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How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

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Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#131

Post by 7Z7 »

KirinDave wrote: post #68

The number of people who are quick to jump unquestioningly on this and say, "It was better before" are... well it bums me out. Sesame Street's role in child development has changed radically as the general opinion on how TV should interact with kids has changed. These kids shows have been pushed down the age bracket, appealing to younger markets where demand is a lot greater for the content. Older kids shows? They ex…

>quick to jump unquestioningly on this

I and many people I know have been saying this since Elmo first became popular. It isn't a new hipster opinion its always been true, for some people.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#132

Post by 7Z7 »

ideonexus wrote: post #122
KirinDave wrote: post #68

The number of people who are quick to jump unquestioningly on this and say, "It was better before" are... well it bums me out. Sesame Street's role in child development has changed radically as the general opinion on how TV should interact with kids has changed. These kids shows have been pushed down the age bracket, appealing to younger markets where demand is a lot greater for the content. Older kids shows? They ex…

> "I see so much of these kinds of articles. All I can do is despair as my generation begins to make the exact same mistake as our outrageous parents who had very similar things to say about childhood programming which we all wax nostalgically on now." Thank you so much for this insightful post. As the parent of a two and four-year-old, reading this article all I could think was, "But Sesame Street is not for you!!!…

>"But Sesame Street is not for you!!! Who cares if your adult-self doesn't like Elmo?"

Lots of people weren't adults 20 years ago when Elmo was hitting his stride as the most prominent member of Sesame Street, though.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#133

Post by ubernostrum »

rjbwork wrote: post #130

A great article, but why is this on Kotaku? I thought they were a video game/geek culture publication. It seems to have far more depth and thought put into it than most of their tripe as well.

Well, they recently had a bit of a scandal when it came out that some large game studios are blacklisting them over repeated leaks of internal information. So maybe they need to broaden a bit now they no longer have access to as much gaming stuff.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#134

Post by sopooneo »

Splines wrote: post #85
knicholes wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't these characters those like Maria, Gordon, and Mr. Hooper?

For logistical reasons, not really. It's easier to maintain puppets vs trying to keep the same human actors tied to the show.

But they have. And to agree with both you and the parent post, watching with my child the other day, I noticed an adult actor that looked familiar. I looked it up, and he had originally been one of the child actors when I was watching as a kid.

Granted he wasn't anywhere near as frequent as the puppet characters, but still amazing.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#135

Post by bronson »

batbomb wrote: post #16
dragontamer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with this article is that it makes the "Why Snoopy ruined Peanuts" article utterly redundant. Its clear that the author is just taking "Why popular character X ruined (show) he was from" as a formula. http://kotaku.com/how-snoopy-killed-peanuts-1724269473 I guess its interesting from a sense of irony or maybe a creative exercise. But it almost feels like textbook "clickbait".

The author wrote that article too. The author says he's a teacher, I'd be interested to know if he has children himself.

From the article: "I have a 13-month-old son..."

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#136

Post by commenter1239 »

bitwize wrote: post #52

I'd rather a million Elmo-centric Sesame Street episodes than even one episode of Barney or Caillou. That said, every kid needs some old-school, Elmo-free Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. (No, "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is not the same; it's insipid and dumb by comparison.) Also, back in the day, Square One TV had a police-procedural parody called Mathnet that was still loads better than network TV's attempt at a…

mathnet taught me the fibonacci sequence.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#137

Post by KirinDave »

Amezarak wrote: post #111
DanBC wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teletubbies is aimed at children young enough to not be speaking yet - 6 months to 2 years old.

Children under two aren't even supposed to watch television. > Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child's brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens. https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-ini...

These rules are considered to be outdated and very few pediatricians suggest "0 screen time" anymore.

Please see various MODERN materials and their sources at: http://www.zerotothree.org/parenting-resources/screen-sense/...

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#138

Post by josho »

KirinDave wrote: post #97
bitwize wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think DTN is necessarily bad on its own merits at all. Certainly there is much worse: Dora, Barney, Caillou, to name three. But compared to its predecessor it pales, significantly.

While I remember MRN fondly, it was as complete mess compared to what we have now. We need to accept that there was almost no actual rigor put into the creation of our kids shows, at their genesis. I remember them fondly and praise them regularly, but I try to keep this in mind. Modern kids shows are optimized for kids. Even Dora is specifically optimized for very young children. It appears insipid because it's repet…

I think you give Dora to much credit. Yes, the show has educational advisors, but I've always viewed that as a mechanism to gain parents trust to leave their children infront of the Dora marketing machine for 30mins a day.

For example the repetitive sing songs are not educations theory, simply an animation trick to fit the show to the timeslot available. Ie. Script ended 10seconds short, no problem just loop "I'm a map" 3 more times.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#139

Post by firebones »

reuven wrote: post #43
brandonmenc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother claims I sat in front of the TV utterly hypnotized by the "phonetics shadows," and that it's how I learned to read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfQseUDQB2o Is there anything like this available for kids now? It's so stripped down and catchy that, even as an adult, I could watch these all day long.

I bought the DVDs when they came out, about 10 years ago. Look for "The Best of the Electric Company." It was, and remains, totally brilliant. My two elder children loved it, and couldn't get enough. My son (who is now 10) never got into it, but I'll somehow forgive him. Really and truly, the Electric Company was a very, very clever show that mixed humor and education in a unique way. The company that produced these…

I give a lot of credit to "The Electric Company" as well. Because the episodes were repeated so much, some of these memes still stick with me today, including "You Drive Me Up the Wall" which packed humor, double-meaning of phrases, idiom, and reading into one little skit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6eNoTF_hNY

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#140

Post by grogenaut »

delecti wrote: post #128
grogenaut wrote: post #87

Summary: These things I loved as a kid are now slightly different and therefor RUINED. In an unrelated note, get off of my lawn you damned kids. Seriously, more hard hitting journalism by the folks that brought us "Snaktaku reviews the Big Mac" and "We really pissed off some game devs and had to buy our own copy of games" authors.

I admit to having never watched much Sesame Street, but I think that's a pretty inaccurate characterization of the article. There are several convincing examples of the point the author's trying to make.

Sure, except Sesame Street and it's impact is incredibly well researched and this article is based on one guy's book and Kotaku trying to generate page views. I'd rather read the studies.
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