Today on CNN.com they mentioned that the old episodes of Sesame street are out on DVD. There was a very interesting article about the old and new sesame street. You can read the article here, but these are my favorite parts:
On the DVDs, Cookie Monster can be seen as his character of Alistair Cookie in his "Monsterpiece Theatre" segment (a spoof of Alistair Cooke's "Masterpiece Theatre") smoking a pipe.
Yep, Cookie Monster smoked.
He later eats the pipe because, as he was often prone to doing, he thinks the pipe is a cookie. Cookie Monster used to become so overwhelmed by his desire for cookies that he'd start seeing (hallucinating about?) cookies that weren't actually there. He'd eat (rotary) telephones, typewriters (what are those?), pencils, almost anything. It was funny.
Today, Cookie Monster's diet is much more balanced, as he has adopted the philosophy that cookies are a "sometimes food."
Children are seen riding their bikes without helmets, and there's even a sketch where the human character of Gordon can be seen approaching a little girl on the street. He takes her by the hand and brings her into his house for milk and cookies (again with the cookies!). Clearly, that could be misinterpreted by today's standards.
I think I may just need to get a copy of these DVDs. I haven't seen Sesame Street in many many years, but I think as Jake gets older I will see my fair share of the "new" Sesame Street. I don't think they let Bert and Ernie sleep in the same bed anymore either.
1 comment:
Shelly, there's a book out there on the complete history of Sesame Street. It's called Street Gang, and it's on my Christmas Wish List.
There's a lot of characters that I remember from the old Sesame Street that aren't around today. In my classroom, I always say that I am a "Forgetful Jones". I never knew where that came from...well, Forgetful Jones was a character on Sesame Street back in the day! Yeah, good ol' Sesame Street. I loved that show!
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