[HN Gopher] 'Sesame Street': From Radical Experiment to Beloved ... ___________________________________________________________________ 'Sesame Street': From Radical Experiment to Beloved TV Mainstay Author : pseudolus Score : 71 points Date : 2021-05-09 10:34 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.npr.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org) | neilv wrote: | I think I liked Sesame Street well enough, but, as an adult now, | I'm not sure what their pedagogic/developmental intent was with | this format: o/~ Three of these kids | belong together... Three of these kids are kind of the | same... But one of these kids is doing his own thing... | o/~ | | (Watch out for nonconformists) | | (Denounce them to authorities) | | (persistent song repetition, for operant conditioning) | AndrewBissell wrote: | There's a lot to suggest that _Sesame Street_ is not the | harmless quirky kids ' show it's made out to be. From | https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/21/obey-the-cookie- | mons...: | | _Not long ago the new television ad featuring Sesame Street's | Cookie Monster pitching the iPhone 6 would have been considered | a deplorable exploitation of children's culture for profit. But | this final collapse of a putatively public educational project | into the realm of corporate marketing caused little stir, quite | possibly because Big Capitalism was written into Sesame | Street's DNA from Day One. | | Sesame Street was born as a ruling class experiment in social | control, managed and funded by the Carnegie Endowment in | concert with the Ford Foundation and federal agencies. | Carnegie's Children's Television Workshop (CTW) created the | show as a conscious response to late 60s urban insurrections | and African-American revolutionary sentiment."_ | allturtles wrote: | > There's a lot to suggest that Sesame Street is not the | harmless quirky kids' show it's made out to be. | | If there's anything to suggest it, it's not in this article. | The author seems to be angry that a children's television | program was not designed as a vehicle for encouraging | socialist revolution. | mycologos wrote: | That article seems to just be a sequence of innuendos and | insinuations meant to surround Sesame Street with unsavory | associations without ever actually providing evidence of | them. Seriously, they're arguing that Sesame Street is | responsible for _advertisers copying their format_ and | failing to teach long-form critical thinking to _pre- | schoolers_. | ravenstine wrote: | Why do they still make Sesame Street episodes? There's 51 seasons | of content, but the audience is realistically only going to spend | a few years of their lives watching it. Kids these days should | probably get a "best of" selection of episodes that aren't | ridiculously out of date. Otherwise, most of it is evergreen. | koolba wrote: | > Why do they still make Sesame Street episodes? There's 51 | seasons of content, but the audience is realistically only | going to spend a few years of their lives watching it. | | Because the producers think that having Elmo telling kids that | their parents are racists is a good idea: | https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1269270231383449601 | | I really don't get it. Children are blameless innocent minds | and truly feel that it's things like this that pervert them for | years to come. | jjj1232 wrote: | Are you referencing something specific? I watched that whole | clip you linked, and there's nothing in it that would | "pervert" a child's mind. | | It's a clip explaining what protesting is, and what racism | is. Both seem like valid things to explain on a kids show. Is | your issue that it's lightly in support of the BLM protests? | boomboomsubban wrote: | I haven't watched Sesame Street for like thirty years, but my | memory of it was that every episode had both new segments and | best of segments. | | I think more things would feel out of date than you'd think, | though by now they probably do have enough evergreen segments | to manage ~3 years of shows they would likely not cover the | full range of desired topics. | subpixel wrote: | The trailer includes the Stevie Wonder Sesame Street appearance | that is a hit with my toddler, and me | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8lUnI35Sd8&t=39s | jeffwass wrote: | I've always wondered how many classic Sesame Street sketches were | made by artists and animators while tripping on psychadelics. | | All the sketches below are ones I've seen when I was little. | | The legendery Pinball Number Count, with music by the Pointer | Sisters : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZshZp-cxKg | | Totally tripped-out alphabet, and I mean totally tripped-out : | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waxmzwxpKOo | | Multi-armed guru counting to twenty a few times including in | Spanish : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOkbuwRUTZo | | Little kid gets lost in a weird neighborhood : | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPcQeMEnFc | MarkLowenstein wrote: | People often wonder this about psychedelia art. But is it even | possible? The alphabet one, for example. It takes awhile to | draw the stationary design behind any of those letters, let | alone an animated sequence that transitions to the next one. | Surely the mind of someone hallucinating would have moved on to | many other fleeting visions before even finishing the letter A. | jeffwass wrote: | That's a good point. They could have designed the overall | vision for how and what to create while under the influence, | for example. | SavantIdiot wrote: | Philip Glass scored an animation for Sesame Street. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JWwOzEDGss | | I blame this for my interest in modern classical. I can't | imagine them doing something so progressive today. But that's | because they had a captive audience in the 70's. | moralestapia wrote: | The myth that drugs make you more creative is, well, a myth. | | I've had a few content-producing startups and I can tell you | that there was literally no correlation between the | amount/quality of the art produced and whether the person | making it was a drug-addict or not (everybody was treated | equally at my place). | | If you want to know the secret behind creative genius, it is, | as in other things, hard work and dedication. No substitute for | that. | pram wrote: | I watched some of the new Sesame Street with my toddlers and it's | frankly just boring and cheap now. All the other characters have | been sidelined for Elmo. The songs and themes are really | repetitive too. | | I mean I know it's for infants, and it feels petty complaining, | but the episodes from the 80s are like a million times better lol | moshmosh wrote: | Changing the "main character" from Big Bird to Elmo, and other | re-structuring of the show, really did harm it a ton. | | Sells merch better, though. And I dunno, maybe zero kids would | still watch it in a world of smart phones and YouTube and other | relatively frantic entertainment for pre-schoolers, if it were | still as sedate as it once was. Maybe kids can't relate or look | up to Big Bird like they can wacky, high-energy Elmo, anymore. | floren wrote: | I thought I read something about how _Grover_ was the main | character, intended to be a little older than the viewers, | while Big Bird was supposed to be a little younger and more | of an audience surrogate. | | Of course that all depends on your own definition of what a | "main character" is, but it's hard to deny it became The Elmo | Show at some point. | subungual wrote: | I think the piece you're both referencing is here: | | https://kotaku.com/how-elmo-ruined-sesame-street-1746504585 | FridayoLeary wrote: | Maybe they need to come up with new ideas, _' baby shark' and | Elmo will fight to the death on Sesame Street today!_ | | That should liven things up a bit. (no, I've never watched | Sesame Street) | jdkee wrote: | And on to teaching Critical Race Theory. | | https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sesame-street-surrende... | meepmorp wrote: | Good for them! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-10 23:00 UTC)