From the IMDB
Gee, I guess seeing Cookie Monter smoke a pipe is why I’m not living up to my full pontential today.
Things are so white washed now. Oscar is too grouchy? He’s a GROUCH. Cookie Monster can’t smoke a pipe in a parody of Masterpiece Theatre? Wow, get rid of every Sherlock Holmes spoof ever.
I watched Sesame Street when I was little, and I turned out okay. We think.
Oh, fucking hell.
I mean, Oh deaw, Gowdon, dat makes WhyNot weal sad!
('Cause modeling improper English is so much more useful than someone being grouchy. :rolleyes: )
I can believe it. On the one hand, it’s kind of silly, on the other hand, our cultural expectations have changed a lot in the past 30 years or so. And so, while the particular warnings may sound silly, the idea that one should not plop your child down in front of an episode from 30 years ago expecting the child to see something equivalent to today’s programming is valid.
Since when is Monsterpiece Theater from the early seasons? Muppet Wiki dates the first sketch (Me, Claudius) as being from 1981.
Also, I thought the reason for the warning was there notable differences (most notably a different Gordon) that might confuse young children.
Do you mean because it’s not really a half hour commercial for a toy or a game? (Though the old Captain Midnight radio serials certainly were.) I mean, it’s not like you’re plunking the kid down in front of Amos & Andy, though admittedly much of the cast and crew of Sesame Street were stoned out of their gourds much of the time (as were the college students who were watching it, according to PJ O’Rourke :D), so perhaps that’s a “bad thing.”
I remember when I was a kid how the only time Snuffleupagus would appear would be when Big Bird was around. Big Bird would try to convince the adults he was real but they never believed him. Long running gag on the show.
Apparently they later realized this was a bad thing to teach kids (even if you are being molested don’t bother telling other people cause unless they see it they won’t believe you.)
Since then Snuffy has been seen by all.
Ah hah! It’s Cookie Monster’s fault that I’m a smoker! I knew I could blame it on someone.
I think they just realized the gag was getting stale, even with their target audience.
Oh, man, I had no idea! I’m just annoyed with Elmo, Baby Bear and Telly for being morons.
And I HATE that Snuffy is “real” now. Hate, hate, hate it. He was this awesome secret kid thing, and now he’s just another Muppet.
I can remember an episode that showed a woman breastfeeding a baby, with Big Bird asking thoughtful questions about the process. I had been formula fed, as had all the babies I had ever seen being fed, and I thought it was so nice. I thought of it regularly over the years, and when it came time to feed my own baby, I believe it probably played some small part in my decision to breastfeed.
However, I can remember in about seeing that clip one time, in about 1980 I’d guess, with a cousin, and her father was outraged that they would show such smut on tv. Like they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. You can’t please all the people all of the time. And probably several other cliches as well.
I hate that, too. More than anything about TV for kids is the idea that everything has to be examined and re-examined to be sure it’s sending the “right” message. Especially when half the time, I don’t even agree that it’s necessarily the best message.
These disclaimers appear on the Sesame Street Old School DVD sets, featuring classic episodes of the long-running series. Volume 1, covering 1969-1974, was released last year, and Volume 2, covering 1975-1979, was just released. Some of the segments do feature behavior parents of today would not want their children to imitate: one segment features live-action children playing “follow the leader” in a junkyard, and another features two Abbott-and-Costelloesque live actors attempting to hammer a nail into a wall and comedically misusing both (holding the hammer the wrong way, placing the nail so the pointy end faces away from the wall, etc. And, indeed, the series has had to change or remove some recurring features due to complaints: as mentioned, Snuffleupagus became a real entity because it was feared that children may keep dangerous secrets away from their children, and a song entitled I Want A Monster To Be My Friend had to be removed from circulation due to a lyric to the effect of “I’ll let him [the monster] do whatever he wants to me, even though he’s bigger than me.” Obviously, that could be taken the wrong way. But mainly, the original Sesame Street paints a grim worldview of the way big cities really were in the era. Although there is no racial violence- indeed, blacks, whites, reds, blues, and greens live in harmony- the streets are run-down and gritty. As the New York Times puts it:
Not to mention the cast! Cookie Monster is addicted to sweets- although he has promoted healthy eating for the past 15 years, he still eats cookies as if his life depended on it. Oscar the Grouch needs some Prozac, and he lives in a garbage can- that’s got to be unsanitary. Bert and Ernie live in the same apartment- although I’ve always stood by my belief they’re nothing more than a Muppet Odd Couple, I can see why gays relate to their often bumpy, but always sunny, relationship. I’m pretty sure Grover has ADD- he’s always running around and shouting. The Count is obviously an obsessive-compulsive. I’m not sure what Big Bird’s deal is- but since he’s so tall yet acts like a child, I’m sure it must be some form of mental retardation. In short, the beloved characters which still appear today simply could not be created in 2007. (Of course, Jim Henson knew how to toe the line between slapstick for kids and edgy humor for adults: in the original pitch film for the series, which was never meant to be seen by children, a Muppet exective pitches a rather unusual title for the series: “These kids can’t read or write yet, right? So how’s about we call it Hey Stupid!”)
And yet…although Sesame Street itself has changed, it really hasn’t. If you look at the very first episode, each segment is introduced by a character, even though they still have the rapid-fire commerical style which was intended from day one. Today, segments still have rapidity, but are introduced: the Count counts the number of the day, and Cookie Monster attempts to refrain from eating the letter of the day (he always does eat it, of course.) Elmo’s World is here, but in a way, it teaches children about everyday concepts just as other classic Muppets did. And some of the segments that appear on these DVD sets appeared on the series for years and still do today. Ernie singing “Rubber duckie, you’re the one”…Kermit summing up the problems of being a minority by saying “It’s not easy bein’ green”…a pinball careening around a field counting as the Pointer Sisters sing “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve”…Big Bird declaring “Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, it’s the most remarkable word I’ve ever seen”…the simple questions “Who are the people in your neighborhood” and “One of these things is not like the other”…and of course, the simple, premise of a sunny day, sweeping the clouds away. We all want to be on our way to where the air is sweet. Although we don’t know how to get to Sesame Street, we’re pretty sure what we’ll find when we get there.
Here’s the article from the Times: Sweeping the Clouds Away.
Sesame Street is brought to you today by the letter S- for Sesame Street- and by the numbers 38- the number of years it’s been on the air- and 109- the record setting number of Emmy awards it has won. Sesame Street is a production of the Children’s Television Workshop- or the Sesame Workshop, as it’s known today. Whatever you call it, they, along with the Jim Henson Company, and all the folks responsible for Sesame Street, have been responsible for a long memory of learning and laughter- no matter how politically incorrect some of it may be today.
Hey, whatever happened to Sherlock Hemlock, anyway? He didn’t smoke. A lot of Muppets from the Street are MIA. I’m not sure where some of them went to, but some I can guess- Forgetful Jones probably forgot to eat or breathe, and Mumford the Magnificent was probably beheaded by Muslims after calling Allah a peanut butter sandwich.
He did shoot up morphine and cocaine though.
The last word should be “parents” in that sentence, of course. Now that was a controversial Sesame Street- the one where one of the kids got pregnant. Disturbing on so many levels. I think Joe Raposo hanged himself rather than write “When Babies Have Babies” for that epsiode.
Oh for Pity’s sake! IT WAS A BUBBLE PIPE if I am not mistaken. Those people who wrote that warning lable and put it on the DVDs need to get a grip!
Either way, Parente says that Cookie would eat his pipe at the end. I’m pretty sure that nowadays that’s what the censors call “imitatable behavior.”