Sesame Street censorship

[ISNorden]

The second skit was around the late 70s too. Bert was in the park singing a marching song with Simon Soundman, Muppet Willy, and Farley marching behind him. But then Bert was interrupted by Ernie’s drumming. Ernie and Bert started arguing while Ernie continued banging. Then Olivia came in and tried to get them to cooperate. She told Bert to start, and told Ernie, “Don’t start before I kill you!” for Ernie was getting wild on those drums. And Ernie and Bert ended up singing a marching and drumming song. And Olivia left in satisfaction.

I agree with Xerus' interpretation of that "don't start before I ___ you" line; Olivia killing Ernie (literally or not) makes much less sense than her cuing Ernie to start the drums later.

 

[ISNorden]

Other censored Sesame clips

On one hand, I agree that censoring some violence and self-injury on Sesame Street was a good idea: the mallet-whacking in that carrot cartoon has a bit too much copycat potential, and so does Bert's head-banging. (I'm surprised that the show's writers allowed him to do that after Don Music got retired!)

On the other hand, I think that censoring too much of the show would make Sesame Street too squeaky-clean: people in the real world do get angry, and do use angry words to express that. "Darn it!" is pretty mild compared to what most kids hear and say now; it's the shows with real cursing that need the expletives cut, not Sesame Street!

 

[JLG]

I can't imagine any little kids wanting to imitate Don Music's head-banging. When I was a kid I thought it was the most painful-looking thing I'd ever seen and I'd cringe whenever he did it. Well, everybody's different.

You guys can't be serious about some of these edits. Bert fainting? The guy falling out of the chair? Come on!!!

This is really ironic. The '70s were the era when everyone was going crazy with dumbing down and sanitizing kids' cartoons, and censoring old Warner Brothers cartoons on TV. Meanwhile, Sesame Street was cheerfully having characters argue, trade mild insults, and engage in mild slapstick. Flash forward to now, and cartoons can once again be violent, the Warner Brothers cartoons are mostly intact (except for suicide gags---for some reason it's OK to have Yosemite Sam firing his pistols off in every direction, but not okay to have a character shooting himself in the head), but Sesame Street is drenching itself in sanitizer and editing out the most innocuous slapstick and harmless words you can think of. Go figure.

About "shut up": Don't forget the Ernie and Bert "What time is it?" skit. Ernie wakes up and wants to know what time it is, and Bert tells him to just go back to sleep. So Ernie opens the window and starts singing really loud, and you see all the lights flicker outside and the neighbors start yelling "Cut it out!! It's 3 o' clock in the morning!!"
One of the voices very clearly says "Shut up!!!"

 

[Tim]

I had heard that Prof. Hastings was cut because he presented a negative image of the elderly(?).