Blog

When I heard the news that Sesame Street was launching a new initiative to raise awareness of autism, I was one of many people who were extremely happy to hear this. It’s exciting that Sesame Street is once again taking a big step in tackling a sensitive subject in both an educational and entertaining way. It also got me thinking about how Sesame Street has always been on top of things, in terms of tackling topics of interest that are important in today’s world. Topics such as divorce, military families, emergency situations and even death have all been featured on Sesame Street.

I wanted to discuss a few of these topics, and how Sesame Street handled them so well. For the next few weeks, I’m going to highlight a different topic for each post and give an overall analysis of how Sesame Street tackled each subject, and the educational and entertainment challenges of presenting these topics. I have to give credit to where credit is due to my #1 source for all material, The Muppet Wiki. It’s a fantastic website, and I wouldn’t have been able to find so much information if it weren’t for them.

Divorce

This topic is extremely interesting, in that it has been attempted by Sesame Street twice as featured stories, but only once did it finally make its way to the public. I was surprised to learn the topic was brought up much earlier than I thought. In 1989, a song appeared on Sesame Street in an episode of the show’s 22nd season. The song appeared during a News Flash sketch with Kermit the Frog interviewing a bird. Besides the topic it addresses, what’s special about this sketch is that it was the last day Jim Henson spent time in the studio recording Sesame Street material.

In the sketch, Kermit the Frog interviews a small bird in a park, who sings about how her parents live in separate trees, however despite this, they still love her no matter who she is with. The little bird was performed by Fran Brill (Zoe, Prairie Dawn), her father by Jerry Nelson (The Count, Herry Monster), her mother by Camille Bonora (The Count’s girlfriend Countess von Backwards and Meryl Sheep), and her grandmother by Pam Arciero (Oscar the Grouch’s girlfriend Grundgetta). What’s interesting about the song is that it tackles the subject in a very simple way by having the little bird sing how she feels, without using the word “divorce.” A new version of the song was released 23 years later (however I’ll go into that a little bit later).

3 years later in 1992, Sesame Workshop attempted to tackle the issue of divorce in an episode known as “Snuffy’s Parents Get a Divorce.” The project was first announced in 1989 by Sesame writer and director Jon Stone, who at the time was also working on tackling the issue of drugs and peer pressure. However, cast and crew members expressed mixed feelings about the topic, even before a script was finished. In 1990, executive producer Dulcy Singer shut down the project, wanting the show to focus more on targeting financially disadvantaged families, and believing “divorce is a middle-class thing.” Instead, she preferred a story illustrating a single-parent family, with a child born out of wedlock with an absent father.

The “divorce” concept was not completely finished, though, as the idea came up again the following year when new statistics revealed that 40 percent of all children in the United States – not just the middle class – would soon live in divorced households. The writers and performers found divorce to be a heavy subject to approach. They had to find a way to reach small children who were affected by it, something they didn’t have to touch much before. The crew had to find the right approach to address the issue, the first question being whether to use the Muppet characters or the human cast to highlight the subject. Using Muppet characters would make the topic less frightening and easier for kids to have somebody to identify it, however using adult characters would make it more real and possibly easier to relate to. Eventually, it came down to realizing that the human married characters, such as Maria and Luis or Gordon and Susan, couldn’t be used as the audience was possibly too attached to the characters and may not understand the issue.

It was decided to use an established Muppet character as the child in the issue, whose parents were getting divorced. Snuffy was chosen as the childlike character. Norman Stiles, who previously wrote the episode that focused on the death of Mr. Hooper, was chosen to rewrite a new version of the story. The script was heavily scrutinized by the advisory board and developmental psychologists, who wanted the script to more heavily emphasize that not all arguments mean divorce.

The script was revised, and the episode was taped and screened in front of a test audience of 60 children. Noel MacNeal, best known as the titular character on Bear in the Big Blue House, as well as being a frequent Henson performer, had performed Mommy Snuffleupagus before on the show. However for this special, he instead performed Daddy Snuffleupagus, which was actually the Snuffy puppet with a different voice. Lynn Hippen was the voice of Mommy Snuffleupagus, as the studio wanted a more feminine-sounding voice for the character. Singer still had her doubts about Sesame Street tackling the issue, even after many revisions to the script, believing that a topic like death was universal and divorce was personal, something people can react to differently.

The story at one point featured Daddy Snuffleupagus arriving for a weekend visit and Snuffy’s sister Alice trying to bring him inside, but he reminds her that he doesn’t live there anymore. Children from the test audience couldn’t understand where Snuffy’s parents lived, especially the father, many believing he ran away from home. In another scene, as she overhears her parents arguing in the next cave, Alice pounds and kicks her teddy bear out of frustration, something kids misunderstood as Alice being violent and her parents planning to move away. After the negative test results, the project was abandoned, although there were several talks of trying to tackle the concept again.

More than 20 years later, the issue of divorce was approached again, this time successfully. Instead of focusing on how a character is going through the process, the show illustrated how a character has gotten over a divorce. The topic was featured in a new research initiative for Sesame Street called “Little Children, Big Challenges,” a multimedia outreach program that focused on helping children persevere through changes and challenges in their life. It was specially made available for the general public through various family courts, counseling services, parenting and child care programs and other similar outreach outlets. The video and research kit were both released online in 2012 and featured a current Sesame Street popular character, Abby Cadabby, explaining to Elmo, Rosita and Gordon that her mommy and daddy are divorced, while she also shares the emotions she went through during this change in her life. Kevin Clash, who also performed Elmo, directed the special episode, in possibly one of his final performances as the character before resigning from Sesame Workshop. This special also includes the same song from the News Flash sketch in 1989, “The Bird Family,” here with the little bird performed by John Tartaglia, alongside Abby Cadabby and his bird parents, performed by Kevin Clash and Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, who also performs Abby.

I think what’s special about Sesame Street covering divorce is how they didn’t simply go with their first approach. They took time, did research, did tests and made sure they got it right. I also applaud Sesame Workshop for approaching the topic in different ways, first through a song and later through a story, with one of its most popular characters recalling how she went through the process. And while Snuffy was seen as he went through the change, Abby had already been through the process and had time to adjust to it. Abby also doesn’t hide her feelings from the experience, instead sharing how angry and sad she is because she loves her parents. It reached its appropriate audience, making downloadable content for parents who needed a tool to help their children understand the subject, not trying to force feed the subject to the regular television viewing audience, who may or may not being going through the same situation as Abby. In handling divorce, I think Sesame Street got it right and I think this is a fantastic tool and program to help families.