From my former "Airwaving It Out" blog, dated January 13, 2007. Enjoy.
YouTube has a great library of Sesame Street segments from the past, when I swore I was its number one fan. Sadly, these clips (save for a brief resurgence on the Noggin network in 2001) are ancient history and have never been appreciated by the generations growing up today.
What has Sesame Street been whittled down to today? Mindless junk segments meant only to make noise (and keep the infants awake), versus teaching something. Whoever made Elmo more than a supporting character should be barred from media altogether.
When I watched the show from ages 2-4, the emphasis was on learning letters and numbers. You would learn pronounciations, etc., on The Electric Company, but with time, you could understand the conversations the people on the street or the Muppets would have. Skits were creative, and yet simple for the youngsters to understand. Parents could watch the shows with them and appreciate the teaching tool the show provided.
Now Elmo takes 1/3rd of the show? With his third-person references, as in "Elmo wants, Elmo likes?" I was never told to say "Kevin likes, Kevin dislikes." The NBA has an image problem because so many of its athletes talk in the third person sense. Elmo may not have trained them directly to talk like that, but I'm sure the character influenced them. The emphasis is on visual humor these days, versus learning something.
How come the show still airs on PBS, which prides itself on being a teaching tool, I wonder.
I am grateful for the images YouTube does have, and reviewed some of them last week. I caught a glimpse of some commentary about this segment, which to my dying day I will credit for me learning to count to 20. There were many "far out, psychadelic, 'great' influence for the kids; what drugs were they on" comments, which caused one person to literally say: So it had some psychadelia, so what? People remember it, because the segment TAUGHT something.
How true. I'll never remember an episode of "Super Grover". But I'll remember all the things the show did teach me, and the fun ways the lessons were taught.
Call up YouTube sometime and type in "Sesame Street", looking for the old cartoons and viginettes. You'll see what I mean quite clearly.
