Not the Same Street-Assertion Journal

Not the Same Street-Assertion Journal

For those of you who haven’t been on Google.com recently, you may not know that it is Sesame Streets 40th birthday! The article Not the Same Street written by Virginia Heffernan is all about the original, earlier episodes, of Sesame Street, and how they came out on DVD last year. The article focuses not only on the fact that the beloved show has finally come out on DVD, but the fact that a little warning label accompanied it. This label reads “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

The article then talks about how outrageous and preposterous this warning is and I must say, I disagree. The main reason those early episodes aren’t acceptable is because they don’t send the right message to the preschoolers of today. For example, in the very first episode, a young girl is walking around when an older man offers to give her some milk and cookies at his house. The little girl ends up going home to eat with him, and in turn meets his family. I’m not saying that every single male adult out in the world wants to abduct kids or anything. I’m just saying that by seeing this example, young kids today might think “Well, Sally got milk and cookies, so I will too!”

The little characters and scenes like that make me feel that the early episodes shouldn’t be watched alone by preschoolers. When Cookie Monsters alter ego, Alistair Cookie, smokes (and later eats) a pipe before enjoying his delicious cookies, that really sends a bad message. Little things like seeing a favorite character smoke on the television can really influence a child, especially a preschooler, in a bad way.

I love Sesame Street, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy it’s met the big 4-0, and has brought so much joy to children all over the world. I must say, however, that I’m happy Sesame Street has left its pipe-smoking puppets back in 1969.


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1