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How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

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Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#141

Post by DiabloD3 »

DanBC wrote: post #44
DiabloD3 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. Kotaku articles have no place on the front page of HN, especially ones like this that don't understand the larger context of the program, and its inability to thrive in the "junk food media" environment that is being force fed to kids. If I ever have kids, I'm going to continue to not have TV in my home. They can read all the books I read when I was a kid, or watch select TV shows from the past 20+…

> They can read all the books I read when I was a kid, Hang on. Some old books sell well and so keep getting re-printed, but they're not very good. There are some great books for children created each year. The Kate Greenaway award is mostly (but not entirely) for younger children (because it's an award for excellent illustration) and the Carnegie award is mostly for older children (because it's an award for older ch…

When I was a kid I read stuff like Dune or the Foundation series (and everything else Asimov), or the part of the Ender's series that was published back then, or everything Robert Heinlein, or anything Author C. Clarke, or Neuromancer, or Snow Crash, or 1984, or Fahrenheit 451, or H2G2, or everything Philip K. Dick, or A Fire Upon the Deep, or Brave New World, or the Mars Trilogy.

I read all the "good" stuff before I was in high school.

If I have a kid, he/she is reading allllllll of that. If I had a 12th grade reading level when I was in like 5th or 6th grade, so can they.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#142

Post by sjm »

mfoy_ wrote: post #90
hitekker wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mister Rogers For those who didn't grow up with Mister Rogers, I encourage you to watch this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA , to get a sense of how effective he was as a speaker.

He must be rolling in his grave with the way violence has waxed and mentionable, manageable feelings have waned. I haven't watched any cartoons recently but it seems the trend is toward rejection and denial of feelings rather than acceptance and understanding. He even brought up mental health (this being the late 60s) which is remarkable as there hasn't been much focus on mental health until very recently (and still…

I also thought it was incredibly surprising he even uttered the words "mental health" given how it was looked at back then. It comes across as brave and with much foresight. A very smart man indeed!

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#143

Post by DigitalSea »

I completely agree. I can not stand Elmo as a character. He lacks depth and is really annoying. However, observing my 1.5 year old niece when Elmo comes on, you can see why he is the popular Muppet. Kids love his annoying voice and silliness which is why Elmo will continue to be at the forefront of Sesame Street.

I saw the episode where they talked about Mr. Hooper's death. It was the saddest thing I had seen in a very long time. Very emotional and probably the most honest episode ever made.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#144

Post by caf »

pipermerriam wrote: post #92
aczerepinski wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peg + Cat is a fairly intelligent PBS kids show. Lots of exposure to math & music concepts.

Cannot recommend this enough. Strong female lead character. Entertaining enough for adults to watch. Math!

and puns!

I really like the whole drawn-on-graph-paper look, too.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#145

Post by flashman »

aczerepinski wrote: post #89
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…

Peg + Cat is a fairly intelligent PBS kids show. Lots of exposure to math & music concepts.

Fairly intelligent except that every one of Peg's lines sounds like it's spoken in upper case.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#146

Post by marshray »

jMyles wrote: post #19

I don't understand why folks think this is out-of-place on HN. It seems on target to me. It is evidence of an emergent media phenomenon (albeit a slow one) - that a single character on an iconic platform changed its dynamic enough to cause its identity to come into question. Because Sesame Street leveraged novelty and maturity, the emergence of a cutesy, immature, "it's all about MEEE!" type of character represents a…

So Elmo coming to Sesame Street is basically like Twitter changing stars to hearts.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#148

Post by anigbrowl »

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!!!…

And I can see it with my boys. Elmo youtube videos taught my two-year-old the alphabet, his shapes, and counting to 10, which blows his daycare teachers away.

Sesame street (and the Electric Company) helped me with my early reading and numeric ability, long before Elmo showed up. You can watch classic episodes on Netflix and see that there was actually more of that stuff in the early years than there is today, with more elaborate animations and songs that made it easier for kids to remember.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#149

Post by anigbrowl »

austenallred wrote: post #10

There is no substance on earth more addictive than Elmo is to a two year old. In most television shows and movies what people are looking for is somebody that represents them - call it an "avatar" if you must. When kids watch Sesame Street they relate directly to Elmo. He's younger, smaller, has an insatiable curiosity, and is in a permanent mode of questioning and discovery. He even has similar mannerisms to childre…

Sesame Street was created for two-year-olds

Nope. Watch some first season episodes (they're on Netflix) and even in the very first shows, where they clearly didn't know what they were doing yet and the characters were poorly defined and less funny, and it's clear that they were aiming for slightly older kids and to engage them intelligently. An obvious clue to this is to look at the age range of the children they had on the show, which was more clustered around the 4-5 year mark.

Re: How Elmo Ruined Sesame Street

#150

Post by stevewillows »

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…

Caillou is brutal.

I love George Shrinks though. It's simple adventures, but they created something that's actually interesting without being overly complex.

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