Posted on 11/27/2007 3:39:26 PM PST by Libloather
Sesame Street: not suitable for children
Hadley Freeman
Monday November 26, 2007
The Guardian
Thrillingly, the early episodes of Sesame Street have just been released on DVD, but be warned - those shows are dangerous! Slapped across the front of the case is the message, "These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child." And looking at the wobbly sets and be-stringed puppets, they probably are better suited to sentimental adults than kids raised on Pixar. But this sticker is an expression of concern.
It's not the psychedelic nature of the programme in its 70s incarnation that worries, but the behaviour it might encourage. Children dancing in the street! Grown men reading storybooks to kids - for no apparent reason! Cookie Monster is the number one problem, not because he is a monster, but because he eats cookies (encourages obesity), and when his addiction takes a special stranglehold, the plate (might hurt). His alter ego, Alistair Cookie, used to smoke a pipe before eating it, which, Sesame Street producer Carol-Lynn Parente explained to the New York Times, "modelled the wrong behaviour", and so Alistair was, tragically, dropped, and he now probably munches down on pipes in bitterness in illegal pipe dens.
The clearly depressed Oscar the Grouch is another problem: "We might not be able to create a character like Oscar today," said Parente, which is possibly one of the most depressing sentences I have read in my life.
For those of us reared on Sesame Street, the degree to which the show is embedded in our psyche is hard to overstate.
**SNIP**
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
One has to wonder how the needs of today's preschool child are any different than the needs of last year s preschool child...
the old seseame street episodes were awesome....
“These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
They go farther than that. They decided that the episodes DEFINITELY DON’T meet the needs of today’s children and should be kept far away from them.
And I salute them for taking a stand. I was horrified when children across the country started smoking pipes because they had seen Cookie Monster do it.
last week i was at a family gathering and a kid told me that the cookie monster is now called the vegetable monster!!! is this true? and oscar the grouch is now simply oscar.
I agree, but I do prefer Johnny Quest. That’s good television!
I wonder what Jim Henson would think of all this. Next thing you know the Fraggles will be banned because they illegally inhabit caves under people’s homes.
Phlbblttt...Sesame Street...
Did anyone ever watch this claptrap?
Johnny Quest Rocked!
In one of the Jonny Quest episodes, one of Dr. Quest’s old friends is taken captive by an Amazon tribe. The Quest team is called in to save him. From the very beginning, the tribe is referred to as a bunch ‘savages’ and ‘devils’. In an effort to buy some time, Race Bannon pretends to be one of their gods (Aquizio) and orders the tribe not to kill the captives. This is how he starts:
“Alright you ignorant savages, get a load of Aquizio you heathen monkeys!”
I read that when they released the Jonny Quest DVDs, they edited out some of those lines.
I think Jim Henson did some adult material with his muppets (which go back to the 1960s). He had them on SNL and I think Ed Sullivan and I don’t know what else.
[”These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”]
Ya, a pampered uninformed twit of a kid that couldn’t defend him/herself and hasn’t a clue about the world.
Afterwards, I believe he found out that the purple stain from the berries wouldn't come off for at least 2 weeks.
IMHO, parents should dump the current PC garbage that SS has become and let their kids watch the old shows.
PC SUCKS!
That’s the episode.
I heard about this a few days ago on the radio. Unbelieveable. I watched the old Sesame Street when I was in college. I have not seen the current version but I’m sure it’s just horrible. All that said, Rocky & Bullwinkle was my favorite cartoon as a kid and I have some of the DVD collections.
The same people that did the acid trip animation in the old Sesame Street shows also the same for the Grateful Dead Movie video.If you haven't seen the animation in the latter,it's pretty damn cool and you know what these guys did on their spare time.
the old seseame street episodes were awesome....
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They were very good but I’d reserve the “awesome” moniker for Pee Wees Playhouse..
This PC cr*p has got to go ,, just watch Mayberry RFD or Lassie and you’ll see children doing everyday things that if we allowed our kids to do it today we’d be arrested...
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