Today was pretty uneventful, so lacking any new stories, here are some thoughts introduced by YouTube videos.
Sadly, this one isn't really that good, but it gives me an excuse to mention Howards End. In my political economics class yesterday I was struck by how much our discussion could be broken down and explained as that book. The question was what to do about child labor and other such practices in China and elsewhere. Is this a cost to be paid on the only road to development and growth? Should we declare a universal standard of morality that we owe responsibility to prevent this happening? Suddenly, one side of the room the Wilcoxes, and the other the Schlegel sisters, the workers cast as the Basts, and the professor's proposition perhaps the child. A question a century ago and now.
Monsterpiece Theatre presents "The Sound of Music." Possibly less strange a re-telling than this marionette version I read about.
Can't believe they managed a Twin Peaks segment.
And so we have the lesson for today: Sesame Street and its eventual dumbing down. About two years ago I attended a presentation on puppetry and Jim Henson given by Stephanie d'Abruzzo, star of Avenue Q and longtime Sesame Street puppeteer. Besides a chance to see some early Henson work, the most interesting part of her talk was her discussion of the changes she noticed during her years working on the show. At its inception the show had a strongly education purpose and contained a mix of simple children's humor to some directed to go over their heads. Turn on the show now and you might not recognize it from its original format. Now, while the educational purpose is still there, the visuals are an overwhelming, overstimulating mess, the humor reduced, and long-running character plots given less weight. What this is reflecting is a shift in television habits and consquently audience targets. Originally, the target group was children ages 3-5 with parents, hence the more sophisticated material. They needed to engage both these young children and their parents. But then, according to Ms. d'Abrubzzo, the target shifted in the late 1990s, gearing itself at kids ages 1 (or earlier) up to two or three. At this age, the focus shifts to visual stimulation and pure entertainment. This doesn't help to fight against viewership patterns, encouraging parents to watch with kids, nor does it act in the same role it once did, targeting education in underserved culutrally-deprived youth.
My problem here, why I feel this is a loss, is the same problem I have with the Disney-ification of classic fairy tales. By removing the death and other challenging elements from these stories, they're neutered of their original purpose. They're not just entertainment, but a way of introducing kids to some of the realities of life. And while Sesame Street once did this (and mentioned inflation - on a kid program!), I really doubt you'd see that today. And kids go unhelped by pretty pictures.
This NYT piece from this past weekend looks back at early Sesame Street from a contemporary perspective. Just one quote to back up my earlier point: "I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody 'Monsterpiece Theater.' Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, 'That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — 'so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.' "
And if you're still up for more, after all that, one last link: Fred Rogers before the Senate on Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding in 1969.
