Katy Perry song banned from Sesame Street Season 41

[The 11th UrRu]

Seriously disappointed they cut it. Saw it yesterday before this all happened and was impressed with her effort on the skit. Much like Natalie Portmans elephant skit, I held her in a new light after her appearance. We are simply too sensitive to these things these days, I'm sad to see SS buckle under the "outside" pressure... leave the politics and jerry springers and CSI's and the TMZs on the outside where they belong, that line of thinking or debate does not belong on this show, this show has for 40 years super-ceded outside garbage... at the end of the day, on the inside, its a cute harmless skit for kids to enjoy and dance to while they watch TV in the morning....

 

[dwmckim]

The controversy certainly helped it. It's one of the most watched clips on Youtube now. Which is kinda cool because the Ask Elmo is a featured clip with an Elmo pic next to the Youtube logo today! It's basically an Elmo Day (what a day for it to happen to fall on too!)

I realized in my previous posts i never actually mentioned something i wanted to say but left out...i do really love the clip. Overall it's fresh, really well done, lots of fun and sounds great! (Might be my fave Sesame song since Feist's 1234). The only thing i didn't care for (besides some poor choices in editing/execution/too many entendres) was that parts of it were modulated in a way you couldn't make out the words which normally i wouldn't mind because the sound is a bit cool, but when the main objective is as a teaching tool, it's kind of important to understand the words.

The clip is so right on and yet so wrong in so many different ways (what is that odd fascination the editors had with showing the shot of Elmo running around the bottom of Katy's skity over and over?)

Someone also posted a rather funny video of parts of the clip in slow motion where parts of Katy's body are doing some major dancing on their own.

 

[ISNorden]

For what it's worth, I was over at the official Sesame Street channel: the comment section is filthier than Oscar's can, and those who do mention the Perry scandal refer mainly to her, ahem, cleavage. Yes, Sesame Street has shown two women breast-feeding as part of an educational discussion of that topic, at a level kids could understand. And yes, animated/puppet characters can be "sexed up" inappropriately; Tinker Bell's looks sparked a ton of criticism back in the 60s. Heck, Sesame Street may have gone too far in the past when they created Polly Darton; but at least the designers dressed her a bit less suggestively than Katie Perry nearly got away with!

 

[minor muppetz]

Dang thing wasn't even strapless.

I thought it was (those straps over her shoulders were part of the cape).

If I was a celeb on Sesame Street, I'd specifically ask to work with Telly and or Oscar.

Heh, if it was me I'd ask to work with Herry or Biff and Sully, though Oscar would be great to work with.

 

[frogboy4]

I thought the video, composition, shooting, editing and vocals were easy to understand and top shelf. Also loved the Oscar cameo! This is very much in the spirit of the original video. Sure, there's repetition of a few key shots, but that's one of the educational parts of the song and of Sesame Street as a whole. Would I have gone with a slightly varied take? Well, yeah, but it's unnecessary. I suppose anything can be scrutinized. I’ve certainly done so with the Muppets Kitchen, but this simply cute little video has nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it’s too fun for the modern Sesame Street.

I think they should have Katy back and either make a different song or change her outfit. She’s such a big fan and obviously she and Elmo had a good time working together.

 

[Convincing John]

If I was a celeb on Sesame Street, I'd specifically ask to work with Telly and or Oscar.

Me too! Or Cookie or Bert or Ernie...any of the classic characters. It got annoying this past season when an Elmo-centered street story would end and right away was "Hi, I'm (celebrity)." "AND ELMO'S ELMO!" I felt like Han Solo when he said "Didn't we just leave this party?"

Get Weird Al on the phone. Get someone who REALLY can do a parody.

I've thought the same thing for years! He's still making CD's, still touring, still writing great stuff...why doesn't he do something with the Muppets or Sesame? He'd be the perfect guest and it wouldn't matter if kids didn't know who he was. He can do all kinds of silly things to make kids AND adults laugh. I wish that SW would hire him as one of the writers or musicians or something. If they did, we'd get great, classic parodies with the same quality as "Born to Add" or "Hey Food". Heck, he could do versions of some of his own songs if he wanted. Can't you just see a version of "Eat It" starring Weird Al and Cookie Monster?

Convincing John

 

[HeyButtahfly]

I support Sesame Street pulling the video, I thought it was inappropriate for a children's television show. That is all I will say because I'm not in the mood to argue over ethics in media.

 

[Drtooth]

Once again we have to ask... How on Earth... How in the entire universe is her outfit any different from what people on the street are wearing now.

Oh wait. It's a lot more modest. You don't want your kid to see that never EVER take them to the beach. And NEVER let them watch the Little Mermaid. Even the Sea Witch showed a lot more skin than I would have liked. I'm sorry but we've come pretty far in our society to still think that's completely inappropriate. Meanwhile, hypocrisy still surrounds the prudish and puritanical culture. Walk into TRU, what's the first thing you're gonna see? Twilight character action figures, and all the men are shirtless. Yeah, THAT'S not sexual.

The only guests SS should ever bar from being on the show are ones that deal in telling kids the glory of smacking ho's and being a pimp. Or any sports star that doped up to cheat. And of course, anyone who molested children. THOSE things hurt people. Katy didn't. She wore something that's NOT out of the ordinary (kid's show or no kid's show) that covers up both her midsection AND her buttcrack. Something that actually ISN'T too common, and I'd at least see your point if the dress was at LEAST strapless. This, socially speaking isn't just a step backward, it's a giant Scooby-Doo leap into Shaggy's arms backwards. This whole god given Human body= Sex=SHAME thing is completely lost on me. There is nothing even innuendous about her performance. Sure, you wouldn't want the pre-school teacher to dress that way, but she's NOT a preschool teacher.

Watch the Desperate Houseplants segment again. Now, how come we aren't having a small vocal minority with WAAAAY too much time on their hands whine about that? There's so much innuendo in that segment I'm surprised they got away with it. And NO ONE COMPLAINED. And Kids DIDN'T know what they were talking about.

But MAKE NO MISTAKE. This isn't about just her body, it's her body of work. Oh NOES! She sang California Gurls. Yeah, did she get arrested on multiple drug convictions? Did she assault anyone? Did she molest any little kids? She wasn't even WITH kids in that segment. No? She didn't hurt anyone.

But hey, let's dumb down and overly babify the series more. Because of this flap, I'm sure we'll get a fresh crop of annoying talentless children's musician Raffi wannabes like Laurie Berkner as guests. I listened to something of hers once...and once is all it takes. The WORST Sesame Street guest star ever had to be the children's musician that sang "Jump up" that couldn't even be bothered to work with the Muppets, adding yet another lame filmed segment to the bloated season of filmed segments taking away Muppet time.


But hey. You win. Now you don't have to fear talking to your kids about something they could easily be exposed to anywhere else.

 

[Blue Weirdo]

Think about it this way. When you watched Ghostbusters as a kid, did you realize what "Key master" and "gatekeeper" meant? Now add to the fact that they sort of showed as much as they could get away with... and the third piece of the puzzle... there was a Children's cartoon series BASED on that movie. And a very successful one at that. Kids either know it or they don't know it.

which in turn led to stupid censoring on it's own. They were forced to change Janine's appearance and voice because some idiotic complaint group was worried she'd frighten kids. On a show where literally every episode had some kind of ghost, monster or demon (they fought the freaking Boogieman for crying out loud!) they worry about Janine being scary?

I watched the Katy Perry segment and frankly I see nothing to complain about.

 

[muppet maniac]

Another Youtube video response, which is totally spot on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t1aBGtBCaY

You know, I've seen cleavage my whole life, but I've seen a lot of things my whole life: trees, birds, skies, buildings, dogs, cats, cars, butterflies, rain, clouds... Because, like the cleavage, it's all there, it's everywhere you go, and there's no avoiding it like there's no getting away from the letter T or any other letter of the alphabet (reference to a skit from The Muppet Alphabet Album), I just don't see why people get so ballistic over it.

Until this whole bruhahahahahaha, I didn't know much about Katy Perry, as I've been out of the US for all these years. I've seen the video before the controversy broke out, and like the guy in the video said, it was anything but what the parents said. Like I said, I've seen cleavage my whole life, even before I could talk. I didn't even bother to bother (personally I'm more into booty, but that's not the point).

Which brings us to...

IMO, and generally speaking, the worse thing you can do is try to protect and shield your child from something in which they will end up having to see eventually, and once they do encounter it, they're clueless on how to act on it since they weren't exposed to it sooner.

And that's what parents are for: to help kids understand the things they'll need to know in order to get through life as an adult - how to deal with conflict, social skills, crossing the street safely, how to take care of one's self, and so on. But back on topic, Katy has cleavage because she has breasts, and women have breasts. That's a part of a woman's body, and that's that.

Kids are going to develop urges at some point, but that's to be expected. They're gonna ask questions, but as we all learned from this show: asking questions is a good way to find out and learn about things.

One more thing: I don't know about you, but have you people noticed that it's always, if not, almost often, women who make a big fuss over things like this? Anxiety issues I guess...

The only guests SS should ever bar from being on the show are ones that deal in telling kids the glory of smacking ho's and being a pimp. Or any sports star that doped up to cheat. And of course, anyone who molested children. THOSE things hurt people.

As far as political figures go (they've had these on the show), I would never want to see THIS guy appearing on the street:

http://students.georgiasouthern.edu/greeklife/George-W-Bush.jpg

This guy has done more damage (awful, serious, evil damage) to humanity than Katy Perry and her outfit ever did. Seriously. And to think that people see the latter as a major catastrophe.