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View Poll Results: When did you mostly watch Sesame Street? | |||
1976 to 1981, or earlier | 0 | 0% | |
1979 to 1984 | 0 | 0% | |
1982 to 1987 | 0 | 0% | |
1985 to 1990 | 3 | 17.65% | |
1988 to 1993 | 1 | 5.88% | |
1991 to 1996 | 2 | 11.76% | |
1994 to 1999 | 1 | 5.88% | |
1997 to 2002 | 5 | 29.41% | |
2000 to 2005 | 4 | 23.53% | |
2003 to 2008, or later | 1 | 5.88% | |
Voters: 17. You may not vote on this poll |
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12-08-2015, 11:36 PM | #1 |
時の彼方へ
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Lafayette, Indiana
Posts: 20,578
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How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street
Saw this Kotaku article making the rounds today on social media. Now I know what you're thinking: "Kotaku!?" But trust me, give this one specific article a whirl. I think you'll be positively surprised.
As for me, I agree with pretty much everything the writer has to say. When it comes to Sesame Street, I've long felt blessed to have been born in the mid-'80s. The final half of the '80s was, for Sesame Street, a golden era where on the one hand it had had enough time to find its footing but on the other hand Jim Henson was still alive, he and Frank Oz and everyone else attached to the show were still giving it their very best, etc. I grew up with the Sesame Street the freelance writer is describing -- a Sesame Street with Herry and Cookie Monster and Grover and Prairie Dawn, a Sesame Street led by Big Bird, a Sesame Street with Bob, Gina, Gordon, Maria, Luis, and Linda -- and a Sesame Street on which Elmo was nothing more than a background character. Is a lot of this circlejerk nostalgia between one born-in-the-'80s kid and another? Sure, maybe. It's hard to say for certain since I'm on the inside looking out. But I don't think this is the case. I think the points he makes are salient and sound. I'm especially struck by his examples of missed opportunities to teach kids good lessons (e.g. the book scene and the date scene) and his examples of how the show was classically "a surrogate parent" that taught small children important life lessons suitable to the very young (e.g. all the Big Bird stuff). He's absolutely right: Elmo is a terrible role model for kids. And the Children's Television Workshop, renamed the Sesame Workshop, seems to have forgotten that somewhere between Jim Henson's death in 1990 and the premiere of Elmo's World in 1999. Tell me what you think. And I tell you what: for the purposes of this discussion, I'll actually make this thread a poll and I'll include a poll question. "When did you mostly watch Sesame Street?" I'll divide it into semi-overlapping chunks and you pick the one that most closely matches your own experience with the show. Apologies for the bias towards our burgeoning population of members in their 20s and 30s, but they do constitute the majority of our membership and I can only provide up to 10 poll options. Just pick the best option the poll allows you to pick. The poll isn't the focus of the discussion. Rather, it'll lend us all some insight into where you're coming from with your opinions on Elmo, on Sesame Street, etc.
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12-09-2015, 12:02 AM | #2 |
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Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: my house
Posts: 331
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Ugh I hate Elmo. I used to watch Elmo's world back in the good ol' days (well, for me, like 2005, I was 1 or so) and I kind of was afraid of his voice.
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12-09-2015, 12:23 AM | #3 |
時の彼方へ
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Lafayette, Indiana
Posts: 20,578
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12-09-2015, 02:59 AM | #4 | |
我が名は勇者王!
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Quote:
I was thinking the entire article that the premise is basically something rooted in someone having a child, thus giving them reason to watch Sesame Street again. Because I haven't seen the show since I was in elementary school at most. Anyway, I read it and I don't agree with the premise at all. Elmo didn't ruin Sesame Street. He is what he is, and the author even pointed out examples of how pairing Elmo up with a more mature character (Kermit, Big Bird) can be quite effective at contrasting his personality. The problem lies in... -Elmo's market share. It's a conscious decision by Disney to star Elmo so frequently, not Elmo's fault for doing what he do. It's not his role to teach mature lessons, leave that up to the more mature Muppets. -The desire to maximise market share rather than to educate. Does Sesame Street have to kill it in the ratings to not be axed off PBS? I don't know, but I don't think it has to sell tons of merchandise to maintain job security. -Disney's conflict of interest. The main company itself deals with heavily marketing fairy tales, escapism, and dreamlike adventure - all inherently unrealistic, childish concepts meant for people to run away from the struggles of life rather than take them by the horns. And endorsing Elmo means they're priming children for that kind of appeal later in life. Not Elmo's fault. It's his evil overlords.
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12-10-2015, 12:14 PM | #5 |
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: VA
Posts: 3,199
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Disclaimer: I haven't watched Sesame Street in 10 years. I don't actually remember much about what Elmo did. My earliest memories of Sesame Street come from just before Elmo's World started. (la la la la~ la la la la~ Elmo's world!!!!) God. It's been forever. I literally could only dredge up Elmo's World from the dark abysses of my brain because you reminded me that it even existed at any point.
I remember Elmo as surprisingly organized and grounded. He has his own apartment, which is a little sparsely furnished but which is clean, colorful, and brightly lit. He always remembers to feed Dorothy the goldfish, and he likes to laugh at the crazy antics of Mr. Noodle who pretty obviously doesn't have his shit together. I think this is something that I actually did recognize when I was young - one of my goals when I was like 6 was that I was gonna have my own house. I think I packed up all my stuff and everything until my engineer dad sat down and walked me through how to buy a house and I decided that I really didn't want a house after all (plus it was too expensive, i had like 25 cents as my total fortune at the time). Any other dad would have built or helped build a "house" in the backyard, but my dad had just finished his MBA and I guess was a little tired of my antics. Elmo has been a pretty big influence on the way I see my relationship with work and play. Even though Elmo's day is pretty well structured and is full of "work", he always has fun doing it and his strong imagination means he's never really bored. (And speaking of which, here I am wasting time when I should be getting things done ;-; maybe I wasn't paying enough attention back then.)
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