The Evil of Alistair Cookie
In the midst of toy recalls and recent news about dangerous chemicals in household cleaners, we moms now have something else to fear: Sesame Street. Seasons 1 & 2 will soon be released on DVD, and the set includes this warning:
“These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
Huh? What?
Folks at the Children’s Television Workshop, the producers of Sesame Street, say that among the things parents today may find objectionable is Monsterpiece Theatre, featuring Cookie Monster as Alistair Cookie. Cookie smokes a pipe and later eats it. Also, Oscar the Grouch is “too grouchy.”
At first I thought this was pretty ridiculous. My siblings and I grew up watching these exact same Sesame Street episodes and we turned out just fine. Well, my sister did start smoking at 13 and my brother at 19, so maybe Alistair Cookie is indeed a bad influence.
I’m not sure it’s possible to argue that television does not influence kids. If it didn’t, companies wouldn’t spend billions of dollars advertising their products on television.
I’ve seen the effects of this influence firsthand. Until last month, my sweet 4-year-old has never called her brother or other children names. Then, she started watching Charlie Brown – first The Great Pumpkin, then Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving. Suddenly, she’s prone to calling her brother “stupid” or a “blockhead.” Thanks a lot, Chuck.
I also cringe just a little every time I see Snoopy as the Great World War I Flying Ace, shooting at the imaginary enemy from on top of his dog house. Hopefully, my bazillion lectures to the kids about how guns hurt people will overshadow the image of their favorite cartoon dog committing violent, if heroic, acts of war.
So I can’t say that the warning label on the early Sesame Street episodes is entirely outrageous. Although our generation was raised on Sesame Street, our sensibilities have changed since the 70’s. As parents today, we’re much more concerned with things like car seat safety, second-hand smoke, gun violence, or back-sleeping babies than our parents were. Even methods of teaching kids to read have advanced since the days in 1980 when we were forced to work on those boring phonics workbooks day after day.
But even though much is different today, I’ll probably still let my kids watch these early Sesame Street episodes under my supervision. After all, my siblings and I managed to grow into responsible adults in spite of the poor role modeling of Alistair Cookie. Except for their nicotine habits and my own wicked cookie addiction, we’re doing just fine.