
Did I forget to mention the Muppets? Maybe CTW biggest coup was
bringing Jim Henson and his already established
star character Kermit the Frog on
board. Henson and his crew of created dozens
of new puppets, many of which were break-out stars on their own
before the first season was over—Big
Bird; his pal shy, hairy Snuffleupagus;
Oscar the Grouch; Cookie Monster; Count Von Count, and the odd couple Bert and Ernie. Research showed that kids responded
so strongly to the Muppets segments, that more were commissioned and added as
the season rolled on.
When children interacted with
the live actors or Muppets, child actors were never used. Kids recruited mostly from New York public schools and their younger
siblings were used, giving spontaneity to segments that children
recognized as genuine.
When the show debuted, no one
had ever seen anything like it. People
were used to local TV children’s shows with host clowns or cowboys
introducing variety acts and cartoons—the format perfected
by Howdy
Doody and Bozo and copied in even the smallest markets—or Saturday
morning “children’s blocks” on network
TV dominated by re-runs of old live action series like The
Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, and Sky King, or old theatrical
cartoons. Captain Kangaroo and Shari
Lewis were considered gentle programing for the younger set, but not—at
least until Sesame Street, when they revised
their approach, considered educational.
By the end of the year NET had what
it never expected—a hit television show. A show so successful it changed public
broadcasting from the old “educational TV” model. With money pouring in from new subscribers,
donors, corporations, and the Feds they reimagined
themselves and less than a year after the premier of Sesame Street emerged as the Public
Broadcasting System (PBS) on
October 5, 1970.
To their chagrin, however,
CTW honchos discovered that their main audience was not the hoped for
urban poor, but the comfortably suburban
middle class and young families already fretting over their children’s educational
development. The producers could
have recalibrated the show to this demographic. And of course, to some degree they did, but
they refused to give up the urban setting, the multi-racial and multi-cultural
cast. Sesame Street remained a city block, not a suburban cul-de-sac. And in doing so the show
taught generations of kids about diversity and accepting people
who don’t look or speak like they do.
Over the years the show adapted,
particularly after it was determined that it would last long after its anticipated
two year run. They had to do more
than just repeat the alphabet and numbers endlessly, although some of the first
of those educational clips continue to be sparingly used to this
day.
When research showed that children
who watched with a parent or care giver got more lasting benefits
from the show than those just plunked down in front of the set with the
expectation of it being a babysitter, producers decided to try and
attract more adult viewer by adding cameo appearances by major stars
and celebrities. Soon the biggest
names in Hollywood and the music
business were clamoring for chances to do the show. They could not plug their latest
work. In most cases their names were
never even mentioned. Generally,
they had to interact with real children in short encounters. Early stars appearances included Harry Bellefonte, Dan Blocker of Bonanza,
Candice Bergen, Cab Callaway, Ray Charles,
Whoopi Goldberg, Lena Horne, Michael Landon, Rita Moreno—who became a semi-regular,
Malvina Reynolds—also a cast member in season 4, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Lillie Tomlin.
The show adapted in other ways. After the mid-70’s they began to spend more
time on children’s emotional development including dealing with the events
and traumas of real life. Famously
they dealt openly with the death of a beloved original character, Mr. Hooper, the proprietor
of the local store. The romance
and marriage of Luis and Maria became a season-long story arc
as did the birth of Miles,
the baby of another cast pair and the show traced his growth and development. Teen
age characters with real problems like older brothers and sisters
often had were introduced. Divorce and
even abuse would be carefully
touched on.
Despite all of its success, the show
was not without its critics. Some
child development experts came to believe that the rapid fire style
deprived children of the ability to develop longer concentration skills. Educators found that their classrooms
were filled with restive youngsters who were bored by their best
efforts and lessons. Some
doubted the long term advantage of early exposure to elementary
basics saying it seemed to evaporate by second grade.
The Nixon administration became nervous about the direction of
the show and the Education Department wrangled
with producers over funding and content.
In 1972 they did not deliver promised support until the last day
of CWT’s budget year, nearly crippling production. Signs were out that direct Federal support
would be cut off entirely, and indeed it eventually was. That caused producers to turn increasingly to
licensing of Sesame Street
characters and songs to producers of books, records, toys,
and an infinite variety of special merchandise. Eventually live stage and ice show toured paying handsome
royalties. Along with the sale of rights
to do versions of the show in 40 countries, CWT was soon making very
good money indeed. In 1998 it even began
accepting direct corporate sponsorship for
the broadcasts. These developments drew harsh
criticism from some on the left,
including Ralph Nader who called for
a boycott for “exploiting impressionable children.”
But the complaints of commercialism
from the left paled before the growing outrage of the right. As noted, suspicion of the program began
within the first few years under Nixon.
It only grew. By the ‘90’s the right
wing think tanks were producing reports calling the show thinly disguised
liberal propaganda. It was never really
that, but the generations of children who grew up watching it were taught tolerance
and respect for others and grew up with far different racial ideas
and attitudes than their parents—even in the Deep South. Women were
portrayed as strong and capable and all sorts of families with
and without men present were shown as happy and normal. Kids were taught cooperation and community
as values, to the omission, conservatives charged, of individualism
and competition. There was no inoculation
of patriotism and religion was hardly ever mentioned.
The right would occasionally surface
with direct blasts at Sesame
Street, but it turned out to be unpopular—Republican mommies were just as enthralled by the program a Democratic bra burning, Hadrian feminazis.
So, they concentrated their fire obliquely on Public
Broadcasting and have spent more than two decades trying to slash or
completely de-fund it. Despite
the fact that the program has not received a direct dime of support from
the Feds in years, Democrats are always ready and gleeful to
charge that Congressional Republicans are trying to “kill Big Bird.”
And the charge sticks every time—in no small way because the public
recognizes a glimmer of truth behind the hyperbole. Tea
Party Representatives in the early 2000s reported hearing more protests about that than any other issue.
In 52 years on the air, there have
been changes. Elmo, the impossibly cute perianal two-year-old,
became such a star that his occasional segments became his own daily feature. The hectic pace and fast cuts of
the early years have been slowed down.
More time is spent “live” on the Street between segments and story
arcs are more completely played out.
More change was inevitable. And it didn’t make conservatives happy. Long time couple Bert and Ernie were acknowledged
to be Gay,
The rise of cable TV and various kinds of on-demand media—including gaming
for very young children—has eaten into the audience. Ratings are down and Sesame Street is no longer the only game in town.
But it is not going away
anytime soon. A third maybe even fourth generation,
of young parents is sitting down with their toddlers and turning on the giant flat screen. Big Bird is bigger and brighter than ever
in HD.
In my house my daughter Maureen and I watch with 23-month-old baby Matilda. With fond tears in
our eyes, we sing along:
Sunny Day
Sweepin, the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet
Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Sesame Street
Come and play
Everything’s A-OK
Friendly neighbors there
That's where we meet
Can you tell me how to get
How to get to Sesame Street
It’s a magic carpet ride
Every door will open wide
To happy people like you--
Happy people like
What a beautiful
Sunny Day
Sweepin’ the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet
Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Sesame Street...
How to get to Sesame Street
How to get to...
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