INeedless to say, we have recently been preoccupied with what we have lost.
The immediate response is sadness and anger, but linger behind it is melancholy, especially when you expand things from the personal to the universal; when you think about what we have lost as a culture.
Alex Trebek, Regis Philbin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis and last week Larry King, Hank Aaron, Cicely Tyson and Cloris Leachman. Several pop culture projects have brought a renewed focus on the death and legacy of Fred Rogers, Robin Williams and Whitney Houston. These are people who have been icons for generations.
When Trebek died, it stuck so deeply because it reminded us how few institutions like him there are. He was an industry giant with whom people had intimate, emotional relationships throughout their lives, just like their parents and, in some cases, grandparents or children. In a broken cultural landscape, it is no longer possible for something so beautiful to resonate – a cultural connective tissue between us.
That is to say, it couldn’t be more reassuring to pay a visit at this point Sesame Street, and learn about the infrastructure that has been put in place from when the show was conceived more than 50 years ago to ensure the product survived changing times, and even its creators – whether those involved knew it or not.
The new documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street premiered at the Sundance Festival on Saturday, prior to airing later this year on HBO.
Directed by Marilyn Agrelo and inspired by Michael Davis’s bestselling book, it spans the first two decades of the show’s rise, from its beginnings as a renegade disruptor, to ideas of how to talk to kids and how to help kids. education, to the tanning of the cultural pedestal: a congealed institution in itself, but one malleable enough to remain equally relevant 20, 30, 40 and now more than 50 years after its debut.
Watching Street gang is an emotional experience for many of the reasons mentioned above. It’s rare to have the opportunity to stop and think about the ways something formative like Sesame Street shaped who you are and the way you see the world; how it connected you with friends, family and, perhaps more importantly, outsiders; and how much your relationship with the show’s characters and the lessons you learned meant to you, even if you had no idea the bonds were so deep.
The inherent fascination behind a documentary like this is learning what went into creating something so profound and lasting: what the makers went through to get the thing on the air at all, and the toll it took to sharpen it. keeping, entertaining and conversing with the changing needs and curiosities of children as the years progressed.
More than 20 original cast and creators will be interviewed Street gang, which is rich with archival footage from the show’s early days and old news reels that reveal how the people behind the scenes reacted to the popularity and, in some cases, the controversy in real time.
You may know how to get to Sesame Street, but it’s a journey to find out how it got on the map at all.
“You may know how to get to Sesame Street, but it’s a journey to find out how it got on the map at all.“
The creation of Sesame Street was a radical act, born of counter culture, protests in the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. The revolution was televised in the late 1960s, but so was its commercialization and – when it came to certain populations of children – stagnation. One of the crucial sources of inspiration for Sesame Street, believe it or not, were beer ads.
Street gang introduces the viewer to the two people who, other than Jim Henson, are most responsible for the identity and mission that would define Sesame Street.
Joan Ganz Cooney was a media manager who had gone to work on public television, driven by the climate of dissent and social awareness at the time. At a dinner party she hosted, she was approached by Lloyd Morrisett, a psychologist at the Carnegie Foundation who focused on the socio-economic divide in schools. He wondered if television, which children were beginning to watch in record numbers at the time, could be used to close that gap. But, he says: ‘Academics were not interested in television. They didn’t have it in their homes. It was the breast tube. “
His musings sounded like music to Cooney’s ears, who had made adjacent observations, but not that connection. “Every kid in America sang beer ads,” she says in the documentary. “Where did they learn beer commercials?” The answer, of course, was television. They walked into supermarkets and identified products after seeing commercials on TV. “Children loved the medium, so why not see if it could teach them something?”
She commissioned a feasibility study entitled “The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education” in 1966, in which she found that children between the ages of 3 and 5 watch television for half their waking time. Only thing that topped it was sleep. If these kids are going to watch so much television, why not find out what they like to watch, what’s good for them to watch, and put the two things together?
Her pitch earned her an original budget of $ 8 million, most of it from the Government’s Office of Education. Only had that check The New York Times predicting that she would be one of the most powerful women on television.
She immediately built up an unconventional staff. She hired not only writers and producers, but also educators and researchers in child development, and brought them together. That venture, which had never been done before, became known as the Children’s Television Workshop.
It was the show’s writer and original director Jon Stone, the other pivotal pioneer in the focus of many of Street gang, who suggested taking Jim Henson to the workshop. At the time, Henson’s group of puppeteers was a high-profile group of beatniks performing edgy late-night comedy skits on variety shows, determined to prove that their shtick exceeded the kids birthday party hacks with which their art form was most associated. But Cooney and Stone’s vision for this still-sprouting new show intrigued him.
“Much of our work was refined and had a kind of dark humor,” Henson said in an old interview. And a lot of our audience was really middle-aged. So this would be the first time we ever worked for children. When I first heard about it from Jon, I thought it was a great idea, the whole idea of using commercial techniques and applying them to a show for kids. “
That word – “commercial” – became the cornerstone of it Sesame Streetgroundbreaking genius. The show would treat young audiences the same way a commercial venture would if it developed an ad campaign on them. As executive producer David Connell puts it, “We’re trying to sell the alphabet to preschoolers.”
“When I first heard about it from Jon, I loved the idea, the whole idea of using commercial techniques and applying them to a children’s show.“
But there was more at the outset that represented a marked shift from how things were done on children’s television. Inspired by the civil rights movement, Cooney, especially after that first dinner with Morrisett, wanted to ensure that her program spoke specifically to – and entertained – kids in the inner city and children of color, the demographic that is so often left out. development of children’s television and are academically disadvantaged when they reach compulsory school age.
At the time, it was common for a children’s show to be set in a cute tree house or clubhouse, or in a fanciful fairyland. Stone didn’t want that for his home base. The light bulb moment happened while watching a commercial for the Urban Coalition, which was filmed on location in Harlem.
“As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly where we needed to be,” says Stone. “I wanted to capture that New York energy because for the three-year-olds locked up in the room upstairs, the action is on the street.”
It’s rare that a can of nuts and bolts behind the curtain is as fascinating as the one in it Street gang. But again, it is of course interesting. This is Sesame Street– that meticulous and accessible view of how the world works is baked into every episode.
You’ll be thrilled when researchers discuss how they tested the content to determine what balance between education and entertainment to maintain, or when the comic writers talk about being self-educated in the differences between concepts such as counting and enumeration so that they are correct. script an impressive scene with the count.
You’ll be amazed at the puppeteers, of course, but you’ll also be amazed at the ways the show’s human performers pushed boundaries when it came to diverse casting.
There’s an in-depth discussion of the impact that race had on the show and its legacy – and the unease certain markets had about it – as well as the darkness that sometimes looms over creators of a show that had so much content to produce in each episode, and such a high bar and worthy mission to live up to every week.
You revisit important moments such as the milestone in which, after Will Lee’s real death, Mr. Hooper played, Big Bird and the audience at home learn what death means and how to deal with it, and you’ll probably cry again like it was the first time you saw it.
All of this is to say that the more you learn about the fabric of the show that was so carefully and passionately woven by these creators in those early years, the less surprising it is that it managed to remain essential and, in terms of viewership – and merchandise revenues, blockbuster entertainment all those decades later.
There is a portion of a conversation between Cooney and Henson on the show’s 20th anniversary, a year before Henson’s tragically early death, that the documentary is re-airing.
“What’s interesting from both points of view is that it’s kind of a form of immortality. Because if you think about it, Ernie will live forever, ”says Cooney.
“Does this mean I can stop doing Ernie?” Henson laughs in response. “No, you don’t have to,” says Cooney. “But it means that in 200 years, people will be watching Bert and Ernie and Kermit the Frog.”
In such a rapidly changing world, it is remarkable – and perhaps more poignant than can be expressed – to make sure that she is absolutely correct in that prediction.