Sesame Street to tackle divorce, for real this time

[Drtooth]

I just don't think it makes divorce real enough. A kid might see this Abby segment and think "Well divorce is something that happens to other people and they're fine now but it's not something I need to worry about." But if divorce actually does happen to them, it's a very different story. It's a lot harder to handle when it's actually happening to you.

I see what you're getting at, but we all have to realize, this is for 3-5 year olds. They do need to realize everything's okay, even if it's a little dishonest. They're more mature than we realize, sure... but messy and complex will just make this thing incredibly difficult for the child to understand. It's like when they tackled Mr. Hooper's death, they said he was gone and never coming back. They did not say "Mr. Hooper was fighting off an life long illness, and in the end, we all die." Older kids know that, but the target audience doesn't need to know. If you tell a little kid about mortality, they'll either not underhand the concept or freak the heck out that they're going to die, even eventually. When you're old enough, you come to terms with these things. There are many reasons why parents get divorced... do we want to tell kids that mommy or daddy was cheating at that age? That's for them to find out and learn later. DTF put it very succinctly.

Actually, I have to admit, showing the parents fighting isn't exactly a good idea anyway. There was this episode of Arthur where the parents got into a big fight, and through the entire episode Arthur and D.W. worried that their parents would get a divorce. At one point, they feared repercussions of custody battles, in an imagine spot Arthur never got to see D.W. or Pal (which is his dog anyway). There's a real fear that if they show parents fighting then getting a divorce, kids who aren't going through this WILL think their parents will get a divorce and they'll be in the middle. I swear I was in constant fear of that at some point... scarier still, as I said, it almost happened. They still fight a lot. They're VERY passive aggressive people.

Like I said before, the Fat Albert episode works fine for older kids. It shows quite a few arguments (The father even making a nasty comment about the wife "Spending all [his] money"). Albert is for 7-10 year olds. They understand complexity more.

 

[CensoredAlso]

I see what you're getting at, but we all have to realize, this is for 3-5 year olds. They do need to realize everything's okay, even if it's a little dishonest. They're more mature than we realize, sure... but messy and complex will just make this thing incredibly difficult for the child to understand. It's like when they tackled Mr. Hooper's death, they said he was gone and never coming back. They did not say "Mr. Hooper was fighting off an life long illness, and in the end, we all die."

Yeah I definitely get what you're saying as well. I guess I just don't have the faith that the episode will be as deep as the Hooper episode.

Like I said before, the Fat Albert episode works fine for older kids. It shows quite a few arguments (The father even making a nasty comment about the wife "Spending all [his] money"). Albert is for 7-10 year olds. They understand complexity more.

Yeah Fat Albert did a good job. The only thing that bothered me was how all the pressure was on the child to accept the change.

 

[Drtooth]

Yeah I definitely get what you're saying as well. I guess I just don't have the faith that the episode will be as deep as the Hooper episode.

Death is a very permanent and depressing thing. What made the Hooper episode powerful is that we hide death from children, especially in ridiculous, heavy handed ways in kid's television in this country. No one can die. They're perfectly alright but you never see them again. And anytime someone's implied to die, that's when you know that character is coming back. Even mentioning a death in passing is taboo. For a while they had to completely hide the fact that Ghosts were dead people in Casper and even Real Ghostbusters (and they planned an episode about what Slimer was before he died too). Then you look at anime, and death's all around it. Even in the little kiddy stuff like Doraemon and Anpanman. When we get one of those over here, they butcher any reference to death they can, and that stuff is meant for 7-12 year olds. Meanwhile, the original versions get very emotionally manipulative when a character dies, and in certain shows, characters randomly come back to life back and forth.

The fact that we can't even mention death in an action cartoon for older kids is reason enough Hooper's death was powerful.

 

[minor muppetz]

I wonder if this will lead to Sesame Workshop releasing the Sesame Street News "Bird Family" sketch on DVD or online, or even if they'll release portions of the "Snuffy Gets a Divorce" episode (now that I think about it, I want that to be a bonus feature on Old School Volume 5, if we get a fifth volume).

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

For a while they had to completely hide the fact that Ghosts were dead people in Casper and even Real Ghostbusters (and they planned an episode about what Slimer was before he died too).

Really? I've been wondering about that too. After all, they did talk about Casper's history in the movie. Slimer's is still in question, especially how he got so slimey where Casper is more of just a semi-visible being with no slime/ecto plasm whatsoever. Okay. I'm getting way off topic. I guess this is a better discussion for the ToonZone forums, but since Drtooth mentioned it I thought I'd post my thoughts on that.

Now, back to Sesame Street....

I wonder if this will lead to Sesame Workshop releasing the Sesame Street News "Bird Family" sketch on DVD or online, or even if they'll release portions of the "Snuffy Gets a Divorce" episode (now that I think about it, I want that to be a bonus feature on Old School Volume 5, if we get a fifth volume).

Yeah. I think in the special that they should maybe have Snuffy appear and make some mention of his parents being divorced as well. I guess that's been in question since they decided not to air that episode.

It was definitely before. Kevin not only performed Elmo and a few other characters in the video, but according to Muppet Wiki, he directed it as well.

Thanks for that info. That's what I was thinking, but I wanted to be sure.

 

[Drtooth]

Really? I've been wondering about that too. After all, they did talk about Casper's history in the movie. Slimer's is still in question, especially how he got so slimey where Casper is more of just a semi-visible being with no slime/ecto plasm whatsoever. Okay. I'm getting way off topic. I guess this is a better discussion for the ToonZone forums, but since Drtooth mentioned it I thought I'd post my thoughts on that.

Eh... the movie doesn't really count for various reasons. The only Casper cartoon I know that dealt with ghosts being the thing you turn into when you die (also barring the 1990's cartoon based on the movie) was the one where he becomes friends with a Fox, and the fox becomes a ghost at the end. In fact, the 1950's series went to great lengths to hide the fact he was a dead kid, basically saying that he was born a ghost and raised by a ghost family. I forgot exactly where I read that, though.

As for Slimer, Ghostbusters Wiki has this quote:

Writers Pamela Hickey and Dennys McCoy pitched a story many times about Slimer coming back to life as a human being. He was to be a 4'11 schlub who wore a suit that didn't fit right and ate a lot. Len Janson liked the premise but the sticking point, oddly, was having to then address Slimer's death. [3]

• The story was never approved because it was against the rules to mention a ghost was a dead person (though this somehow didn't prevent episodes such as "Boo-Dunit" and "Slimer's Curse" from airing, as they explored the notion of a ghost being the spirit of a deceased person).

 

[DTF]

Death is a very permanent and depressing thing. What made the Hooper episode powerful is that we hide death from children, especially in ridiculous, heavy handed ways in kid's television in this country. No one can die. They're perfectly alright but you never see them again. And anytime someone's implied to die, that's when you know that character is coming back. Even mentioning a death in passing is taboo....
The fact that we can't even mention death in an action cartoon for older kids is reason enough Hooper's death was powerful.

Even sitcoms, "Full House" mentioned the mom more than all previous ones *combined* (okay, nos tats to be sure, but it almost has to be) and there were real effects from missing her, both shown and implied. (Anyone who thinks the dad not discilpning Michelle till almost age 4 and his obsessive cleaning can't be linked to depression doesn't fully understand eath, and I don't care if the writers didn't intend it that way. And don't even get me started on other show types.

There's an element of TV, though, that's *supposed* to be escape; that's why "Dallas" lost viewers because a season had been a dream, but if Bobby(?) Ewing had just reappeared after a year (and I suspect they tried to find a way to do it) few would have batted an eye. There's a reason i stopped watching TV int he middle '90s and most of "Full House" I saw on reruns, and it's not just becasue I dropped shows as I advanced in school and got busier and didn't pick new ones up. There is too much violence, gore, and sex on TV for my tastes.

Should Sesme Street remain as tranquil, with no problems, as TV was in the '50s-'early '80s? No, I think there can be a happy medium. We're not talking introducing lots of chaos, or even having the gang from the Old 1-2 ("Barney Miller"'s precinct) pay a visit. Like Pam's death on "Full House," like Mr. Hooper's death on "Sesame Street," it's not like we're seeing all the gory details.

Can they use Abby's parents in the same way? The more I think about it, I think it would really help tohave a character saying an iconic line like "Magic won't solve it" int he same way Susan's "Mr. Hooper's not coming back." yes, I know it's cheesy to sum it up in one or two lines. But, unless you want the gory details, that's sort of what television does. And,the huge details of something like divorce can't be shown totally in 1 show with a beginning, middle, and end. It takes a season, nay, a series. (And even that's not enough, as I show in the "Full House Chronology") No, episodes don't span only 30 minutes in the TV universe of the characters. Most take place over days, the beginning can be months before the end of the episode in rare cases, and a M*A*S*H one spanned a year! However, it's still only showing 22-25 minutes worth of those 3-5 days over which the episode takes place.

 

[Drtooth]

There's an element of TV, though, that's *supposed* to be escape; that's why "Dallas" lost viewers because a season had been a dream, but if Bobby(?) Ewing had just reappeared after a year (and I suspect they tried to find a way to do it) few would have batted an eye.

I heard they lost a bunch of viewers before that, constantly writing themselves into corners and getting gimmicky and incomprehensible and ticking the viewers off. That's why Dallas had that retcon that I guess drove everyone away.

But my point being, I never got the whole "You can't mentioned death" bit in cartoon shows. Sure, goofy cartoony escapist shows I get, but action shows and ones where death is integral to the plot are kinda ridiculous. Personally, I liked how Bravestarr dealt with drug abuse by actually killing off a kid who was using. That's a very important piece of realism right there.

 

[Convincing John]

Speaking of mentioning death to kids, we saw this film in elemenatry School called "Play Safe". Zip ahead to the 6:00 mark and watch what happens with "Jimmy". Technically that film was for kids...and we saw it pretty early on, like second or third grade. It freaked a lot of kids out, but that was what those films were designed to do: scare the crap outta kids so they'd behave.

(I'll refrain from saying the obvious line from "Mr. Lizard's World" on Dinosaurs.)

Oh, and the Casper cartoon you mentioned about the fox was called "There's Good Boos Tonight":

 

[Drtooth]

Speaking of mentioning death to kids, we saw this film in elemenatry School called "Play Safe". Zip ahead to the 6:00 mark and watch what happens with "Jimmy". Technically that film was for kids...and we saw it pretty early on, like second or third grade. It freaked a lot of kids out, but that was what those films were designed to do: scare the crap outta kids so they'd behave.

I'm preprogrammed to think of this whenever I hear "Play Safe."

Because every dollar store cartoon compilation, both VHS and DVD is required by law to have it.

As for that one, scaring the crap out of kids so they'd behave was a freaking market in Germany. You know, the story about the kid who sucked his thumbs and a monster cut them off. Not to mention Krampus. We really coddle our kids here. Seeing Germany, I can see why. But we really need to come forward and say to kids, "we all die. The point is to not run into traffic and make it happen sooner."