Sesame Street's most disturbing bits

[Luke kun]

Again, that's more scary than disturbing. As far as Jim Henson goes, that seems to be very much 60's, early 70's Jim stuff. He did some great abstracts from time to time, and he felt they'd work fine on Sesame Street. Now, it being scary is up for debate, and why something that abstract didn't cross his mind as scary to little kids eludes me, but I give all the credit in the world for Jim not dumbing down the concept by making it cutesy woowoo. It's probably scary as a kid, but as an adult fan of Jim Henson, I find it intriguing.

Now, this was already posted in the "What scared you as a Kid" thread, but I feel it belongs here...

Here's where I don't respect artistic integrity and not dumbing things down. See, there are artists and arteests. Artists make art, arteests make incomprehensible rubbish because they think it's daring and intelligent and in reality it's just so head up its butt that it's a turn off. While I won't say these segments are that exactly, they're pretty darn close. If this was handed to a wackier animator, the idea of morphing faces would actually be kinda fun. For example:

Now, I'm sure there are some that didn't like this skit and it bothered them when they were younger, but let's compare the two examples.

There's some nice atmospheric, catchy music and the faces switch from realistic to cartoonish. This segment has a nice, bouncy, upbeat quality that the other face morph one lacks. Now, the male face morph sketch is more disturbing than the female one, first off. The transformations are much more grotesque here. The guy clearly turns into Rocky Dennis at one point. Now, for comparison sake... no music, but hey! Creepy Moog synthesizer. Instead of faces morphing into other faces to say "hey! Faces can be different" it's out and out body horror. Why these aired on Sesame Street and the Wicked Witch episode was pulled I'll never know.

In fact - I happen to know who did the catchy BGM. His name was Caleb Sampson, and he died in 1998. Wikipedia claims a Youko Miyamoto did the music. I know that person too, and not to upset her or anything, but she stole the music from Caleb Sampson without knowing. Good thing it isn't copyrighted.
Anyways, great point about the difference between Ken Brown and Lisa Crafts' sketch, and Etienne Delessert's sketch. I agree on the guy, I looked up who Rocky Dennis was to understand your comment and the pictures unnerved me. The female one is a bit creepier in terms of sounds, how loud they get near the end might hurt someone's ears on full volume; not to mention I actually woke up in the middle of the night shortly after seeing it for the first time and kinda got scared when I thought of it.
Someone remembers a third face morph sketch where a guy's mouth changes at an angle and disappears with a pop at the end. As disturbing as they may be, I've figured out what they were supposed to teach us: no matter how different we are, we're still the same, which is represented by the face morphing back to normal. It could also be a kid playing a video game, evidenced by the noise before the morphing starts. But this was 1973...
Etienne Delessert's still alive, by the way.

 

[Foodie]

The Frog and The Ox. A prideful boastful little frog, trying to become the biggest creature on earth, inflates himself until he explodes.

Years later I found out this was an Aesop's Fable, and Sesame even produced a series of Fable cartoons (The Fox and the Grapes, etc.) But with no frame of reference, this cartoon seemed that much more jarring.

Aesop had a way of teaching lessons. Good behavior gets rewarded, bad behavior gets punished. Severely.

At least the colors in the background were nice.

I always wished this one was on the Old School Sesame Street DVDs.

 

[Flaky Pudding]

OMG! This is just awful. Is this an actual, legit Sesame Street sketch or just an extremely elaborate, convincing parody?

That is one of the most disturbing songs I've ever heard on a kid show.....if it's even real, that is. If they actually put that on Sesame Street, shame on them! I usually respect everything the show does but that is just too far. Not only does it mention some brutally dark subject matter that not even most adult shows would deal with but I also find it kind of odd how they use references that no kids would understand as metaphors in the song. For example, they just out of the blue throw out a direct mention to Ivan Drago at one point. What average Sesame Street viewer would be expected to know who this guy is:

If any child of average Sesame Street viewing age knows who Ivan Drago is they probably only know him as,

"The guy from that one movie that mommy and daddy won't let me watch because it's too violent,"

I really hope that song is just a fan made Wonder Showzen-style spoof. I'd be shocked if that ever got past the radar on SS .

 

[ConsummateVs]

OMG! This is just awful. Is this an actual, legit Sesame Street sketch or just an extremely elaborate, convincing parody?

That is one of the most disturbing songs I've ever heard on a kid show.....if it's even real, that is. If they actually put that on Sesame Street, shame on them! I usually respect everything the show does but that is just too far. Not only does it mention some brutally dark subject matter that not even most adult shows would deal with but I also find it kind of odd how they use references that no kids would understand as metaphors in the song. For example, they just out of the blue throw out a direct mention to Ivan Drago at one point. What average Sesame Street viewer would be expected to know who this guy is:

If any child of average Sesame Street viewing age knows who Ivan Drago is they probably only know him as,

"The guy from that one movie that mommy and daddy won't let me watch because it's too violent,"

I really hope that song is just a fan made Wonder Showzen-style spoof. I'd be shocked if that ever got past the radar on SS .

Yeah, that's obviously fake. They would never show something like that on SS.

 

[Flaky Pudding]

Yeah, that's obviously fake. They would never show something like that on SS.

Absolutely not. My first thought when I found the song was,

"That's not a Sesame Street skit. It seems more like a half-a**ed attempt at a fan made Robot Chicken sketch without the dolls to me,"

The editing style totally fooled me though lol .

 

[Flaky Pudding]

While searching for Sesame Street clips on YouTube recently, I found an old SS cartoon that totally shocked me.

At the end of the skit when the guy gets stuck to the dart, I find it somewhat strange how they actually show his green guts coming out. I had to rewind it a couple times to make sure I wasn't just seeing things. They actually showed a cartoon character's insides popping out on Sesame Street of all places. That's very unusual.

Maybe I'm wrong and those aren't really supposed to be his guts. But somehow I find it rather hard to believe that they could've intended anything else. Why else would he suddenly be covered in green gooey stuff if those weren't supposed to be his innards?

I'm surprised that this one hasn't received so much as a mention on this thread yet.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not freaking out like some sort of SJW about kids shows being "too violent". In fact, I think it's quite intriguing to wonder how they even got such a thing past the censors. As much as I love the off color humor of adult animation, I always find it rather charming in a morbid sort of way when kid's shows push the envelope every now and then.

Trust me, when it comes to the presence of gore on a kid's show this is absolutely nothing in a world where Dark Harvest from Invader Zim exists. Now THAT in my opinion was a step too far.

 

[Foodie]

Oops! I posted this wrong. Lemme fix it. * ahem * Hmm... I've seen that so many times, ( and had forgotten about it until now ). I just never considered what that green stuff was. I dunno how his guts could've come out though. I never liked how the dart was stuck to him, even though it was his sleeve. Actually, I think I was always bugged by the way that the dart took off so well with him stuck to it.

 

[Flaky Pudding]

I love your avatar btw. Bayonetta is awesome!

 

[hooperfan]

The green stuff is from the target.

Still quite bizarre though

 

[Foodie]

The green stuff is from the target.

Still quite bizarre though

I think that's how I always saw it too.