Ellie's Blog

Sunny Days... Not So Sunny? Looking Back at the Early Days of Sesame Street

I was both shocked and amazed by Virginia Heffernan's blog post about the reality of early episodes of Sesame Street. At first the article intrigued me because I love all things old-school nostalgia. I love its focus on simple pleasures, which she points out are now designated as "not suitable" for today's preschool child.

"Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole."

She talks about mood-disordered Oscar, diabetes-stricken Cookie Monster, and how the show was originally targeted to the "4-year-old inner-city black youngster." I always find it amazing to look back at children's programming with adult eyes to see what was really going on...

"People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much. The harshness of existence was a given, and no one was proposing that numbers and letters would lead you “out” of your inner city to Elysian suburbs. Instead, “Sesame Street” suggested that learning might merely make our days more bearable, more interesting, funnier. It encouraged us, above all, to be nice to our neighbors and to cultivate the safer pleasures that take the edge off — taking baths, eating cookies, reading."