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?
