Sesame Street is inappropriate for small children. (pause) Huh?
Ok, that’s it. I’ve had it. We’ve gone too far, and this mamby-pamby, politically-correct, protect our children from reality at all costs bullhockey must stop.
The first episodes of Sesame Street come with a warning label more appropriate for today’s rap singers than classic children’s television: in what universe has this venerable show been deemed ‘for adults only’?
Ours.
The recent release on DVD of Sesame Street volumes I and II contain a warning so risible as to be unbelieved if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
*thud* Excuse me?
Virginia Heffernan writes this in her New York Times article entitled, “Sweeping the Clouds Away“:
At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.
Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.
So, what has parents recoiling in horror from these episodes? Let’s see. Cookie Monster smokes a pipe and later eats it; we won’t even begin to touch upon his cookie binging. Big Bird hallucinates big, fluffy elephants til apparently, folks were threatening to send him to rehab. Oscar the Grouch is… grouchy!! Heaven forfend. Let’s not even touch upon the dubious relationship between the curmudgeonly Burt and his dimwitted amant ami, Ernie.
My favorite reaction to this warning label comes from an incredibly eloquent man on LJ who also writes for DCist. In his reaction to all this idiocy (whose title, btw, comes closer to Avenue Q than Sesame Street, and more power to him for bucking the politically correct), he writes:
Or, for parents who’d rather not just let the TV teach their children, they could use it as an avenue towards teaching not just that smoking, gluttony and general bitchiness aren’t behaviors that kids should model, but also that used in the proper context, these things can be used to dramatic, comedic, and allegorical effect.
Then, maybe those kids won’t grow up into humorless and painfully literal adults who assume that no one under the age of 18 could possibly be capable of some guided critical thinking and the separation of what they see and how it impacts on how they act.
What saddens me the most is that we’re getting to a point where the show has been around long enough that a lot of the folks saying that Sesame Street of all things is a bad influence probably grew up with the show themselves. Or, maybe they didn’t, and that’s the problem.
Please read all of Lonecellotheory’s blog entry on this subject, and pay close attention to the last paragraph.
We live in an age of extreme censorship, both internal and external, brought on in some small part by this new reality of a hush-hush police state complete with Big Brother surveillance. I’m fearful that we are too worried about conforming; without those who dare to break the mold, push the envelope, go to extremes, question an authority who will not bear up to close scrutiny, there will be no new thought, no real debate, no genuine understanding of what we are and who we are. It’s a brave new world out there, and I for one am frightened.
Tags: censorship, Lynne-Duke, New-York-Times, Picture-of-conformity, pollitical-correctness, Sesame-Street, Sweeping-the-Clouds-Away, Virginia-Heffernan, Washington-PostRelated Stories
POSTED IN: PSA, essential reading
20 opinions for Sesame Street is inappropriate for small children. (pause) Huh?
Dawn
Nov 21, 2007 at 11:52 am
I am sooooo glad I am not the only one who feels this way. I couldn’t believe what I read. I wrote a blog on this myself actually…and there was so much I wanted to say. Well I better get off of here and go take back my daughters Sesame Street toys for Christmas…dont want her to be influenced
christina
Nov 21, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Dawn, please feel free to leave the URL for your blog post on this subject here in the comments. I’m sure other folks will be interested to see what everyone is saying.
Kate
Nov 21, 2007 at 12:19 pm
I would like my child to see these relics of a more innocent time. Warnings be damned. Can I get them on DVD?
Dawn
Nov 21, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Thanks Christina. I dont know how to do exact link to the post itself but it is my latest entry at http://morningmom.blogspot.com/ (Im still learning the best ways to set up a blog)
christina
Nov 21, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Absolutely, Kate. They have been released on DVD, which is what has caused the uproar. Give me a break — “For Adults Only” SHEEZ
christina
Nov 21, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Dawn, you’ll get the hang of it. You just need to know some basic HTML. I’ll do the link for you.
Dawn’s post about this Sesame Street Silliness can be found here
Naomi Dunford
Nov 21, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Normally I try to find something witty and acerbic to say to things like this, but right now, I’ve got nothing. I’m shocked. I can’t find a damn thing for my kid to watch on TV these days and the one show I love and trust is adults only. Well, that just sold it for me. I’m buying the full set. Sesame Street marathons and trans-fat-filled cookies for everyone!
Thrifty Karen
Nov 21, 2007 at 1:09 pm
This is just too much. I have had to explain Cookie Monster before to my daughter. Every time she saw him eating cookies she wanted some for herself. And Elmo really annoys me with his voice and when he starts a sentence with “Me” instead of “I”. I think the disclosures are a little much. I guess people are just so sue crazy now that they wanted to protect themselves. They didn’t want a lawsuit against them like has been done to McDonald’s for people actually gaining weight for eating fried foods.
christina
Nov 21, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Naomi, I’m right there with you. I’ll curl up on my (horrors!) leather couch with the King of Everything and throw all that organic, politically correct, farm fed goodness right out the window.
Wait til some idiot takes a closer look at the Muppet Show. Woah. Now THAT’S subversive.
christina
Nov 21, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Karen, I think the Cookie Monster is hysterically funny, and my kid and I make fun of how he can’t stop eating cookies. The Kid, luckily, still self-regulates on the sweeties binges, so he doesn’t winge for cookies all the time.
Elmo and the Teletubbies scare me.
Thrifty Karen
Nov 21, 2007 at 1:55 pm
My daughter was never much into Elmo or Sesame Street. She latched onto Barney, then Blue’s Clues, and then Dora was her favorite for a long time. She has finally found a new favorite - The Backyardigans.
Elmo gets on my nerves so badly with his voice. When my daughter had her first birthday and Christmas, I told the family no Elmo toys. lol Then for her second birthday, someone gave her an Elmo doctor toy (something like that). It talked non-stop. It was like she was at his beckoned call. He was constantly saying, “Blow my nose”, “Check my boo-boo” or something like that. Then when she would walk away, he would still keep talking. She would run back to him to help him. We had to get rid of him.
I don’t like Teletubbies either. My kids have never watched one of the shows.
FeeFiFoto
Nov 22, 2007 at 12:37 am
The original intent of these programs was education, not child care. Shame on anyone who routinely plunks tiny children in front of a television without regularly monitoring what they’re watching and using it as a springboard for conversation. So Cookie Monster holds a pipe and then eats it — so what? It’s an opportunity to have a little talk about smoking. I once read that parents have an easier time warning their kids about smoking because you frequently see people smoking. On the other hand, it was more difficult for parents to bring up drug use or glue sniffing because that’s not something you routinely encounter in public. So what if Elmo uses bad grammar? I’d see that as an opportunity to talk about good grammar in a way that’s not heavy handed. When we read, or listen to audio books, my kids or I might interrupt the story occasionally to point out notable qualities or behaviors. Want to read something really shocking? Try the Little House books. They contain an awful lot of blood and guts. Why? Because they hunted for their food. Does this make the series detrimental to children? Not at all. My kids learned a lot about society, conservation and history from the Little House books, because we listened to them together and talked about them. Come on! It’s not Sesame Street’s job to raise our kids — it’s our job. Sesame Street just offers a little help.
worker bee
Nov 23, 2007 at 3:18 pm
i’m glad i was just old enough to escape the “barney + telletubbies + elmo” craze. those things scare me as an adult . . . i can’t imagine a child would find them endearing, either!
i remember Sesame Street as what helped me learn to read at four years old. and taught me to count. [’ah ‘ah ‘ah]. and showed me colors and shapes and happy people and grouchy people and tall people and short people and people that weren’t really people after all.
the overall message was caring and friendship and acceptance and learning. if these ideas are inappropriate for our children, i’m moving to Canada.
christina
Nov 24, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Foto, I’m with you. I don’t shield my child from everything. You should have heard what he told my parents about the Pilgrims and the Indians, for example. LOL
christina
Nov 24, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Little Miss Bee, you’d better high tail it to Canada before our neighbors to the north realize how nuts we are down here and close the borders.
Chris
Nov 25, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Unbelievable, about adults today. The ones who put these warning labels on shows like sesame street, The muppets and so on probably did watch them as children but, we have become a society were everyone is afraid of getting sued because their child mimics something they saw on tv. These type of people are looking for someone else to blame because they were not paying attention to their own kids.
I actually wonder if they sit down and watch any of the cartoon that are on now. They are the same or sometimes even worse. All programs now come with a rating of some sort but no one ever pays attention to them. I think they would be surprised if they sat down and watched them sometime.
I have a 5yr old and a 1yr old and they both prefers the cartoons I grew up on than some of the ones on now. They like sesame street, the muppets, tom & jerry, bugs bunny etc, along with some of the ones today. The only diffrence between them and I is the fact is I care about my children and take the time to explain the diffrence between REALITY & FICTION.
Hopeful Spirit
Nov 26, 2007 at 3:53 am
Thanks for contributing this lovely post to the Carnival of Family Life which I am posting this week! It is a valuable addition to the Carnival!
Carnival of Family Life | On the Horizon
Nov 26, 2007 at 4:19 am
[…] fought the “thermostat wars” with your spouse, you will empathize. Christina presents Sesame Street is Inappropriate for Small Children. (pause) Huh? at Solo Mother saying, “When I found out that the original episodes of Sesame Street have […]
Kelly
Nov 27, 2007 at 4:46 pm
That’s insane. It’s like people just going around looking for reasons to be offended.
By the way, I didn’t realize you also had an LJ account (saw your comment in the post you linked). Mind if I add you as a friend there?
Elizabeth
Sep 7, 2008 at 11:39 am
I’m so confused!!! (yes, I do relate with Bullwinkle)
I was on vacation with my sister-in-law and somehow Sesame Street came up. In the 70’s-80’s our whole family would watch Sesame Street and thought it was wonderul. But my sister-in-law said she would not let her kids watch it (in 2008) because it was too darn politically correct. I am 60 years old, she is 30 years old.
So, can someone tell me what has changed from 1988 to 2008?
Maybe I am just a simple person and enjoyed all the Sesame Street characters for who they were and didn’t see any faults, we just accepted them for who they were. I try to do the same thing in everyday life. Possibly I could start watching Sesame Street again and draw my own conclusions.
Lastly I agree that children learn the most from their parents..manners, morals, grammar, love and sadly even hate. I am glad my kids watched Sesame Street…we had fun watching it together.
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