Happy 40th, Sesame Street!
It was the street I grew up on, like so many other children of the sixties and seventies; and, it would seem, every decade since. The Children’s Television Workshop launched Sesame Street forty years ago on the 10th of this month to a generation of kids previously raised on the standardized kid-show formats of Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and it changed and advanced the way children are educated. With short, commercial-length segments, colorful cartoons and, of course, the beloved Jim Henson Muppets, Sesame Street revolutionized not only kids’ programming, but television itself. Condescending to children was nowhere to be found on the program, and the diversity of personalities and ethnicities was long overdue on television. (Mississippi banned it initially, claiming that the state “wasn’t ready” to see a mix of races presented so equally.) But the show transcended its kiddie roots especially by being the first to deal with real difficulties, like getting lost, getting to know someone with a handicap, even death itself—a segment for which the show was widely praised.
For me, it introduced me to the incredible expressiveness of puppets as characters, and how faces can be created with an economy of form. Grover and Big Bird are marvels of simple design, and the puppeteering was astoundingly polished, giving so much life and believability to these furry creations that the kids featured on the show knew them not as inanimate objects, but as people.
Its influence is impossible to measure, the characters icons of Americana, and the sweet and gentle way in which it introduced so many children to the world is a testament to the loving people involved in its creation. Happy Birthday, old friends—and thank you!
(As of 2009, Sesame Street has won over one-hundred-and-seventeen Emmys!)
November 7th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Best show ever!!
November 8th, 2009 at 6:55 am
One of the coolest! Definitely some of the most memorial group of characters. Always loved them, alway will.
November 8th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Jim Henson was a genius. I loved Sesame Street as a kid, but didn’t appreciate just how groundbreaking it was until I reached adulthood.
It is so important to reach kids at an early age, with quality, creative entertainment. It influences their taste and sense of possibility for the rest of their lives. I know it did for me.
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
The early Sesame Street is some of the best children’s programming ever created. Recent changes have made it about 50% less effective, in my opinion as the parent of a preschooler–so we watch the DVDs of the ’70s episodes much more often than the new ones.
I wouldn’t say they were FIRST to deal with difficult issues; Mister Rogers started that, and speaking of expressive puppets, did you ever see the one where Henrietta Pussycat gets mad? “Meow meow take meow things and go! MEOW!” delivered with enough hurt and tension is a powerful line.
Nicholas and I recently had an interesting discussion about “the real Grover” vs. the one in a computer game; see the end of this article. And while I’m at it, you may appreciate my unconscious creature design in this dream.