Sesame Street on the set in 1969, the year the show debuted. Hulton Archive / Getty Images
For generations,
Sesame Street has been a mainstay of American children s television. But when the show premiered more than 50 years ago on Nov. 10, 1969, it was considered controversial, even radical. In 1969, what was on TV for kids was a very dire landscape, says Marilyn Agrelo, the director of a new documentary called
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street.
Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street is in theaters and on demand now.
Courtesy of Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street Basically, the programming was geared to sell children toys, Tootsie Rolls and breakfast cereals, and there was no thought of educating them in any way, she says.
Courtesy of Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street
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toggle caption Courtesy of Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street
Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street is in theaters and on demand now. Courtesy of Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street Basically, the programming was geared to sell children toys, Tootsie Rolls and breakfast cereals, and there was no thought of educating them in any way, she says.
Sesame Street debuted on the airwaves in a tumultuous moment in U.S. history, and the bigger forces upending American life played a big part in shaping how and what the show came to be.
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Maps the History of a Revolutionary Kids TV Show That Still Has Plenty to Teach Us Time 5/7/2021
When
Sesame Street first hit the public-television airwaves, in 1969, the target audience of kids aged three to five took to it immediately. But older kids, and even college kids, watched it too: If its goal had been to “sell” preschool kids on learning their alphabet and numbers, the way advertising sold goods to consumers, its methods of doing so were so hip and entertaining that everyone wanted a look. Its set, a semi-realistic ramshackle street inspired by real-life late-1960s Harlem, served as an anchor for a kind of groovy learning variety show for kids, featuring neo-psychedelic animated segments in which numerals and alphabet letters danced and squiggled across the screen, not to mention a full neighborhood of performers both human and Muppet that, for lots of kids, would come to be a de facto family.
What’s new to VOD and streaming this weekend: May 7-9
Including Almodovar s English-language debut, Eat Wheaties! and season 3 of The Girlfriend Experience By Norman Wilner and Kevin Ritchie
May 7, 2021
The Human Voice
(Pedro Almodóvar)
Spanish director Almodóvar’s English-language debut is a short film that strips the hallmarks of his oeuvre down to a few core elements: a high-strung woman engages in high drama while clad in high fashion. Based on Jean Cocteau’s monodrama of the same name, The Human Voice is essentially a 30-minute showpiece for Tilda Swinton, who stars as a jilted woman confronting her ex in a lengthy phone call as her oblivious dog unhelpfully reflects back her anxiety. Cocteau’s play served as the inspiration for Almodóvar’s 1988 international hit Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown so not unlike 2019’s Pain And Glory, this project finds the director self-consciously revisiting the late 80s/early 90s period that defined his suc