Celebrating TV's most important show
‘Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street’ is a funny, thoughtful look at iconic television
Sesame Street is a miracle.
I’ve called it arguably the most important television show ever made, possibly the one purely good thing to come from a medium that largely exists to distract us and hawk products. For more than 50 years, it has not only taught children to read, but also presented a world in which people of all races and backgrounds co-exist harmoniously and learn to respect, and love, each other.
As someone says in the new documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, the show is what television would be if it loved its viewers instead of trying to sell to it.
Directed by Marilyn Agrelo and based on the book by Michael Davis, Street Gang tells how researcher Joan Cooney, television producer Jon Stone and entertainer Jim Henson created the iconic television program. It tells how Sesame Street is not the result of one person’s creative vision but a project that, through collaboration, provided an invaluable learning tool for an untold number of children for over half a century and influenced the worldviews of several generations.
I should probably note that I did not go into this as an unbiased viewer. I’ve made no secret that Jim Henson is one of my personal heroes, a man whose creativity and worldview have made an indelible impression on my life. Growing up, I was always more a Sesame Street kid than a Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood one. The show’s fast-paced, humorous nature was always a better fit with me than the Land of Make-Believe, probably because I was simultaneously raised with a hefty dose of Henson’s The Muppet Show. Sesame Street taught me to count and read; it also presented a world in which people who had different skin colors and backgrounds played and lived together without it ever once being a problem.
Street Gang is at its best when it tackles this revolutionary nature of Sesame Street, how it co-opted advertising tactics to put them to use to “sell the ABCs” to children, and how its adult sensibilities and the irreverent humor of Henson and his collaborators created as how parents didn’t mind watching and discussing with their children. Cooney has never been shy about addressing the show’s political nature; it was a show where people of all colors, along with felt monsters, mingled together. It was a sensibility that some stations couldn’t handle in the show’s earliest days, and the film briefly details the state of Mississippi’s hesitations on airing an integrated television show, and how the program’s popularity eventually gave them no choice.
My wife and I have talked recently about whether Sesame Street normalized integrated cultures for children, and believe that kids who grew up under the program were more likely to grow up accepting of others just as a result of seeing it normalized daily on PBS. If that’s the show’s greatest triumph, that would be enough; the fact that it also taught children fundamental skills to prepare them from school is just icing on the cake.
If you’ve read Street Gang or Brian Jay Jones’ autobiography on Henson — and both are excellent — very little of this will be surprising to you. The film doesn’t travel too much new ground. The intense research to figure out how to make this show educational and entertaining, the sensitivity that went into preparing the episode about Mr. Hooper’s death, the invaluable contributions of songwriter Joe Raposo. Muppet fanatics will likely not walk away with new information.
But a documentary, obviously, has the strength of being able to show clips from those episodes or behind-the-scenes moments, and it’s here that Street Gang is at its most enjoyable and moving. Watching Henson and his collaborators at work is pure joy, and a source of many of the film’s biggest laughs; there’s simply nothing funnier than watching a Muppet swear in frustration during an outtake. I’m sure many tears will be shed at the clips of Big Bird learning about Mr. Hooper’s death, Jesse Jackson leading a crowd of children in the chant “I am somebody,” or Carol Spinney singing “Bein’ Green” at Henson’s funeral. Just watching Henson and Frank Oz at work bringing Bert and Ernie to life, as well as the playful bickering between them, is worth the price of admission.
And Street Gang also corrects those who may think the show’s success was only due to one person. It was the research know-how and passion of Cooney, the production insight of Stone, and the playfulness of Henson and Raposo that created cocktail that made the show work so well. Sesame Street was a collaborative endeavor that fused rigorous research and unbridled creativity, and the result was a show that changed the world. Everyone from the show’s behind-the-scenes talents to its onscreen actors played a vital role, and the documentary gives them all their say.
In the end, if the film has a flaw, it’s that 100 minutes is simply not enough time to delve into the show’s rich history. This easily could have been a six-part HBO documentary series (HBO co-produced the film), and individual episodes could easily be dedicated to the show’s formation, impact on race, characters and more. Hell, there’s a whole documentary itself to be made about Matt Robinson (the original Gordon) and his complicated feelings about the show, including the frustration he felt over the reception of the first Black Muppet, Roosevelt Franklin.
Street Gang is a great primer for anyone who hasn’t heard these stories, and for 100 minutes, it’s perfectly charming, funny and moving. Even the film’s credits — a singalong to Raposo’s classic “Put Down the Duckie” — are pure bliss (be sure to stick around after the credits for a special message from Oscar the Grouch). But for a show that has lasted as long and had as much of an impact as Sesame Street, I can’t help but want more.
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Where you can find my work online
We’re Watching Here: One week ago, the most divisive Oscars in my memory aired. It wasn’t that the winners were unpredictable or undeserving, Nomadland won, as many thought it would. But the pandemic-related production necessities required the show’s producers to take a new approach, and the result was a casual, stripped-down ceremony that some felt were too turgid or undignified. On this week’s We’re Watching Here, Perry and I push back against that belief and talk about why the show was actually one of the best Academy Awards ceremonies in years. Listen online and subscribe.
Chrisicisms
The pop culture I’ve been enjoying this week
The Sopranos, Season 2 (HBO Max): I started going through The Sopranos in 2019, when the show hit its 20 year anniversary. I flew through the first season, started the second and then...stopped. I don’t really know why. Maybe it was that I had too much more to catch up on. Maybe it was just that it took me a bit of time to adjust to the second season’s rhythm, which is initially a bit slower and more scattershot than the first season. Maybe I bought into the hype that season two just wasn’t as good as the first. Whatever it was, I started it back up recently and plowed through the remainder of the second season, which I think is nearly as good as the first. David Chase and company waste no time deeping the show’s psychological obsessions and widening the reach of Tony’s organization to show how it wreaks havoc on the lives of ordinary people. I think some people had a harder time with this season because it presented Tony as he is: not an antihero, but a monster, and they didn’t like the fact that the show made them feel complicit in his actions. In a post-Breaking Bad world, I think that feels less rare than it did then. But the show is clear-eyed in its view of Tony’s activities, and James Gandolfini’s towering performance never softens his edges. The show ends on a whammy of a two-episode run, culminating not only in (spoiler) Janice’s shocking murder of boyfriend Richie, but in the agonizing death of Vincent Pastore’s Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero -- oh yeah, and numerous dream sequences that include, among other things, talking fish. This truly was great TV and I can’t wait to get to season 3.
The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone: I’m going to keep this short because we’re going to discuss the series in greater detail in an upcoming We’re Watching Here. But I finally caught up with Francis Ford Coppola’s third entry in the Godfather saga this weekend, taking the advice of many and going with the newly released director’s cut instead of the theatrical version. I can understand the flaws; the film never has the emotional or spiritual impact of its predecessors and Sofia Coppola’s flat performance never allows her to be the emotional lynchpin the film requires. But there’s still a lot here I like, notably Al Pacino’s performance as a Michael Corleone desperately seeking redemption and finding that all roads lead to damnation. The film is constantly in conversation with the previous two entries, and while that sometimes leaves it in their shadows, it also allows it to feel like a culmination. Gordon Willis continues to confirm that this might be the most handsome blockbuster franchise ever created, and while Coppola’s heart doesn’t seem to be in most of the action sequences, the film’s final act is a gorgeous and suspenseful bit of work. It’s inessential, sure, but it’s worth watching on its own merits.
We’ll be back next Friday. I’ve got a new series I’m looking forward to delving into here. So state tuned!