Sesame Street sadly stricken

This Tuesday, Sesame Street celebrated their 40th anniversary as one of our foremost sources of childhood education since its inception — quite an achievement for a TV program. Almost all of us who have ever owned a television can probably recall watching Sesame Street at some point in our childhoods. During its 40 long years, the show has undergone some changes, though.

Originally intended as a revolutionary kids’ supplement to be focused particularly on low-income inner-city children, Sesame Street was a rather grimy place, and was even home to Oscar the Grouch, who literally lived in the trash. The actors on Sesame Street came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, representing the typical inner-city neighbourhood.

I hadn’t watched the show since my youth, but I decided to sit down and watch the latest episode for the nostalgia and I have to admit that in the last 20 years, the show has changed quite a bit. Gone is the grime; now, Michelle Obama is teaching the kids how to plant vegetables.

This newly sanitized Street certainly reflects how mainstream culture has changed, but watching the show in this updated iteration, I feel like it’s lost its way. Does anyone know how to get to Sesame Street anymore?

Cleansing the show seems to be just a band-aid for what ails society — which is pretty much our current modus operandi in North America. Forget about actually solving the problem so long as we can all pat ourselves on the back at the end of the day. The neighbourhood clean-up, while certainly a representation of our society’s values, doesn’t seem as designed as it was once intended to represent the average inner-city boulevard.

I travel through the low-income parts of Edmonton every now and then, and rarely am I greeted by smiling children happily drawing colourful chalk murals onto pristine sidewalks. While the multi-ethnic cast remains, this is now because of a requirement to meet certain equality standards on television, rather than to represent the reality of an inner-city experience, as the latter would be racial stereotyping in the eyes of modern society. I suppose it’s no coincidence that Sesame Street set off on this fantasy right around the time that its ratings took a dive when other fantastical children’s “educational” shows began to take centre stage.

I admit I’m astonished at what Sesame Street has accomplished in pursing the 40 seasons of the edutainment cause. I believe there’s a way for me to be much more amazed — if any modern parents walked over to the TV, shut it off, and had an educational conversation with their kids. I think those kids would be a lot better off 20 years down the line. If that meant the end of Sesame Street, then no one can say those guys haven’t at least had a pretty good run at it up to this point — every street needs to be swept clean once in a while.