Sesame Street
This morning I woke up with the image of a chef standing at the top of a flight of stairs holding an arm-full of pies. He takes a deep breath and announces, "Fifteeeeen Banana Cream Piiiiieeeeees." Then he begins to desccend the stairs. On the third step he trips and comes crashing to the bottom covered in bannana cream. Don't ask where it came from... It's most likely a throwback to my childhood creeping up in my subconscious because I'm saturated with baby-stuff these days as my wife and I struggle to find the holy grail of parenting, a good night's sleep.
The image did get me reflecting on Sesame Street though. When I was a little kid, the show was all about Big Bird. The world of Sesame Street was shown through his eyes. The lessons were common sense and simple to understand. There was no Elmo. Today, I look at Sesame Street and think, my children are never going to watch this show. It's teaching all the wrong things. Political correctness is not a value a toddler should be learning... in fact it's not a value at all. It's brainwashing. I'm not saying that Sesame Street was ever "realistic" but, the show was easy to relate to as a kid. It made sense. These days, I'm not sure what their target audience is or indended world view might be.
Some of this might be blamed on the demise of Jim Henson, though it seems that children's television as a whole has fallen victim to some sort of namby-pamby clockwork orange type theme. I don't know what my kids will end up watching... The theta-wave-inducing Teletubbies? A show so vapid and devoid of content that it's like mentally sucking your thumb. I nearly laughed myself into a coma during the Family Guy episode "A Hero Sits Next Door" when Lois puts Stewy in front of the Teletubbies and he tries to resist falling under their spell. He comments that the more he resists the more intrigueing it becomes until he becomes mesmerized shouting, "yes AGAIN!" I've actually been there trying desperately to find the will to turn the channel... what do they put in these shows? Well, I supporse we can bring Owen up watching a carefully selected diet of visual stimulation... I think run of the mill TV is out until he's much older.
The quite below comes from JumpedTheShark.com and is one of numerous comments about Sesame Street I found entertaining.
http://www.jumpedtheshark.com/s/sesamestreet.htm
No television show has its thumb and index finger more firmly depressed on the rectal pulse of America than does Sesame Street. If Sesame Street has jumped the shark, the ONLY possible reason for this is that American society, as a whole, has jumped. Sesame Street always goes along with whatever time period it happens to find itself in. During the 70's, Sesame Street was a VERY 70's show, with its Samuel Jackson-esque Gordon, funk-based music, psychadelia, and "lofa bread, quarta milk, sticka butta" cartoon segments. In the 80's, Sesame Street was a VERY 80's show: a wave of political correctness flooded Sesame Street with deaf characters, blind characters, "ethnically diverse" characters, cartoons and live-action segments encouraging ethnic diversity, and an overall "Kids, You Can Do Anything!" atmosphere -- not to mention the obvious influence of new wave music. In the 90's, Sesame Street, from what little I've seen, appears to be a VERY 90's show: the music is horrendous, the writing is laughable, the skits are aimed at an attention span of 15 seconds, all the kids are expected to be computer nerds, all the adults are expected to be less intelligent than the kids, and the main character is a narcissistic, mentally retarded 2 year old boy. All Sesame Street does is observe the society which surrounds it, and base itself upon this society. Look, I haven't watched Sesame Street (intentionally, anyway) in years, so if it indeed has jumped the shark, it would explain why other countries laugh their asses off at how screwed up America is.
