Sesame Street: Subverting Capitalism Since 1969

Sesame Street was a post-modern experiment, conceived at inception as a parody of adult television, offering a knowing commentary on the conventions of the medium, then appropriating those conventions as educational tools.

By patterning the animated educational segments on TV commercials - the use of jingles, visual motifs, hip language, the repetition of snappy slogans, quick edits, entertaining characters - the Children's Television Workshop engaged in a subversion of the hard-sell techniques of consumer, capitalist culture. Sesame Street holds up a distorted circus-mirror to television, reflecting back a psychedelicised, rainbow-hued re-vision of the medium. The aim is to educate; the joke is at the expense of commercial television.

It is gentle satire, but satire nonetheless - very much a product of a late 60s. John & Yoko exploited the methods of Madison Avenue to 'sell' peace - Sesame Street exploited them to sell education. Monty Python & The Firesign Theatre ingested television whole and regurgitated a crazed version of it back into the mainstream with anarchic countercultural zeal -Sesame Street ingested television whole and regurgitated a day-glo, fuzzy-felt version of it back into the mainstream with the right-on zeal of progressive hippy educators.

Way back when, the Childrens Television Workshop could not have possibly envisioned Sesame Street becoming the global multi-billion dollar mega-industry it is today. I don't know if it has become 'part of the problem' or not, I'm not a socialist or an anti-capitalist myself, but I guess it has certainly become something different to the thing it once was. Episodes from early 70s have a loose, spontaneous vibe to them which is inevitably far less evident now. But while it continues to educate children in an entertaining and smart way, it would be churlish to regard Sesame Street as anything less than one of television's unqualified triumphs, a programme which is funny, fun, creative, and ultimately A Good Thing.

Here's my all-time favourite clip, a skit starring Cookie Monster (Who made the top 5 in my All-Time Fave TV Characters list on a post years ago) and the world's most beloved frog, Kermit. This clip is genuinely laugh-out loud funny, and appears to have absolutely no educational content whatsoever. An overused word, but what the hell: genius.



(I like to quote "Life not all guessing games, frog" every chance I get!)