‘Sesame Street’

The show's we-are-the-world agenda doesn't always produce friendly neighbors. In 1998, a Middle East version was launched, co-produced by Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli and Palestinian Muppets lived on different streets, but they would sometimes visit each other to play. Israeli Muppets could appear in Palestinian territory, but not without being invited. But the intifada made the notion of coexistence and cooperation politically untenable and it was canceled. The show returned in 2006, but now there are separate versions produced for Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian one no longer features Jews at all.

The tough topics aren't only political. Following the attacks of 9/11, the 33rd-season premiere found Elmo struggling to deal with his fear after he sees a grease fire break out at a lunch counter. He's reassured after he visits with real-life firefighters in Harlem. With that storyline, Sesame Street did more to acknowledge its audience's unsettled feelings than many adult shows did, even some set in Manhattan, including Friends and Sex and the City. In 1982, Will Lee, the man who played Mr. Hooper, died suddenly of a heart attack. The show decided to tackle the issue of death with an episode on Big Bird's distress and confusion over losing his friend. Children with illnesses and conditions such as Down syndrome are also regularly included. "For many children, the first place they may see a ballet may be on Sesame Street," said Rosemarie Truglio, vice president of education and research for Sesame Workshop, in a book about the show. "Moreover, it may be the only place where they see a ballet performed by a girl in a wheelchair."

Not everyone thinks that Sesame Street is doing right by kids. Latino groups have criticized it for not having a Hispanic character in its early years. The show only introduced a major female Muppet in 1992. (Prairie Dawn was too annoying to count as a role model.) It has also been criticized by Ralph Nader and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood for selling out its characters in too many licensing deals. Some of its interactive software products have been panned by Children's Technology Review.

There is no question that Sesame has provoked some critics to chastise it for getting a little too attached to the letters P and C. After the show launched an obesity-awareness campaign called Healthy Habits for Life, one particular Muppet needed to get with the program. So in 2005, Cookie Monster began to sing about cookies being "sometimes" food. Parents, some of whom wrongly believed that Cookie was going to become a health-food nut, started a preschool food fight. It turns out that Cookie still eats cookies in his typically frenzied fashion. "But the lesson was, this show is important," says executive producer Carol-Lynn Parente. "Don't mess with it."

That's impossible, of course. As Nicole Kidman might say about Botox, no 40-year-old looks young without a few touch-ups. (Cosmetic case in point: in the first season, Oscar was a particularly unattractive shade of orange.) Sesame Workshop is focusing a lot of energy on the digital universe. It recently launched a new Web site featuring a huge library of free video clips, both recent ones and classics. It also offers a series of podcasts that parentscan download to their phones to show their kids later, like when they're stuck in a long line at the grocery store. So in that sense, Sesame Street is no longer changing the world as much as trying to keep up with the world's changes. "We need to continuously reinvent or experiment," says CEO Gary Knell, "or else we are going to be dead."

Could that really happen—could Big Bird follow Mr. Hooper into the big playground in the sky? Maybe it's wrong to even worry about that. The granddaddy of them all doesn't have to survive for the breed to prosper; if that were true, people would still be driving Edsels. Children's programs are in more places than ever. But only a tiny handful, such as Blue's Clues or the new PBS show Super Why!, make any real attempt to conduct research like Sesame Workshop, not to mention influence the way the world thinks. If we agree that Sesame Street has changed our society, and many others, for the better, if we agree that we still need messages of open-mindedness and if we agree that it is still rare to find an educational television show that parents and children can enjoy watching together, then we have to hope that our furry gang will live on to greet the next generation of children. Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? Of course. The more important question now is: can you tell me if Sesame Street will continue to get to us?

With Joshua Alston

Guernsey is the author of Into The Minds Of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth To Age 5.

© 2009