Sesame Street has turned 50, and if that doesn’t make you feel old, I’m not sure what will.
I’m of the Big Bird era, but I’ve watched my share of episodes over the years courtesy of my kids. So knowing that this popular children’s TV show is celebrating this milestone has made me nostalgic for a time when Elmo, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, and Kermit graced my TV set.
Sesame Street debuted in the fall of 1969, and its first episode was sponsored by the letters W, S, and E and the numbers 2 and 3. At the time it was groundbreaking, an experiment: Furry puppets! Diverse cast! Academics on TV!
While other children’s shows modeled social skills, Sesame Street had decided to take a different route. Designed by education professionals and child psychologists, it hoped to overcome some of the early literacy deficiencies low-income and minority preschoolers had in the 1960s, when they entered kindergarten.
It did much more than that, of course. Before long, pretty much every three-year-old was learning about shapes and colours, numbers, and letters from television, which was at the time, a relatively new medium. As a mother watching the show with my kids in the late 90s and 2000s, I welcomed how information was delivered in a child-friendly, developmentally appropriate way, and I’m referring to more than the catchy songs and the alphabet skits. Sesame Street held a mirror to the world and reflected it back with humour, rhymes, and primary colours.
It still does. In addition to featuring a very diverse cast of actors – including my favourite, the pioneering actress who played Maria, until a few years ago when she retired from the show. Sesame Street also introduced Julia, a Muppet with autism. It was the first children’s program to feature someone with Down syndrome, and it was brave enough to deal with homelessness, jailed parents, and military families. After 9/11, writers showed Elmo, traumatized by a fire at Hooper’s store, being helped by the community and firefighters. This year it tackled the opioid crisis with Karli, a Muppet whose mother is battling addiction.
Basically, Sesame Street has spent five decades presenting life with all its complications and heartaches but also with its happiest moments (I dare anyone to sing “Rubber Duckie” without smiling, or not laugh at Statler and Waldorf doing their commentary in the balcony). In doing so, the show has made some of the more confusing situations children face that much more understandable, and help paint a less frightening picture to little ones struggling to figure out the grown-up world.
Not unexpectedly, it has flourished over the years. It now plays in 150 countries and boasts 10 Grammys and 193 Emmys. It has also become a commercial powerhouse; merchandising its characters on everything a kid would have interest in owning. I’m sure if I look hard enough, I can find a residual Sesame Street toothbrush or plastic drinking cup somewhere in my house. Earlier this year, the United States Postal Service issued 16 commemorative stamps featuring the Muppets, and next month the show will receive a Kennedy Center honour for lifetime artistic achievement, marking the first time this prestigious award will go to a television program.
A lot has changed since its debut. We have cable, Internet, social media, streaming, working mothers and children in day care. There are so many channels and shows for kids to watch that parents (and pediatricians) now worry about screen time.
Yet much remains the same, variations on a theme. The Vietnam War has been replaced with fighting in the Middle East. Kids live with a different set of the same worries. We once again live in unusually turbulent times, and that only makes the wit and charm of Sesame Street more valuable.
As Big Bird told a Time magazine interviewer in a piece about the show’s anniversary: “I think all the kids I’ve met, they’ve always just been friendly and kind. They’re looking for a friend, for somebody to play with. I think kids have been like that for all the time I’ve known them…”
In those “six-and-a-half” years, he and the rest of the Sesame Street crew have done a masterful job of being that friend.