As Sesame Street kicks off its 40th anniversary season Tuesday, with first lady Michelle Obama and Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda as guests, it is indisputably the most beloved children’s show in history, and one of television’s biggest and most enduring success stories.
The series holds a record 122 Emmy Awards, not including a lifetime-achievement trophy (奖± ) award, and has been adapted in more than 120 countries and territories around the globe. An estimated 100,000 Sesame products have been made available internationally, from T-shirts and costumes to high-tech toys such as Elmo Live.
Sesame’s cross-cultural, multi-generational appeal has a lot to do with the specific age group it targets. “The bulk of our audience is in the 2s and 3s, though we shoot for 2 to 4,” says executive producer Carol-Lynn Parente. At that early stage, says Spinney — who is 75, and has been with the show since Day 1 (he plays Oscar as well) — “children are basically the same, and have been through the years.”
But if preschoolers’ fundamental needs and sensibilities haven’t changed much, the world around them has — not least of all on the media landscape, where Sesame Street now competes with many other kids’ shows and an ever-expanding array of new media.
In 2000, the Children’s Television Workshop, the organization through which creator Joan Ganz Cooney launched Sesame Street on PBS predecessor NET, changed its title to Sesame Workshop, to reflect its expansion into the digital, interactive age.
Content and presentation continue to evolve on TV as well. The show’s famously catchy theme song, Sunny Day, now has a hip-hop beat and a jazzier arrangement. Parente stresses that it’s just as important “to keep our curriculum current. The ABC’s and 123’s are always there, but we stay relevant by incorporating other things that are interesting and meaningful.”
“We focus on all aspects of development — cognitive needs, social and emotional needs, health needs — and bring in advisers who are experts in each area, to make sure we’re age-appropriate,” says Rosemarie Truglio, vice president of education and research, Sesame Workshop. “But we never talk down to children, and we’re not afraid to explore sensitive topics.”
Sesame has had its critics in the academic community as well.
For Mary Lynn Crow, a clinical psychologist and professor of education at the University of Texas-Arlington, “shows like Sesame Street lack the potentially deep, personal emotional imprint (影响) that can and should occur between a student and teacher in an early educational experience.”
On the other hand, Crow considers Sesame Street “a beautiful model of what I call high-tech learning. They can teach children about letters, numbers, color and size through repetition in ways traditional education can’t, and provide early information about attitudes, values and relationships.”
1. What do we learn about Sesame Street from the first two paragraphs?
A) It rose to fame because of the first lady’s role.
B) It’s successful and gains international popularity.
C) It still has to win a lifetime-achievement award.
D) It is the most successful show in American history.
2. What’s Spinney’s opinion on the target audience of Sesame Street? |
