Illuminating Sesame Street’s Dark Past

A friend of mine shot me a link to an article examining Sesame Street through a pair of today’s politically-correct glasses. Based around the release of the show’s original episodes on DVD, Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times writes about her surprise when viewing the first disc at being met with the warning: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Say what?

Heffernan writes a splendidly tongue in cheek take on what is “wrong” with these old episodes, including such scandalous subjects as a lost lonely girl taking the hand of a strange man and going back to his house for milk & cookies with his wife while her mother is located; a character not only smoking a pipe, but then eating it; and of course, the biggest shock of all: the presence of grumpy characters! No “Prozacky Elmo” types, as she describes today’s painfully cheery regulars. Wow, how traumatic for kids to find out that once you could ask someone to help you find the way home, that some people smoke, and that (gasp), it might be okay to be grumpy once and a while, rather than medicate any unpleasantness away. Sunny Days indeed.