It's All Elmo's Fault (He Started It!)

  

"The Day Sesame Street Died"

Video Source and Credit: Entertain The Elk on YouTube. I do not own or make claim to any of the information or IP contained in the video above.

Happy 2024 (Or So We Hope)!!! Yeah, I haven't written in this space for a minute (long story, trailers to come), but I have been actively educating and enlightening myself on world news and views while at the same time reviewing the information I think I know or thought I knew.  This particular video caught my eye on one of my sojourns in that direction and after viewing it, I felt compelled to say a few things.  I invite you to watch and agree/disagree with the creator's viewpoint and message.  

At first glance, you may roll your eyes and think "hater" or "OK, Boomer", but I'm assured that neither of those are factual.  I myself relate to the theme and the evidence the narrator presents (he could have gone much further and turned it into a thesis project if he wanted to and I'd watch the whole thing), so maybe you might come to the same conclusions, or maybe not.  After watching it, I do have some comments of my own, and that's why I decided to make this a post:

This video does a really good job capturing and summarizing the essence of what made Sesame Street such a phenomenon and then why it went bad (at what was intended to be a really important moment in the show’s history and development).

The point in question is the revelation by the adults in the show that Mr. Snuffleupagus (aka Snuffie), Big Bird's so-called "imaginary" and best friend, is actually real.  This was a long running joke for Sesame Street and one that children who grew up with the show to that point remember either with fondness or consternation.  Never mind that Snuffie often undermined Big Bird's attempts to prove that he was real by absent-mindedly shuffling off before the adults would even look, the fact was he was an important part of the experience of childhood and of the immersion with the show most viewers had, from children to adults.  The revelation, while putting a definitive end to that joke and in essence breaking a wall between the adults and the viewers, was a responsible decision as the purpose of doing so is made clear in the video.  Kudos to the producers for recognizing the significance of that moment and making it happen. 

However, the unintended consequence of this moment was in fact the elevation of a character who, up to that point, had played the back and was quietly trying to find his own identity and purpose in life: Elmo.  It was from this point that Elmo (and the characterization that had finally settled on him) became important to the fabric of the ongoing story.  The video goes further into explaining how important that became and then what sort of impact that had on the show going forward.   

It’s certainly not to say that they never should have revealed Snuffie, as the important lesson was to listen to and trust kids when they are trying to tell you something (important), but it was from this point that the overindulgence in Elmo (whose puppet caricature I didn’t know was almost as old as me!) and how centering the show around him actually shrunk its target audience and essentially alienated the rest. I would even speculate that the move to HBO was necessitated by this dynamic in order to keep it in production. Tickle Me Elmo was a fad that passed after a while and the show was now focused on something passé that was not able to develop naturally.  Introducing babies to shows involving grownups invariably ruin them (or in this case, reset its core audience back to a practically infantile age, eschewing the interests of most kids who would have watched it to begin with). The other problem: Sesame Street GOT GENTRIFIED!

To put it bluntly, success definitely has its disadvantages. In capitalizing on the Elmo craze that developed with his evolving stature in the show's cast, the show also evolved, or as many would deem it devolved, into a kids show.  

What does that even mean? Well, what is the definition of a kid? Up until then, a kid in the show's context could be a child or an adult, especially if they enjoyed the same thing; even if for different reasons (consider the monsters and other Muppet characters who were very adult-ish).  

What Elmo's elevation to central character of the show did was define the parameters of being a kid; it put a definite age range for the entire show and a focus for who would enjoy it. Elmo is three... as the narrator points out, the focus of a three year old is almost entirely different than the focus of a six year old (Big Bird's official age) and what they each are capable of processing is different.  Thus, the content and the intent of the show had to essentially lower itself to that level.  

In doing so, the show sacrificed what had made it a phenomenon for sixteen years and became a different type of phenomenon: a cash cow.  Playing off of Elmo's commercial success (Tickle Me Elmo) brought in a different viewership and (unintentionally perhaps?) alienated the audience it was created for from the get go.  

Rather than highlighting a natural diversity of characters in a realistic setting, it became more fantasy-based and character (product) focused; that being a specific type of character at the expense of the rest. And the function of fulfilling the show's mission (to educate) shifting from the cast of adults to the remaining characters; the adult cast eventually devolving to basically one full-time adult as an anchor to the new version of reality.

There are other strong points made throughout the video that the narrator makes very clear and I really agree with, not even from a nostalgia standpoint, but mainly a practical one.  Outside of that, if these changes had not occurred, would the show have survived to this point? Maybe, maybe not.  Is it a must that a show that had a purpose that never existed before on television stay pure in that context? Perhaps not, but I would argue that had it done so, it would have had a greater fate than what has become of it now.  There are very few programs in history that go out at or near the top of their game, and we're free to debate which ones those are.  Sesame Street is under no obligation to remain the same for my own sake, after all...

Yet, I would argue that the great ones knew when their time was up or at least coming to a close; either they adapted to changes that refreshed their original vision and carried it further to similar or new heights, or it closed the curtain and called it a wrap (some would revisit their concepts in a later time or via spinoffs, with varying degrees of success).  

I conclude that in the case of Sesame Street, they missed an important sign and lost their way.  Now, hardly anyone knows how to get to Sesame Street (especially since it's on somewhere on mMaaAaXx...) Again, it's not for me or my kids or even their kids (if I had any to begin with); times have changed and if they wanted to remain relevant they needed to change with it and above all, if you're a toddler or younger then there's nothing much to complain about; but therein lies the rub: it used to be so much more than that.  Sesame Street was the change and was for a long time at the vanguard of change, and taught many of us how to change.  To fall back and become the embodiment of the consequences of change with hardly  even a corporeal attachment to what inspired it... I don't really know what to say.  Go watch the video and make up your own mind.