Regarding Jim Henson and children’s television
Jim Henson’s creative genius was absolutely treasured in our household. I watched Sesame Street nearly every day, as far back as I can remember. This was an era where we certainly weren’t allowed to watch HBO, meaning that I missed out on Fraggle Rock until I could watch it on video, but I think our worn-out tapes of Follow That Bird! more than made up for it.
Of course, YouTube is a great place to catch up on old clips from Sesame Street. I’d post a few of my favorite, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
The reason all of this is on my mind right now is this clip of Big Bird singing at Jim Henson’s memorial service that was passed around today:
As touching as the video is, it’s made even harder to get through by the fact that you can tell Carroll Spinney is having a hard time keeping his shit together for the whole song.
It kinda reminds me of the tribute Horatio Sanz did on SNL when Mr. Rogers died. (Yes, that’s a link to a transcript, because NBC is ridiculous and won’t allow anyone to post clips of their shows.) Here, watch Mr. Rogers’s final message to his viewers instead:
Thinking about the positive memories and the effect this programming had on me is a little bittersweet. Do kids have stuff like this on TV anymore? Are there characters and shows and songs that today’s kids connect with on a level that would cause them to have the same fondness I have for Jim Henson’s work, a full twenty years later?
It makes me wonder what kind of entertainment our kid will connect with. If there’s nothing comparable on TV, I may have to stick with just DVDs of old shows and classic kids movies.
I may not even be able to fall back on my own dependable favorite, because apparently the early episodes of Sesame Street are (now considered) unsuitable for children. What?
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:16 am
I never watched Sesame Street, but we did watch Follow That Bird a few times in school (I guess when the teacher felt like taking a break!). I watched Mr. Rogers every day. I loved the episodes where they would go to a factory and explain how things were made - I remember two of my favorites were a crayon factory and a tricycle factory. We also had HBO for a short period of time and I watched Fraggle Rock, but I always got very upset at the Fraggles because they would eat the hard work of the Doozers. I was not okay with that!
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:43 am
Yes! The crayon factory was the best one. Need to dig up a copy of that.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I remember I loved Fraggle Rock, but I’ll be damned if I could tell you one thing about the plot now other than what I just read on the link Amber posted:
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:56 pm
What I loved about reading the wiki entry about Fraggle Rock is the clear Communism of the Doozers and capitalism of the Fraggles. It’s almost as good as the time on You Can’t Do That On Television when the “Russians” took over, and they had red slime instead of green slime, and instead of being slimed when you said “I don’t know” you were slimed when you said “freedom.” (Seriously. This happened.)
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
[...] A thread at Garrett’s blog has inspired me to post a favorite television memory. Does anybody else remember that episode of You Can’t Do That On Television where “the Russians” took over? Instead of green slime they had red slime, and instead of being slimed when you said “I don’t know” you were slimed when you said “freedom.” [...]
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I have a copy of FTB. I remember King Friday and Mr. R blowing in beer bottles to make different sounds. Garrett, you also liked the Neil Mc news hour. The whole crayon making thing was really neat. And wasn’t there a bakery involved?
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Yeah, I’m sure there was a bakery at some point. I believe it was Chef Sprockett, or Brockett, or something, who would make the bread. Do you think they were actually beer bottles? Maybe root beer.
Maybe we can put on Follow That Bird next time I visit.
I seem to remember that the music is really good.