Sunny Days…and Some Stupid and Sarcastic Ones Too
by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Deesha Philyaw
Like a lot of Gen-Xers, I lived and breathed Sesame Street back in the day. By first grade, I’d been identified by my school as “a smart kid,” and adult friends of the family regularly asked me, probably rhetorically, “How’d you get so smart?” I had a proud answer for them: “I used to watch Sesame Street every day!”
This answer never failed to get a laugh, but it was true. My earliest TV memories are of Big Bird, Grover, Oscar the Grouch, Gordon, Susan, and David (and Saturday morning NWA Florida fake wrestling–but that’s a different story for a different time.). I learned my alphabet and numbers, and could read by age 3, thanks in large part to Sesame Street.
With The Electric Company and Mr. Rogers (who I felt was talking directly to me and no one else) coming a close 2nd and 3rd, Sesame Street was my favorite TV show. I loved “C is for Cookie”; Ernie and Bert; the psychedelic counting segments; Guy Smiley (he of the flip-top head); the ode to exits belted out by a blue-faced, spaghetti-haired pianist; and John-John*, my secret crush, the lucky, sweet-cheeked boy about my age who got to count with Grover and the other Muppets.
So, color me giddy with nostalgia when I read about the release of Sesame Street: Old School, Volumes 1 and 2, featuring episodes from 1969-1979, including the pitch/pilot episode (which never aired). By 1979, I was eight-years-old and had outgrown Sesame Street, but eighty percent of the nation’s two-to-five-year-olds reportedly watched the show, and it remains popular today.
Neither of my children are big fans of Sesame Street, though not for lack of my trying, with my nine-year-old daughter, at least. At three, she would tune in for the “Elmo’s World” segment at the end of each show, but couldn’t be bothered with anything that preceded it. Based on her indifference, I hadn’t even bothered to introduce my four-year-old daughter to any part of the show. As with other cultural touchstones–such as my seemingly innate appreciation for soul food and R&B–I’ve learned that I cannot spoon-feed my children my childhood.
And yet, I couldn’t wait to show them Sesame Street: Old School. We ripped open the packaging, popped in the DVD and started watching. First up, we watched the opening segment to the pilot episode in which a Muppet roundtable representing the country’s “top education advisors, researchers, and producers” struggles to give this revolutionary new TV show for kids a name. They toss out a few duds, and then one Muppet says, “This show is for kids who can’t read right?”
“Yeah?”
“So let’s call it, ‘Hey, stupid!”
My kids cracked up, and so did I, despite myself.
Kermit the Frog, the voice of reason, asked the roundtable guys, “You really think you’re going to get this show on the air?” And of course we all know the answer to that.
Given this intro, I should not have been surprised then when the following disclaimer prefaced Episode #1: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
Right then, my social-political-cultural radar went a little crazy. Had I somehow missed Maria giving Bob a lap dance back in the day? According to my subsequent research, courtesy of The New York Times, it turns out that as a kid, I was the “target child” for Sesame Street: a “4-year-old inner-city black youngster.” I wondered just what was suitable for me as a kid back then but possibly not for my preschooler now.
After watching a few of the old school episodes, here are some of the things that apparently met the needs of a kid like me from the “slums” (as The Times so elegantly put it in its first review of Sesame Street) in the ’70s, but perhaps not those of today’s preschool child:
- “The Man from Alphabet”, a god-awful live-action segment in which an incredibly unfunny guy in a trench coat nabs bad guy-newspaper thieves hell-bent on stopping folks from reading
- A diverse slate of guest stars including Lena Horne; José Feliciano; Arthur Ashe; Richie Havens; Helen Reddy; Bill Cosby; Lou Rawls; Carol Burnett; Jackie Robinson; James Earl Jones; Buffy Sainte-Marie; Madeline Kahn; Ray Charles; Lily Tomlin; and Johnny Cash telling Oscar to have a rotten day.
- The First of Three Gordons and some kids watching a young raccoon trying in vain to eat kibble floating in a bowl of water. “Don’t get too close to animals when they’re eating, kids.” How about: “Stay away from WILD animals, period, kids”?
- A live-action comedy routine about hanging a picture, from a bumbling, low-rent Abbott and Costello–Somebody and Jim, I forget the other name, but it really doesn’t matter because their schtick would fall flat with today’s preschooler and totally tax today’s inner-city black adult’s nerves.
- Gordon, again. Hey, kids. This is Gordon. And I’m going to keep telling you how important it is to learn—yes, in this voice completing lacking in affect. Because we know that inner-city black youngsters need to be spoken to in monotones or else they won’t get it. The only alternative is to present the alphabet sung by…
- …a dozen or so soul singers dressed in bright colors. This group also performs a ham-fisted Gospel Lite number: “You Got To Learn Something (To Get Where You Want to Be)”. Perhaps some parents of today’s preschoolers would be scandalized by a black man in mutton chops exhorting their kids to achieve. (Don’t get me wrong: I loved Sesame Street’s multi-culti-ness back in the day, and I love it even more now that I understand that it wasn’t incidental.)
- Richard Pryor, looking very much like he’s on that stuff. Some alphabet, according to Richard: “Ain’t nobody care about D…” and “Y was mean!” Trivia: How many drug addicts appeared on Sesame Street in those early years? There’s Pryor, at least one of the Pointer Sisters, and cast-member David (truly, a tragic story). I can’t imagine today’s parents being okay with Courtney Love crooning in a Prairie Dawn Production, or Lindsay Lohan tallying her days in rehab with The Count.
- Mr. Hooper going apeshit when Bob and the gang bought the store’s last newspaper—unaware that the last newspaper always belonged to Mr. Hooper. Always. His tirade occurs right after he snipes at Bob for loitering outside of his store.
- Live-action segments shot in rural areas and/or featuring animals. Lots and lots of these because poor black youngsters need to know there is life beyond the big, mean city. They need to see farms; the construction of a log cabin sans power tools; a day-old fawn nursing and learning to walk; and a septuagenarian postal worker delivering mail on horseback to families in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. (These segments left my urban four-year-old bored and confused, asking “Where did Sesame Street go?”)
One such segment featured nervous, fearful (presumably “inner city”) children at a petting zoo. As they reluctantly petted the animals (or cried), a soothing male voiceover sang, “Don’t be scared, don’t be shy when something beautiful catches your eye. Don’t think too much about how you feel…you might never have the chance again, and you’ll have to remember when you were afraid to feel something warm, and rich, and real.” In other words: Suck it up and pet that goat, Jamal, or you’re gonna regret it when you’re back pounding the pavement in the ‘hood.
And yet…”today’s children” are not being told to suck it up. Snuffleupagus was outed in 1985, perhaps because until then, Big Bird was not being taken seriously when he spoke of his imaginary friend, and Snuffy was constantly being ignored. The horror. Gee…today’s kids wouldn’t be able to relate to either of those experiences.
Here’s what else I learned from Sesame Street: Old School
1. Back in the day, it was not presumed that kids had the attention span of gnats. Some segments are super short, but others are long (painfully so, in the case of “The Man from Alphabet”)
2. Back in the day, it was perfectly safe for two children under the age of 11 to walk up to a complete stranger and ask for directions to Sesame Street.
3. I’m officially old. My oldest daughter, seeing the animated typewriter guy, yelled, “Mommy, wow, look, it’s a typewriter!” Like, “Mommy, wow, look, it’s a stegosaurus!’
4. Today’s preschoolers need:
- sanitized, saccharin characters like Elmo and Telly
5. Today’s preschoolers have to be protected from the following:
- images of urban blight
- adults committing the cardinal sin of looking homely on TV
- words like “dumb”, “dingaling”, and “fool”
- Jesse Jackson leading them in a recitation of his poem, “I am Somebody”:
I am
Somebody!
I am
Somebody!
I may be poor,
But I am
Somebody.
I may be young,
But I am
Somebody.
I may be on welfare,
But I am
Somebody.
I may be small,
But I am
Somebody.
I may have made mistakes,
But I am
Somebody.
My clothes are different,
My face is different,
My hair is different,
But I am
Somebody.
I am black,
Brown, or white.
I speak a different language
But I must be respected,
Protected,
Never rejected.
I am
God’s child!
Maybe the Sesame Street people were worried that today’s kids might be traumatized by all this. But my kids were more annoyed than traumatized. My nine-year-old snark-in-training rolled her eyes at the repetition of the letter “D” segment (three times, back to back). I explained that children learn through repetition. “Yeah,” she said, “but that many repetitions? Oh, that’s right: They think kids are stupid.”
Maybe the Sesame Street people thought today’s parents might be offended by some of the old school stuff. I can see that. One recurring segment features Muppet kids at Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School. The segment opens with the students singing the schools “alma mama.” Afterwards, as the kids settle down for class, one student says, “I’m-a learn me somethin’!” The teacher asks if anyone knows what Africa looks like. One student thinks Africa is one big jungle (”‘Cause I saw it on Tarzan!”), but the teacher uses a map to describe the continent’s diverse geography and resources.
In another Roosevelt Franklin segment, the topic is “Talking Loud.” I cringe. Because we all know inner-city black youngsters are loud. But it turns out that the segment was a lesson in the difference between loud and soft.
My reaction to the Roosevelt Franklin segments captured my reaction to the DVD as a whole: Yea! Here’s something affirming. Oh, wait, cringe–there’s something stereotypical. Affirming. Cringing. Affirming. Cringing…
Maybe the Sesame people’s primary concern really is children’s well-being, hence the warning to parents to use their discretion. Maybe. But by not placing the warning about the content on the outside of the packaging where a parent could read it before purchase–and therefore opt not to purchase–the good people on Sesame Street are seeking to maximize their return on the nostalgia of Gen-Xers like me. They’ll take our dollars, but caveat the whole thing by telling us that our little progeny are too precious to witness litter, poverty, impatience, large groups of black people, name-calling, and actors with bad teeth.
Could it be that “today’s preschool child” is a euphemism for “today’s suburban, typically white, child whose parents have a lot of disposable income and are willing to blow $500 during Christmas for a Hypnotize Me Elmo (why stop at tickling?)”?
The late cultural critic and media theorist, Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, once observed that the main thing Sesame Street taught kids was how to watch TV. Postman complained that TV answered questions children haven’t asked. This makes sense to me, but at the same time, I don’t feel any worse for wear for having watched the show religiously.
Generally, I’m wary of the “…and we turned out okay” defense, which is used to pooh-pooh everything from scoreless kid soccer leagues to breastfeeding. I prefer to judge on a case-by-case basis, and with regard to Sesame Street, whatever its shortcomings and growing pains over those early years, I really don’t believe the show created a generation of insensitive cranks. (Though it is true that ZOOM created a generation of freakish Ubbi-Dubbi acolytes.)
But I will say this: If I never see that guy fall down the steps with the chocolate cream pies again, it won’t be too soon.
*According to Wikipedia, John-John joined the military when he grew up, now lives in San Antonio, and occasionally performs as a Tejano singer.
Deesha Philyaw is a freelance writer who has written for Essence Magazine, Wondertime Magazine (a Disney publication), and The Washington Post. Deesha holds a B.A. in economics from Yale University and a Master’s degree in teaching. In her pre-mommy, pre-writing life, she was a management consultant, briefly, and then an elementary school teacher. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Deesha currently lives in Pittsburgh with her two daughters.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Andrea wrote:
I grew up in the country and it was the big city setting that was exotic to me. The only places I ever saw people who spoke Spanish or were black or Hispanic was on Sesame Street. I don’t think I ever met anyone black in person until I was 10 or 11. It’s interesting that I wasn’t the target audience for that program and I still learned from it and loved it too. It’s ridiculous that it’s not considered suitable for kids today.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 8:26 am ¶
dawn wrote:
I learned about black people from watching Sesame Street (from a series of white suburban neighborhoods as I moved several times before I was eight — always to white suburban neighborhoods) and I learned that they live in ugly urban places and need our (white people) help. Sesame (and Electric Company) were the only times I ever saw African American kids on television or in real life and it definitely shaped my racism.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 8:36 am ¶
Sarah wrote:
Excellent article! Especially your point about the shift in the demographics of the viewers. Really fascinating.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 8:46 am ¶
Chris wrote:
Fantastic article! I often think about how safe we’ve become here today in the US and how we really need to develop more of a thicker skin to deal with the rest of the world. There is so much going on that we never see here… I honestly would love to exchange all of the time on television wasted on Lindsay, Britney and Paris for the people suffering in Darfur, Liberia, Iraq and New Orleans…
Great article.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 9:29 am ¶
sd wrote:
Wow, great essay. In Sesame Street’s defense (I guess?) I did hear the warning that it might not be suitable in all the media coverage when the episodes were released.
Dawn’s comment is interesting … I too lived in a fairly non-diverse community, but I felt Sesame Street’s diversity as a relief: everybody living together in the city! I wish that were true.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 10:01 am ¶
Andrea wrote:
I don’t remember thinking anything particularly negative about blacks from watching Sesame Street. I asked for a black baby doll instead of a white one when I was five or so because I thought the black one had prettier skin. All the racism and bias was directed towards the American Indians who lived on the reservation nearby. I was used to seeing them pull up into the yard trying to sell government commodities to my grandparents or for the phone to ring late at night because some guy from the rez had been arrested for beating on his girlfriend and the girlfriend was now trying to get him out of jail. And of course, the Indian kids were always followed around in the local dime store because they might shoplift stuff, or so the store manager thought. And that was reinforced by knowing that one of the Indian girls I played with had a brother who’d stolen money out of coat pockets at school and parents who were always drunk and couldn’t be bothered to find out where she was half the time, so my mother never let me go to play at her house. I went to a school seven miles from the reservation and about a third of my class was Indian, but we never learned ANYTHING about the history of that reservation or much of anything positive about Indians in general. I had some direct negative experiences that probably influenced any bias I had against American Indians. I have to constantly examine my thoughts and try to redirect my thinking there. Blacks weren’t really on my radar. I had mainly positive feelings about them, if anything, based on watching shows like Sesame Street or Different Strokes or Sanford and Son and reading about the civil rights movement. I don’t think the original Sesame Street was anything but positive.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 10:28 am ¶
Julia wrote:
Even though I grew up in MAINE of all places and only knew one black man to me it was the spanish that seemed exotic. And I LOVED Linda! She made me certifiably obsessed with sign language. I started watching in late 70s through the mid 80s and can’t remember anything to out of the ordinary.
Everybody eats….. remember that.
BTW- I can’t tell does the author NOT like the DVD or does she NOT like what SS turned into ?
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 12:39 pm ¶
Julia wrote:
BTW - here is a link to the I am Somebody with Jesse Jackson on you tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0piTceE2o
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 12:45 pm ¶
harlemjd wrote:
I think Snuffy was introduced to the adults because increased publicity around childhood sexual abuse made Sesame Street increasingly nervous about having a running storyline about adults not believing what kids tell them. (I’ve also heard that a specifica case was involved where a molester specifically told a victim that she wouldn’t be belived, like BB with Snuffy, but I’m at work now and can’t spend any more time looking for a specific citation)
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 12:56 pm ¶
deesha wrote:
Thanks, everyone, for the feedback.
HarlemJD: That’s terrible about the molestation case!
Julia: I am enjoying the DVDs. My kids like “The Electric Company” DVDs better than the Sesame Street ones.
It’s not that I dislike Sesame Street’s evolution over the years; I do find it interesting how what is deemed appropriate and inappropriate for children to view has changed over time, and the fact that the racialized target demographic seems to have changed as well.
What I didn’t mention is that while Sesame Street has “coddled” more and more as years have passed, kids TV in general has trended in the opposite direction.
In both instances however (Sesame and non-Sesame mainstream kids TV programming), marketing and merchandising have become key considerations. This was not the case in 1969.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 1:52 pm ¶
Melissa wrote:
I too grew up with Sesame Street and rented this DVD for my own nostalgic purposes. My three girls are also not that into Sesame Street (although they love the Muppets!) so I watched it with my partner while they were in bed. I agree with all of the comments in the article and wanted to add one of my own. I don’t remember the details of the episode but I remember being surprised at how easy and trusting the kids in the first several episodes were with strangers- especially (gasp!) adult men. There was a new kid on the block who went right in to a strange man’s house for cookies-no questions asked. I grew up that way: the strangers-aren’t-evil/the-world-isn’t-out-to- get-you mentality and feel immeasurable sadness that my girls will not be raised that way. But long live Big Bird! He was my first and favorite role model.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 6:35 pm ¶
Erica wrote:
After I adopted my daughter from China in 2000 my mom bought me the video “Big Bird in China.” I was pretty excited because I, too, grew up on and loved Sesame Street. We watched it several times but a few of the comments made me uncomfortable and I eventually got rid of it. I can’t remember too many specifics now but do recall that I was not proud to have it in my home. I teach third grade and have a DVD copy of all of the old Schoolhouse Rock snippets. I was surprised to see a few slightly controversial things in there as well - certainly none I had noticed as a kid but in showing them to a class it takes on a whole new perspective. The kids love them though and always ask me to play them - the multiplication ones are the best.
Posted 14 Mar 2008 at 11:33 pm ¶
Liza wrote:
Great post, Deesha. I wholeheartedly agree with you about the interesting shift from “content” to “merchandising.” Both my husband and I are educators, and we certainly believe that there is a great deal of toddler-tv that coddles our kids (we have 2 little ones). At the same time, we, too, found some old school cartoons that we grew up on and loved that I’ve asked my husband never to show my little girls again. These include old school cartoon episodes of shows like the Smurfs and non-educational ones. Woah… those are chocked full of homophobia, racism, misogyny, etc! I can only remember the old school educational (Sesame Street, EC, etc) ones. I grew up in the whitest of white suburbs in MA and my husband grew up Queens, NY. He comments that Sesame Street back in the day was one of the only shows that did reflect his experience as a kid in the NYC boroughs. I comment that it was my only semi (looking back) - exposure to real issues outside of my white suburban bubble. Were it not for old school Sesame, I would not have seen someone communicating with sign, heard and learned Spanish, nor seen different people of color interacting with each other (my family was the one of the only families-of-color in our town! ahh!).
Great post — will likely bring this up in workshops that I do in the future!
Posted 15 Mar 2008 at 8:44 am ¶
DWS wrote:
I was 5 years old when Sesame Street came on and my 5 year old classmates and I thought we were “too old” for the show.
We really liked The Electric Company.
Posted 15 Mar 2008 at 12:12 pm ¶
terri wrote:
Sesame Street to me was and probably is more sexist than it is racist. Where were the female character puppets? None were introduced until Rosa? in the 90s!!! The muppets suffer from the same problem…. all characters except for Piggy were male. And of course Piggy is just such a nice role model for girls…. not!
Luckily there are so many kids programs on today that a child never needs to watch Sesame Street. Programs that have a strong female role model like Dora the Expolorer who is Latina. Blues Clues is great for both boys and girls.
Little Eisteins is super for music fans and for fans of musical theater The Backyardigans is excellently done in that style and was created by an African American woman. She is careful to balance the show so both the boy and girl characters take leadership roles.
There are so many excellent educational shows out there that my daughter, who is now 6 year old, has seen Sesame Street less than 10 times in her life.
I do have fond memories of watching it as a kid but as an adult I find it to be lacking and a pale comparison to many other shows.
Posted 16 Mar 2008 at 2:48 pm ¶
Karen wrote:
Hmm, I thought the “not appropriate for today’s preschool child” caveat referred to how children born after 2000 or so are learning things like letters, numbers, etc. earlier, whereas in the 1970s not so many went to day care, preschool, or nursery school, and were expected to learn them in kindergarten. Don’t know where I got that idea from, but I don’t think it’s completely wacko.
I’ve watched all the DVDs many times, and one thing that really jumped out at me was a bit where Bob, some children, and a few Muppets were gathered and thinking of “things that everybody does.” And the first thing anybody said was that everybody walks. Well, we all know that there are people who don’t walk and I expect that example would not have made it onto a modern episode.
I, like Julia, was expecting to hear a clear judgement from the author. In fact my heart kind of sank when I saw the DVD cover at the top of the post–I was afraid that hidden depths of racism would be revealed in this video that my son and I both like. So I was glad that my expectations were not met!
Posted 16 Mar 2008 at 10:10 pm ¶
barbarafw wrote:
Like Dawn, I was a white suburban kid in a predominantly white suburb (the few Latino/as in our town claimed to be Italian). Unlike Dawn, it never occurred to me that the characters of Sesame Street needed to be “helped” by anyone, white or otherwise.
Frankly, I envied them their tight-knit community.
Posted 17 Mar 2008 at 12:21 am ¶
christine wrote:
I do have to take issue with what Terri says about Miss Piggy. She’s tough, she’s proud of her body (even if she’s not a size zero), she knows what she wants and stops at nothing to get it. She’s a girly-girl who’s not afraid to get her hands dirty! She was and is one of my “role models”, if a puppet can be one!
Posted 17 Mar 2008 at 2:31 pm ¶
deesha wrote:
Liza: Thanks, and welcome to the ARP columnist fam!
Terri: There was Prairie Dawn, but she was annoying, lol, with those little musicals she directed. Remember?
Karen: Here’s an interesting link where an EVP of Sesame Workshop talks about the reason for the warning:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/17/eveningnews/main3725571.shtml
Posted 17 Mar 2008 at 5:00 pm ¶
GM wrote:
Sesame Street came after my time but I was fortunate enough to have been taught a semester of writing for Children’s TV by one of its writers. Some of the writers were comedy writers. In addition, a lot of the jokes were written for the adults that were assumed to be watching as well. I learned a lot about comedy from this teacher and I fondly recall him telling me I was funny, moreover, he use to laugh at my scripts.
Posted 18 Mar 2008 at 9:43 pm ¶
Mer wrote:
i am friends with a puppeteer (my best friend has eaten at zoe and snuffy) i think the intention is good, but like everything, it should be discussed with your child.
Posted 26 Mar 2008 at 12:39 pm ¶
sesameflower wrote:
I loved Sesame Street growing up…another rural kid. I think my idea of New York City (despite have relatives there, and having now lived an hour away for over 6 years, worked there, etc.), in my most idyllic fantasies, still comes from Sesame Street. My mother also told me to tell people my name rhymed with ’sesame’ in order to teach them how to pronounce it correctly (this is already a random tangent…but that tactic went wrong with my bus driver, who then insisted for 7 years, on calling me ’sesame seed’ instead of my real name…hence the sn…the seed has sprouted!).
Anyway, I recently went on a YouTube kick looking for SesameStreet clips. I realized that one of my favorite songs ‘My Name is You/We all sing with the same voice’ has a line saying ‘i’ve got one daddy/i’ve got two’. Back then I thought it was talking about families like mine, where divorce and remarriage led to a ’surplus’ of parents…now I like realizing that it could be inclusive of a whole lot more.
Here’s the link if anyone is feeling nostalgic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBtk39S6Z9g
Posted 27 Mar 2008 at 3:35 am ¶
deesha wrote:
Sesameflower, I loved that song.
On another tangent, it’s funny where we get our impressions of NYC. I’m originally from the South and it wasn’t until I was much older that I connected Sesame Street with NYC, though at the point I had still never been to NYC. I got my ideas about NYC from books by James Baldwin and about the Harlem Renaissance. Boy, was I in for a shock when I stepped off the train at 125th station in 1989!
Posted 27 Mar 2008 at 1:59 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Boy did I just learn alot! It never occured to me that I (white, middle class kid born in ‘72), was not the target audience of the show I watched everyday. It’s been a real long time since I watched it, and I never connected it to NYC. Duh!
Posted 27 Mar 2008 at 3:41 pm ¶