Sesame Street Essay

[theprawncracker]

Hey gang! This is a paper I wrote for English at the end of this school year. It's not the whole thing, I'll post pieces of it at a time. But here's the first part of the paper... Enjoy!

Sesame Seeds: The Children of Sesame Street​

Still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, a young boy with mussed up brown hair and Bugs Bunny pajamas moves into his family room. The boy thoughtlessly flips on the television set and hears a familiar and welcoming tune emitting from it. He soon spies a dark green lamppost identifying the name of a street he’s never been to but has known all his life. Suddenly, the boy is told to “Get lost!” by a fuzzy green creature that pops out of a nearby garbage can. The camera then pans down the rest of the street, passing a stoop where children are playing with furry monsters, a courtyard where an eight foot tall yellow bird waves and greets you with a chipper welcome, a small store where a blue, googly-eyed monster devours a plate of numerous cookies in seconds.

In 1969 a television show was developed from the creative minds of Jim Henson and Joan Ganz Cooney that would change the medium of children’s entertainment forever. This show was Sesame Street. “You’ve never seen a street like Sesame Street. Everything happens here. You’re gonna love it!” (Sesame Street: Old School, Volume 1) declares human cast member Gordon (played by Matt Robinson in the first season) as the first lines of the first episode, setting the tone for the entirety of the show. For thirty-nine broadcast seasons the Muppets and cast members of the famous address of 123 Sesame Street have changed the face of children’s television for the better. The show was originally designed as a way for inner-city kids to see that their surroundings don’t have to be as bleak as they appear. By setting the show in a more urban street and casting the two main adult human characters, Susan and Gordon, as a young black couple (very rare for 1969), it would be easier for inner-city kids to connect with the show. Soon, however kids from all walks of life began to find a home on Sesame Street, learning the alphabet, counting, spelling, and basic math skills like addition and subtraction. Gerry Lesser, the original director of curriculum for Sesame Street remembers that, “In 1968 we didn’t know what we were getting into…we didn’t know that television could teach…It hadn’t been done before” (Borgenicht, 13). Sesame Street quickly became a roaring success, but there was still something missing. In the first pilot episodes of the show, the segments featuring Jim Henson’s Muppet characters were taped inserts shown between “street” segments, animations, and films. During the test shows the segments featuring the Muppets held the kid’s attention for much longer than the segments starring only the human characters engaging in educational conversations. It was instantly decided by the producers that they’d mix the worlds of reality and fantasy. Joan Ganz Cooney, co-creator, said, “We didn’t plan to have Muppets on the street interacting with the human cast members because we thought that would confuse the children. But we decided that was nonsense” (Borgenicht, 15). Thus, street-dwelling, interacting characters such as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch were born.

This combination of fantasy and reality worlds led to segments where the Muppet characters interacted with children, having real, entirely unscripted conversations with them. Jane Henson, wife of Jim Henson tells a story about a little boy who came to the set of Sesame to tape a segment with Kermit the Frog (performed by Jim Henson). In between the takes of the segment, the little boy stood with Jane Henson and watched as Jim rehearsed with Kermit on his hand. Jane asked the boy if he knew who the man was. “’Yep,’ said the little boy confidently. ‘He’s the man who holds up Kermit while he’s working’” (Borgenicht, 82). It’s because children find the characters to be so real that they can connect so deeply with them. Kids find it easy to connect with characters like Grover, Elmo, Cookie Monster, Ernie, Bert, and countless other Muppets. Veteran puppeteer Kevin Clash, performer of the immensely popular character Elmo, relates his experience relating with kids seeing him on the set with a character, “Kids don’t look at us, they don’t know us… [The Muppet] is their friend, they don’t know me! They just know me as someone holding their friend” (“A&E Biography”). Characters like Elmo were created as double-edged swords, so to speak. On one end, they’re some of the most entertaining and endearing characters in the industry, and on the other, their personalities fill the needs of the curriculum pin-pointed by child development and learning researchers. “Big Bird…questioned the same things that children at home might question. Ernie…would teach basic reasoning or logic…Bert was the more serious partner who would keep Ernie and check, and act as the good-natured fall guy. And Oscar the Grouch was intended to help kids learn about their positive and negative emotions, and to learn that feelings like anger and grouchiness were natural” (Borgenicht, 16). These personality types possessed by the Muppets of Sesame Street represent the building blocks of a child’s psyche. Children are curious like Big Bird, fun-loving like Ernie, serious like Bert, and grumpy like Oscar. They aren’t merely one single emotion or thought process; they are a unique puzzle with the pieces put together perfectly. Because of this, a show like Sesame Street, which is used for the purpose of educating children, must have characters that display all of the various pieces of the puzzle that is the mindset of a child.

 

[BeakerSqueedom]

This is very insightful, Prawnie. <3

 

[ISNorden]

Bravo! I hope your paper ends up getting an A; you'd certainly get one from me if I were your teacher. Keep us posted about the rest of it, please...

 

[redBoobergurl]

Ooh, this is good Prawnie! I'd like to read some more! I did a speech on Jim Henson and the Muppets when I was a junior in college, it was some of the most fun research I had ever done!

 

[theprawncracker]

Okay... so I lied, it's gonna be three sections... maybe four. I'd forgotten how long it was. Oh, and ISNorden, I DID get an A on this paper. Enjoy!

Sometimes these characteristics of children are over-emphasized in certain characters, to ensure the child viewers that the way they may be acting is normal. A character like Oscar the Grouch (performed since the first season by Caroll Spinney) is an obvious example of this. His species is called grouch, it’s apparent that he isn’t a very chipper character. Oscar’s appearance even gives off the air of anger. Designed with a single furrowed brown eyebrow across his face, imagining Oscar’s cry of “Scram!" is all too easy. Oscar lives inside a (fully furnished) trash can, showing that all he really wants is to be left alone. The grouch shouts demeaning nicknames to anyone daring to come near his home, and his first line in the first episode of the show was a scowling, “Don’t bang on my can! Go away” (Sesame Street: Old School, Volume 1). Though Oscar may seem like a very two-dimensional character on the forefront, he’s truly an enigma. When faced with the predicament of having residents of Sesame Street do something truly rotten and grouchy to him, he has no choice but to thank them for their grouchy deed. A quote from the grouch himself has him stating, “Grouches don’t like to be happy. If I’m happy I’m miserable—but I love to be miserable. So that makes me happy. But I don’t like being happy. So that makes me miserable. But I love being miserable, so that makes me happy, but I don’t like to be happy, so I get—you know, I’m a mess” (Borgenicht, 107). This may seem like a confusing and irrational statement (mostly because it is), but it applies to the way children react when they themselves are angry or grouchy. We look now to a mother stuck with our shaggy brown haired friend from the beginning. The boy is not at all happy and is declaring things such as, “I don’t want to be happy! I just want to be alone!" His mother, taking advice from Oscar, asks the boy if being alone would make him happy, and since the child just expressed his desire to be alone, his obvious answer is yes. As the parent leaves, our friend finds himself in a new predicament, not wanting to be happy, but getting the thing that would make him happy; thus becoming an enigmatic grouch within himself. Oscar has been around for nearly forty years and four generations of children have learned from his grouchy ways. Kids have learned that even though they feel grouchy and angry at times they’re not bad people, these feelings are normal and friends and family will still love them. Caroll Spinney, performer of Oscar the Grouch for thirty-nine years in his own autobiography stated, “[Oscar]’s not a villain, not horrible, not into spiders and ghoulish stuff, and although he can be rude and mean, he fundamentally has a heart of gold” (Spinney, 54).

It’s hard to believe that the rough, dark-green exterior of Oscar the Grouch could house someone who could show compassion for anything at all. This isn’t as much of a stretch of the imagination as it seems to be, in fact, Oscar has shown care for the life of something since the first season of the show, even then the writer’s saw past Oscar’s grouchiness. “During the first year Oscar had a secret garden full of beautiful flowers in his can. Susan was the only one who knew about it” (Borgenicht, 108). Oscar somehow found a reason to show Susan (Loretta Long), a motherly character on the street, something very dear to him, and also very out of character. Revealing a secret this close and strange could’ve shamed Oscar and made him the laughing-stock of the grouch world, and yet, Susan didn’t tell anyone Oscar’s secret. Children today need the security of being able to confide in understanding adults, such as their parents, with secrets this large. After all, if Oscar the Grouch could tell of his secret flower garden and still be accepted and loved, the skeletons in the closets of the child viewers would do leave them entirely unscathed.

Though Oscar the Grouch is angry and, well, grouchy, completely on the other end of the spectrum is the other main character performed by Caroll Spinney, Big Bird. At eight foot, two inches tall, Big Bird literally dominates Sesame Street. His design is vastly different from the other Muppets on the show as well. As a full-body puppet character, the performer truly has to get into the character in order to perform them. With golden yellow feathers decorating his entire body, a cheerful beak, and a crest of white feathers around his eyes that make them stand out and make the character look happy, Big Bird’s positively chirpy disposition can be recognized from a mile away (not that there are many eight foot tall yellow birds walking around). His “psychological profile” as given in the book Jim Henson: The Works is, “Charming, loving, stubborn, and intensely curious, the perennially six-year-old Big Bird is a lot like the preschooler watching at home. He doesn’t always understand things right away, and when an explanation is offered, he tends to get the wrong end of the stick. This makes more explanation necessary, until finally, he does grasp the point of whatever is under discussion—as does his preschool counterpart” (Finch, 56). Big Bird is a friend, and, in a sense, doppelganger to every child who watches Sesame Street—or even those who don’t. Big Bird represents children as a whole; curious, compassionate, and innocent, thus, making him the perfect spokes-bird for a show that tries to reach children from all walks of life. Jim Henson’s original thoughts for the character, however, were incredibly different from the Big Bird the world now knows, “I [thought] of Big Bird as kind of a goofy yokel, a silly guy from the country” (Spinney, 34). Fortunately for the future of the show, Caroll Spinney was not happy with the way Big Bird was developing, “They kept writing for him like he was the village idiot," Spinney says. “He didn’t have a clue about anything, and it seemed that he had no real purpose on the show…Certainly, he had no educational value” (Spinney, 35). A change to Big Bird’s character was quickly coming up on the horizon, though. Writer Jon Stone had written a script that called for Big Bird to wonder why he couldn’t go to a day care with a lot of other kids. Spinney wondered why the “village idiot” would want to attend day care, and for that matter, why parents would want him around their kids. Trying to reason through this situation, Spinney realized that, “…if [Big Bird] was a child, he could go to day care and play with other kids. Most important, if Big Bird was a child, children watching the show could better identify with him” (Spinney, 36). Thus, Big Bird transitioned happily from yokel to youngin’ and became the first Muppet character to truly identify with the kids watching him, since he was one of them. Children watching the show could now feel that they had someone like them, someone who questioned what they questioned, someone they could call a friend.
Big Bird’s questioning and misunderstandings about the world around him is one of the most important ways we connects with the children watching, according to Jim Henson: The Works, “[Big Bird] is especially valuable when there are difficult subjects to discuss: Maria’s pregnancy, for example, or the death of Mr. Hooper” (Finch, 71). Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper, a grandfather figure on the show, died suddenly in the mid-1980s, and something had to be done with his character on the show. The Sesame Street education research team decided to hit the nail on the head, so to speak, in dealing with Mr. Hooper’s death; the first time any children’s show had ever dealt with the subject of death. Big Bird had never had to deal with the death of a loved one before, and so he was very confused as to what death meant, so he’s naturally confused when he can’t find Mr. Hooper anywhere. Maria (played by Sonia Manzanno) rose from her seat in the courtyard where the adults were gathered with Big Bird, and gently told him, “Big Bird, don’t you remember? We told you—Mr. Hooper died. He’s dead.” Big Bird’s eyelids close together slightly as he thinks, “Oh yeah, I remember," he replies nonchalantly. “Well… I’ll give it to him when he comes back," he decides happily. Susan tells Big Bird that Mr. Hooper isn’t coming back—ever. Big Bird is still confused, and says that things “Won’t be the same.” He isn’t told that things will be the same, he’s told the harsh reality that, no, things won’t be the same, but Big Bird can still remember him and be happy that he had the chance to know Mr. Hooper. His feelings are then validated when the adults tell him that they too are feeling sad. Big Bird asks one more time if Mr. Hooper will ever be coming back, and the adults give him the same answer. Big Bird’s questioning shows kids that they can feel like he does, they can be sad at times, they can be happy at times, they can make mistakes, and most importantly they can ask questions. Returning to our friend the brown haired boy, we find that he’s invigorated by Big Bird’s ability to ask questions and soon does so himself, learning more about the world around him then he ever hoped to. A child who is afraid to ask questions will find it very hard to ever learn anything, and because of Big Bird, a child with that fear can learn to fight it, thus opening many new doors of learning as a result. Nearly every episode of Sesame Street begins with Big Bird cheerily turning to the camera and saying, “Oh, hi, welcome to Sesame Street!" to his viewing audience, immediately providing the warm, welcoming feeling of visiting an old friend.

 

[ISNorden]

It's hard to imagine Big Bird as a clueless bumbler, even after watching a few Season 1 episodes. Good thing the writers scrapped that idea quickly...

P.S. Congratulations on getting the grade you deserved for this paper!

 

[stephenjlizard]

Well done, Ryan!

 

[redBoobergurl]

I'm proud of you Prawnie, this is very well written and very deserving of an A. I'm glad you received one!

 

[theprawncracker]

Thank you everyone! Here's the last bit. If anyone would like the whole thing in a Word document so it's easier to read, just let me know.

Friendship is one of the most important things in the life of a child, and two of the best friends seen most in the eyes of children are Ernie and Bert. Bert (Frank Oz) and Ernie (Jim Henson), like peanut butter and jelly or sweet and sour, are total opposites, yet somehow are the best of friends. “Ernie is a tease. If Bert wants to sleep, Ernie wants the light on in order to read. Ernie also has a highly developed poetic streak that sometimes confounds his roommate” (Finch, 60). “If Ernie is poetic, Bert is resolutely prosaic. He collects paper clips and is fascinated by pigeons. Ernie has a carefree attitude toward the world; Bert is worried about everything” (Finch, 61). Not only do they have completely opposite personalities, but their appearances are also very contrasting, which makes their differences even more clear. Bert is very “vertical," he’s extremely upright, showing his uptight attitude towards the world, even the stripes on his shirt run vertically. Ernie, on the other end of the spectrum, is horizontal. His head is flat as opposed to Bert’s longer head and he’s a bit larger than Bert, perhaps showing that he’s more carefree and lazy, and his stripes, of course, run horizontally. According to Bert’s performer, Frank Oz, “The design was so simple and pure and wonderful. You had somebody who is all vertical and somebody who is all horizontal” (Finch, 61). Ernie and Bert have always been friends despite their differences, but because of them, they’ve always argued as well. In one of their most famous routines, Bert tries to ask Ernie why he has a banana in his ear, to which Ernie responds with a shout, “What was that Bert?" Bert tells Ernie again that he has a banana in his ear and tries to explain that ear-fillers are not the primary use for the fruit. “Whatdya say, Bert?" Ernie responds loudly again, the banana still plugging his ear. Bert’s temper eventually gets the best of him and he finally yells, “WILL YOU JUST TAKE THAT BANANA OUTTA YOUR EAR!u201D at Ernie. Ernie, not at all phased by this, yells in response, “I’M SORRY—YOU’LL HAVE TO SPEAK A LITTLE LOUDER, BERT! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! I HAVE A BANANA IN MY EAR!"(Borgenicht, 21). Even though Ernie may prove annoying to Bert (nearly all the time) Bert still puts up with him, and Ernie still puts up with Bert’s boring, tedious ways. A viewer of Sesame Street’s early years expressed her love of this side of Bert and Ernie, “My two favorite characters were Bert and Ernie. I liked them the most because they shared everything…they did have fights with each other…but after that they were still the best of friends” (Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting).Ernie and Bert’s arguments show children that even though their friends are different from them, they can still argue and disagree while remaining friends.

Friendship is not the only thing Ernie and Bert have taught children through the years, they’ve also taught “how to share (sort of), how to cooperate (they try), what to do when you can’t fall asleep (count things, loudly), and how to keep alligators away (you’ll remember)” (Borgenicht, 21). Though these characters seem very two-dimensional, like Oscar the Grouch, they’re not at all. Bert may seem terribly boring, that’s because he is terribly boring; it just works for him. Frank Oz responded to Bert’s character by saying, “I was never really happy with Bert’s character until about a year in when I realized…that he was a very boring character, and I’d use that weakness as a strength for him” (Borgenicht, 22). This idea of using your weaknesses as strengths is a core way to show kids that being themselves is not a bad thing, just another thing Bert and Ernie have taught over the years. The lyrics of Bert’s most famous song on the show, “Doin’ the Pigeon," reinforce this. As Bert struts around the screen, walking just like a pigeon does (including the head cock back and forth) he sings these lyrics: “People may smile/But I don’t mind/They’ll never understand/The kind of fun I find.” Bert shows that he doesn’t care what people think, he enjoys being himself more than he cares what people think of him which shows kids who hear this song that they shouldn’t be ashamed of who they are either. While Bert teaches kids to be themselves, Ernie teaches about longings. In one of his famous songs, “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon," Ernie learns that sometimes the things you desire aren’t worth the sacrifices it would take to get them. In the song Ernie conveys the reasons why the moon, the sea, and the stone-age would be great places to visit, as long as he didn’t have to live there. He sings, “Though I’d like to look down at/The earth from above/I would miss all the places and people I love/So although I might like it/For one afternoon/I don’t want to live on the moon.” Ernie shows kids that, though visiting the moon and other desires they might have may look promising, by not considering all of the things they could possibly lose by going out of their way to reach these wishes, they may end up without them before thinking their decision through. For an example, we return to our shaggy haired child friend. Now he desires a simple ice cream cone but he does not realize the effect it would have on him missing out on his favorite meal being prepared for dinner that night, but the ice cream would’ve already spoiled his appetite. Bert and Ernie have become enshrined in the world of television for their work as a comedy duo. However, they’re exceptional work as an educational team usually fails to be recognized, through the comedy and fights, there’s always a lesson underlying in the way the two Muppets remain friends or come to an agreement to play a game together. Joan Ganz Cooney thinks that Bert and Ernie’s friendship could prove even more beneficial to the world than just educating children because their skits are also shown in the co-productions of Sesame Streetshown around the world. Cooney says, “My dream is that one day they’ll be at a negotiating table, the Arabs and the Israelis, and one of them will say to the other some line of Bert’s and Ernie’s and they’ll pick up the routine and peace will break out” (Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting). Perhaps this dream may seem far-fetched, but if there’s one thing that has proved that anything is possible, it’s the fact that the two opposites of Bert and Ernie have been, and will always remain best friends.

The fuzzy brown haired boy lets out a happy sigh as the closing credits of the show roll down the screen while the big yellow bird dancing with the happy music and watches the credits with a smile. He stands up from his spot on the floor, his eyes finally ungluing themselves from the television. He goes to walks off to find his mother, who’s in the kitchen preparing lunch. He pulls at her shirt and smiles innocently. “Mommy," he says. “Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?" he asks. That boy is me, and Oscar, Big Bird, Ernie, and Bert have taught me all of these things, and Sesame Street has touched my life. Because the show feels so real I feel like that’s why I’ve made such a connection with it. The characters, though they’re fictional, are my friends. I feel like if I flew out to New York City right now, I could walk down the sidewalk and find Sesame Street, and see that Big Bird was waiting for me to sing a song, or Super Grover needing a super sidekick, or Cookie Monster wanting to share a cookie with me. Steve Whitmire, veteran Sesame Street performer, said, “I really had the fantasy in my mind that…I could…go and knock on the trash can and Oscar would…be there. It really felt like, to me, that this was really a real place. It existed. That these characters lived there, and worked there, and did their thing. I think it goes back to that sense of belonging somewhere, and I think those of us that grew up with the show originally and since then…feel that sense of connection and like they belong” (A&E Biography). That sense of belonging is probably the most important thing Sesame Street has instilled in its viewers over the past thirty-nine years. The feeling that there’s always someplace they can escape to when they need a laugh, a song, or a friend is why the viewers of Sesame Street keep coming back year after year. Parents who grew up with the show find that it’s still the same home away from home they knew and loved as kids. Soon, their kids are introduced to Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie, Bert, Grover, Elmo, and all of the other characters who have delighted children for years, and will continue to do so.

Jim Henson, when asked about the probable duration of his characters, said, “It’s hard to say how long they’ll live. I think this is something we’re waiting to see from the audience. If the audience wants these characters to live, they will, and if they get tired of them, they’ll go away” (A&E Biography). As a fan and friend of the Muppet characters of Sesame Street I can honestly say that I’m not tired of them; and due to the fact that the characters continue to sell millions of dollars in merchandise every year, produce DVD specials, TV specials, and are now being used to teach children of military officers about their parents deployment and service to the country, it’s obvious that the world isn’t tired of Big Bird and his friends either. Forty years of “Sesame seeds” have grown up and learned with Big Bird and now he’s become a deeply rooted part of our society, making it not only unthinkable but probably impossible to take him away. The children of the world need Sesame Street to escape to; if it was to suddenly disappear they’d be lost. By now you’re probably humming the infectious tune of the opening theme—don’t be ashamed, you’re thinking of a happier place. “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?" I know how to get there, and so do you, just look inside yourself and you’ll know.