Culture Blues

Kieran Walsh: Street Life

Street Life
Kieran Walsh

It all started in early 2005 with a conversation I had with a friend.  The both of us, transplants from different parts of New England, were trying to determine what first made us want to live in the Big Apple.  Digging into the recesses of my psyche, I stumbled upon a surprising answer.  I wonder—can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?

 

Yes, perhaps more than anything else, Sesame Street is what made me come to New York City.   Can you blame me?  After all, just think of the world Sesame Street depicted:  A friendly city neighborhood populated by people of different ages, races, and nationalities living together peacefully with a contingent of (as they were later termed on Greg the Bunny) Puppet-Americans.  All this is not to mention, despite what any press release from the Children’s Television Workshop proclaims, television’s first happy, committed gay couple, Bert and Ernie. I mean, who the hell wouldn’t want to live on Sesame Street?

There’s something peculiar going on, and don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.  It’s there in the grey hairs, in the back trouble; in the way I now view 8:30 PM as a perfectly legitimate, if not downright desirable, bedtime.  Yes, Generation X is getting a bit long in the tooth.  Our best years are gone and, thanks to AIDS, avarice, and terrorism, they weren’t even all that great.  To paraphrase a quote from Roxie Hart, the chorus girl from the musical Chicago, “I’m far older than I ever intended to be.”

Perhaps all this adulthoodshock is the reason why, rather like Odilo Unverdorben, the protagonist of Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow, I find myself becoming progressively more infantile.  For me, Sesame Street is the television equivalent of comfort food.  It takes me back to the good times; the days when my whole life was spent listening to Beatle records, drawing, and watching PBS.  You know, before school.  Before the man got hold of me.

For a brief time I carried my Sesamephilia around like a dirty secret.  Like I’d just discovered that I had a sexual fetish for the lint from clothes dryers.  But I was surprised and delighted to discover that all of my closest friends were thrilled to bits when they heard of the imminent release of Sesame Street Old School, a DVD collection of episodes from the first five years of the show, 1969-1974.  As one acquaintance responded when I emailed him the news, “sunny day, indeed!”  I was far from alone.

But the cultural importance of Sesame Street extends far outside of my peer group.  Look around and you’ll see the influence of Sesame Street everywhere from Avenue Q to Robert Smigel’s TV Funhouse to Wonder Showzen.  Even a cursory search on YouTube reveals upwards of 2,000(!) classic Street clips all ready to go.  These include the Ladybug Picnic, The King of Nine, the glam-influenced Telephone Rock, the Yip Yip martians, and even a ridiculously young Paul Benedict in his pre-Christopher Guest troupe days as the mad number-painter.  Clearly, there would be no supply without demand, and in this case it seems the invisible hand of the marketplace is shoved right up a puppet’s ass.

Now, Lorne Michaels is on record as saying that the chief inspiration for Saturday Night Live was Monty Python’s Flying Circus. But, personally, I think the genesis was a little closer to home.  Consider:  what is Saturday Night Live but Sesame Street for adults?  Both shows are made and take place in New York City.  Saturday Night Live has a different guest host every week, while each episode of Sesame Street is “hosted” by a particular letter and number.  Both shows feature sketches with recurring characters.  As if that weren’t enough, the Muppets were even regular guest stars on the very first season of Saturday Night Live. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Apart from being mere entertainment, though, Sesame Street was my childhood conduit to the avant-garde.  I got my head done when I was young while watching Sesame appearances by the bizarro Swiss pantomime troupe Mummenschanz.  Likewise, the November 9, 1970 episode includes an extended segment where two boys visit the zoo, and, I’ll be damned, the incidental music sounds for all the world like a cross between early Pink Floyd, Faust, and Einstürzende Neubauten.  I won’t even mention the undeniable lysergic acid/Yellow Submarine sheen that permeates the animated segments.  Progressive doesn’t even begin to describe it.

All of this joy continued unabated until that moment in pop culture history when pretty much everything fell apart–the eighties.  For Sesame Street, apocalypse manifested itself in the form of a bright red annoyance with a falsetto voice, who, rather like Rickey Henderson, inexplicably insisted on referring to himself in the third person.

I’ll cut to the chase by simply reprinting the subject heading from a posting on the Internet movie database:  “Elmo is the worst thing to happen to any show, ever.”  Quite.  A quick visit to jumptheshark.com confirms that this point of view is, well, far from controversial.  For a brief time, Elmo was officially the most annoying creation for children in history until George Lucas stepped up to the plate and gave the world Jar Jar Binks.

But, to be fair, Elmo was only a symptom.  Sesame Street had been already making mistakes for quite some time.  As early as 1985 they decided, for instance, that the charming Snuffleupagus, who at one time could only be seen by Big Bird, should be visible to everyone.  The rationale behind this was predictably specious claptrap about the importance of adults believing children when reporting sexual abuse.  Frankly, I’ve never really followed this argument.  What are the chances that children will be molested by a giant, invisible, wooly mammoth?

And what can one say about the recent, thoroughly loathsome decision to revamp the beloved Cookie Monster character into a fruits and vegetables-loving drip?  Up next, I suppose, will be a streak-of-piss thin character named Healthy Heidi who encourages children to go to the gym before and after school and pick on their overweight peers with more than the usual amount of venom because, after all, they’re just lazy and need motivation.   I mean, excuse me, but Cookie Monster was also fond of eating giant Styrofoam letters and I never followed suit.  Besides, it was obvious to anyone why Cookie Monster never gained any weight – he never actually swallowed the damn cookies!  Clever, clever.

But, then, it’s a common failing that most entertainment intended for children condescends, treating kids as idiots rather than intelligent beings in their own right.  The tragedy is that, for a period, Sesame Street avoided this pitfall and thus, endeared itself Harry Potter-style to both kids and adults.

Not unlike Head Start, Sesame Street was one of creations of the sixties that actually placed value in children.  Maybe that’s why, for me, Jim Henson’s death in 1990 was every bit as devastating as John Lennon’s murder ten years earlier.  Others have already noted this, but it certainly bears repeat, all the best people, the ones who care enough to push for change, they’re always the ones that are taken from us prematurely.

Sadly, no one, not even children, has that delusion called hope anymore.  As Kurt Vonnegut so presciently stated just before the 2004 presidential election, the end is near.  Think so?  Probably.

At the very least, while the world falls apart outside, I and other members of my peer group can still enjoy the glory days out on DVD.   It isn’t cheap, but, heck, it’s less expensive than one of those stupid Tickle-Me-Elmo Extreme monstrosities.

For me, watching these episodes, one of the most surprising segments was a 1971 appearance by civil rights activist Jesse Jackson speaking to a gathering of children of different races and nationalities – a realization of the Rainbow Coalition – and imploring them to repeat, “I am somebody,” despite the fact that they may be poor, on welfare, unemployed, or even in jail.

If there’s anything even remotely as subversive as that on television right now I wish someone would let me know.  I’d really like to watch that program.

Kieran Walsh is the author of several nonfiction children's books on subjects ranging from math to geography to social studies.  He also wrote a reasonably amusing short story that somehow wound up being published in a Sioux Falls-based women's magazine.  Kieran is also an obsessive Doctor Who fan, so if you have any tips on where to find all those missing episodes, do get in touch.

Tagged as: cookie monster eating disorder, elmo, jesse jackson, kieran walsh, sesame street, street life