Sesame Street: Not For The Kids

Everybody watched Sesame Street as a kid. I did; you probably did too. But, apparently, what we thought was good, fun entertainment as kids was actually a mind-warping experience.

Over the past year or so, Sesame Workshop (the former Children's Television Workshop) has released a series of videos called Sesame Street: Old School, which is a greatest hits package of the first 10 years of the show. I would see this as a great thing for parents in their 30s, as they could share their memories of a TV show that their children watch to this day. Or maybe not.

An article in The New York Times drew my attention to the fact that every episode on these videos comes with a disclaimer that states that these shows are for the enjoyment of adults only and may not be suitable for children, as they don't reflect the current standards of children's programming.

"Adults Only"? What, Sesame Street is porn now?

How did it become that episodes of a show we loved as children could possibly warp our children? Well, actually, it didn't. It's the same show. It's that our mindsets have changed as we got older.

As kids, we didn't have a problem with the fact that Cookie Monster crammed his gob full of cookies, ate nothing but, as a matter of fact. Yet now, Cookie Monster is on a diet and eats healthy foods. (Actually, Cookie Monster didn't so much as eat cookies as he did smash them up in his mouth before letting the bits fall back out of his mouth. Was Cookie Monster bulimic? The horror.)

We weren't bothered by the fact that only Big Bird could see Snuffleupagus, yet now everyone can see Snuffy. Big Bird wasn't so "crazy" after all.

And we didn't have a problem with Oscar the Grouch, who really was a son of a bitch. He was quite humorous. But now we have a producer of Sesame Street claiming that Oscar wouldn't even be considered as a character archetype if he hadn't already existed from the "old days." There's an HIV-positive Muppet on the South African version of Sesame Street, and we're worried about a character whose "bad" trait is that he's grouchy? Whatever happened to escapism?

Truth is, the reason these "old school" episodes of Sesame Street are for "adults only" is that my generation, the dread Generation X, is afraid of being bad parents. We remember the laissez-faire way our parents raised us, and it scares the hell out of us that if we did that, we'll be perceived as bad parents.

When I was a kid, no one wore seat belts, especially kids. Car seats lasted forever. Now, it's mandatory to seatbelt kids. Car seats "expire" and require regular replacement. Cars are safer than ever, and the all-plastic car seat of today is better than the aluminum tube frame-and-plastic ones we sat in as kids. So, why the worry?

Because our minds changed. The entire concept of child-rearing changed. Those kids of the '70s whose parents disciplined them with a good yell and a swift smack in the ass are now making policy in the "child" industry, and wouldn't raise their voice to their little Timmy if he was dousing the curtains in gasoline.

And that's why Sesame Street: Old School is only for adults. It's nostalgia of a bygone era of child-rearing that doesn't exist anymore. Maybe our kids, who live in a completely different time and have a completely different mindset, wouldn't even enjoy it. Just like they wouldn't appreciate "Carry On Wayward Son," even if you thought that song was cool when you were a kid. (I wouldn't know, as my parents listened to AM talk radio. But I did gain an appreciation for Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, which would definitely be considered "adults only" these days.)

Just like our parents used to say when we were kids, it was better way back when. Sesame Street sure was: No Elmo back in those days. Talk about mind-warping.