Why Is Sesame Street Such A Controversial Lightning Rod?

[beaker]

Exactly, Beaker, they couldn't even use the word "pregnant" on "I Love Lucy" it was "expecting", they slept in separate beds, etc. Norman Lear definitely made a turn around in pop culture with his sitcoms, and they were some of the best written shows on television, PERIOD. That's what made Sesame Street as ground breaking as it was: catering to mixed language children in urban neighborhoods, having a racially mixed cast of actors, etc. Heaven FORBID they try to put a show on network television today like "All in the Family" it wouldn't last 2 seconds. That's why I don't watch any network shows anymore, all cable for me these days because I don't like the way everything is clean and shiny for everyone today.

That whole Spielberg/E.T. thing bothered me tremendously as E.T. was one of my favorite movies growing up and still is (saw it when it originally came out in theaters), but to give credit to Spielberg, at least when he put it on DVD, he put out BOTH the original and revised one. Unlike a certain director of a famous franchise who redoes his movies every few years on DVD that you can't find an original copy of the film anymore...

Well it's interesting to study...the transition from the 1960's to the 1970's. I wasn't even born til 1978, so for me it's referential. Thanks for bringing up Norman Lear!
He pretty much helped collapse and smash through this very Leave it To Beaver/Dick Van Dyke(not saying anything wrong with those, but they werent real) paradigm and injected a dose of real America. Poor/lower working class families and an inner city sensibility. A lot of those All in the Family episodes had a heavy heart, and I think that's why Roseanne resonated so deeply all those years later.

The 1960's seemed like simply the 1950's continued, so in comes the 1970's with the rise of black voices, strong female voices, and a voice that said "surprise surprise America, life ain't leave it to Beaver". Which is why I really respect Sesame Street deciding from day one to have it set in a not so pretty urban inner city. Every kids show before and since then has been this eerily sterile fantasyland of controlled chaos, the sort parodied in Greg the Bunny or Death To Smoochy. I mean heck even in that very first Sesame Street airing from November 1969 Gordon is talking about some pretty real stuff.

Real shows do not appear anymore, let alone in comedy form. Roseanne was of a dying breed, informed by Lear's groundbreaking work. Now I absolutely love Modern Family, Big Bang Theory, The Office, etc but I miss the All in the Family/Roseanne/Jefferson realism. Or shows like My So Called Life. People today don't want real.
They want sugar coated pop for a smart phone society with short attention spans and bowling lane bumpers.

 

[beaker]

Personally, I'm far more offended that they keep shoving yoga onto the show. Yoga is something yuppies do for various reasons I don't want to rant about. But it's essentially a bunch of well to do, predominantly Caucasian 20 somethings basXXrdizing and Flanderizing the rich culture of another country for selfish reasons. When they even had the episode with Leela teaching Telly and Elmo yoga, they glossed over any reference to the Indian cultural aspects. To me, that's the epiphany that Sesame Street has been Gentrified and the inner city, underprivileged roots of the show have been yanked out. All that needs to be done is to add a 5 dollar cupcake shop and a Starbucks.

Right, but that's like saying every time they reference say, the characters doing karaoke, they would have to explain the Japanese origin. I think it's fair to highlight things popular in middle class suburbia, Yoga and organic food shopping being part of that.
I believe all cultures should be explored and referenced. I mean, yeah I have poked fun a lot at yuppy/upper middle class society(not as much as conservative culture) But I say why not.

At the same time, real problems and issues/themes of the poor and poor working class need to be shown as well. They have all these military specials, why don't they have one like a "Is Zoes parents going to have food on their table tonight" episode.
As far as the cultural tableaux of modern society, the fact is a lot of people, too many with decision making power, live in fantasy land as youve said. Conservatives lament the "nuclear/traditional family", yet most marriage ends in divorce. Americans are getting more and more unhealthy. And Sesame Street has addressed both these issues a number of times.

 

[beaker]

I still reject the premise that Sesame Street is a lightning rod for controversy. I mean, what controversies? Count them. It's just a part of the social consciousness like everything else. Maybe they've been under fire recently because a presidential candidate needed to distract people away from the fact that he was pretty much an empty hat. However, Sesame has embraced first ladies and political figures from all parts of the spectrum.

At nearly 44 years old, Sesame Street has to be one of the most scandal-free projects in entertainment history.

- The Kevin Clash scandal and the tarnish of their most senior flagship
performer and character
- The US military admitting they used Sesame Street songs
as part of their brutal torture of Iraqi detainees
- The never ending political PBS defunding threats
- The New Yorker cover and endless Bert and Ernie debate
- The Big Bird/Mitt Romney thing
- The HIV muppet controversy
- The Katy Perry thing
- The Rosevelt Franklin is a bad influence thing
- The "Cookie Monster is now veggie monster" meme

Yeah some of these are silly scandals, but some are pretty serious.

 

[jvcarroll]

- The Kevin Clash scandal and the tarnish of their most senior flagship
performer and character
- The US military admitting they used Sesame Street songs
as part of their brutal torture of Iraqi detainees
- The never ending political PBS defunding threats
- The New Yorker cover and endless Bert and Ernie debate
- The Big Bird/Mitt Romney thing
- The HIV muppet controversy
- The Katy Perry thing
- The Rosevelt Franklin is a bad influence thing
- The "Cookie Monster is now veggie monster" meme

Yeah some of these are silly scandals, but some are pretty serious.

That's really not all that much for 44 years. Everything you've cited are mere flashes in the pan that have been greatly exaggerated in this thread. You could pick at anything using that sort of criteria. Sesame Street certainly has a history, but it wasn't until last year that a real controversy occurred and it was swiftly dealt with so it wouldn't harm the program. By the standard of this thread, any successful program is a lightning rod for controversy.

 

[Drtooth]

Right, but that's like saying every time they reference say, the characters doing karaoke, they would have to explain the Japanese origin. I think it's fair to highlight things popular in middle class suburbia, Yoga and organic food shopping being part of that.
I believe all cultures should be explored and referenced. I mean, yeah I have poked fun a lot at yuppy/upper middle class society(not as much as conservative culture) But I say why not.

Sesame Street used to be about everybody. Mainly low income kids that live in cities and can't afford preschool. But it also talked about kids in rural areas, some suburban kids... now it's just for kids who live in overly clean safe cities where the rent keeps getting jacked up because a chain store wearing a paper thin indie disguise moves in. Cities where people keep getting kicked out of their houses because all the yuppies came in and made it impossible to get an apartment (now branded a condo) unless you have a 5-6 figure income. It's bad enough that yuppies are screwing over poor people (unintentionally), but to have Sesame Street abandon it's street cred for organic tofus and Yoga rubs it in their faces. I find that a million times more "downhill" and "dumbed down" than Mumford and Professor Hastings not being on the show anymore.

Real shows do not appear anymore, let alone in comedy form. Roseanne was of a dying breed, informed by Lear's groundbreaking work. Now I absolutely love Modern Family, Big Bang Theory, The Office, etc but I miss the All in the Family/Roseanne/Jefferson realism. Or shows like My So Called Life. People today don't want real.
They want sugar coated pop for a smart phone society with short attention spans and bowling lane bumpers.

You left out 2 Broke Girls and The Middle. Both are shows that have the premise of the American Dream being viciously murdered slowly by crap that happened since the 80's. The Middle especially. It's all about how families struggling with 2 jobs can't even make it anymore. Modern Family is kinda sugar coated in the manner that every family has at least 2 high paying jobs and they live in a neighborhood none of us would ever see in real life... but the fact that there's a gay couple that's treated barely awkward speaks volumes. Much better than the preachy, anvilicious The New Normal.

We'd never have a show like All in the Family again because the noble, opinionated bigot is falling out of relevance. More people supported Kevin Keeler in Archie (again, a comic that's litigiously protective of it's purity, and even had a Christian comics line for some time) than whined about it.

Then again, there is something to say about sugar coated sitcoms. Maybe we don't want reality in our media because we have enough reality in our real lives and want to escape our doomed futures. There were at least 2 TV shows about how much promise this generation had, only to wind up as huge failures (one was a comedy). Cancelled in less than a season. We don't want to be reminded that, at best, we got low paying jobs as cogs... IF we were insanely lucky.

 

[minor muppetz]

People today don't want real.

Of course I don't. And if other people don't want real, then it's a shame they don't cancel all those reality shows.

Some have mentioned modern shows that aren't "real", and I hadn't really noticed that about The Big Bang Theory or 2 Broke Girls.

Actually, "real" can be good if it's unexpected. Like in that episode of The Powerpuff Girls where they get framed, break out of jail to capture the real criminals (who wore oversized Powerpuf Girls costumes), and after clearing their names, they had to go back to jail for breaking out.

 

[Oscarfan]

Then again, there is something to say about sugar coated sitcoms. Maybe we don't want reality in our media because we have enough reality in our real lives and want to escape our doomed futures. There were at least 2 TV shows about how much promise this generation had, only to wind up as huge failures (one was a comedy). Cancelled in less than a season. We don't want to be reminded that, at best, we got low paying jobs as cogs... IF we were insanely lucky.

I recall in the Biography episode on Married...with Children, that one of the main reasons people tuned in was that they felt their day sucked and knew that Al Bundy would have it worse.

 

[Drtooth]

See? You don't have a sympathetic character that's going what you're going through as the lead. You go for someone worse off than you.

 

[beaker]

That's really not all that much for 44 years. Everything you've cited are mere flashes in the pan that have been greatly exaggerated in this thread. You could pick at anything using that sort of criteria. Sesame Street certainly has a history, but it wasn't until last year that a real controversy occurred and it was swiftly dealt with so it wouldn't harm the program. By the standard of this thread, any successful program is a lightning rod for controversy.

JV that's my point though, is a lot of this is fake controversy. The majority of what I listed are manufactured controversies from groups who have no lives.

 

[beaker]

Drtooth: Id say 2 Broke Girls is the most fake of all the shows. And Ive seen every episode. Ive been to Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, even last year, and nothing in that show reflects the area. I dont mind the graphic sexual humor, it just feels forced in the delivery...plus I know it's making fun of Paris Hilton-ish prissy princesses, it's just hard to watch even in satire. Though it's a lot easier to watch than The New Girl and Whitney, which to me are just bottom of the barrel personality trait wise.

Of course I don't. And if other people don't want real, then it's a shame they don't cancel all those reality shows.

Some have mentioned modern shows that aren't "real", and I hadn't really noticed that about The Big Bang Theory or 2 Broke Girls.

Actually, "real" can be good if it's unexpected. Like in that episode of The Powerpuff Girls where they get framed, break out of jail to capture the real criminals (who wore oversized Powerpuf Girls costumes), and after clearing their names, they had to go back to jail for breaking out.

Real to me being more, Life Goes On/All In The Family/Roseanne/My So Called Life/etc compared to Friends or 30 Rock or How I Met Your Mother...just in that you feel you can connect with these people.