Pop culture influenced by Sesame Street

The following information is on pop culture that has been influenced by Sesame Street.

Works about the show

• Sesame Street was subject of its own A&E Biography.
• The World According to Sesame Street is a 2006 documentary that made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival.

Projects with Sesame cast, crew, influences

• Rainbow was created in 1972 to be a British take on the Sesame Street concept. It featured puppets and animated segments between a live action story.
• Jack's Big Music Show on Noggin is produced by David and Adam Rudman, with puppeteering by David, Alice Dinnean, and John Kennedy, all Sesame employees or alumni.
• Between the Lions often draws comparisons to Sesame Street. This reading program on PBS used puppet characters and animation to explain literacy concepts to slightly older children than Sesame’s audience. Christopher Cerf and Norman Stiles are among the show's Sesame-alumni. Big Bird, Elmo, Ernie and Bert have made a cameo appearance.
• A Lot Like Birds performed a song named: Sesame Street Is No Place For Me.

Major parodies

Avenue Q

The hit Broadway musical Avenue Q is a parody of Sesame Street. Four members of the original cast (John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Rick Lyon, and Jennifer Barnhart) are all former puppeteers for the Jim Henson Company. The following disclaimer appears in all promotional material, advertising and merchandise for the show: "Avenue Q has not been authorized or approved in any manner by the Jim Henson Company or Sesame Workshop, which have no responsibility for its content."

Wonder Showzen

Wonder Showzen is a sketch comedy television series that began airing in 2005 on MTV2. The show's format is clearly a parody of children's shows such as Sesame Street (e.g. use of stock footage, puppetry, and clips of children being interviewed).

MADtv

MADtv had a recurring segment that is a parody of the show itself, complete with a Sesame Street-styled opening. There have been seven segments.

• In the first segment, "Big Bird Gets the Flu", Big Bird gets the bird flu and spreads it all over Sesame Street.
• In the second segment, "Donald Trump Tears Down Sesame Street", some construction workers try to take apart Big Bird's nest and destroy Sesame Street in the process.
• In the third segment, "MyPlace.com", Big Bird tries to find out why Billy is so obsessed with a website called "MyPlace" on his phone.
• In the fourth segment, "The Dirty Bomb", Big Bird doesn't know why he's turning sick and green.
• In the fifth sketch, "Economic Depression", Big Bird finds out that the bank took his nest after he defaulted on his rate mortgage.
• The sixth sketch was a commercial for "Tickle Me Emo".
• The seventh sketch, "Childhood Obesity", is in which Billy gets too fat.

Other parodies

One of the more famous Internet websites using the effects of Adobe Photoshop and other image-editing software revolves around the Sesame Street character "Bert." The site (and many variations), entitled "Bert is Evil", featured the character as part of many horrific acts throughout history, often co-conspiring with terrorists and other world leaders with negative connotations.

In the Homestar Runner cartoons, debuting in the Strong Bad E-Mail "for kids", Homestar hosts a kids show, "Whaddaya Know, Haddi-Man?" In this show, there seems to be a "letter of the day". In the episode snippet viewers saw, the letter of the day was "G", which may have come from Sesame Street episodes that were brought to you by a letter of the alphabet. However, Homestar's comment on the letter G was, "I'm not gonna lie to you, that's a healthy piece of real estate!"

The Houghton Mifflin company's Power Proofreading online game parodied Sesame Street as "Cinnamon Street" as one of the programs on HME-TV. The description for the show is "Big Baby doesn't like sharing his toys. Miss Wiggy teaches him a lesson."

Family Guy

The FOX show Family Guy has made reference to Sesame Street on some occasions. In the episode "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz", it showed a short clip of Stewie, who is in a plastic bubble, taking on the role of the pinball from the Pinball Number Count sketch. Other counting sketch parodies have been included, notably Peter's attempt to set up Cleveland with a total of seven prostitutes in the episode "Petarded".

In "Model Misbehavior", when Brian gets a job at Stewie's Cash Scam, Stewie tells Brian "If the Cookie Monster calls, tell him I'm not talking to him until he gets out of rehab." Later in the episode, Lois sees him as a desperate, jittery addict, seated in a bathroom stall of the rehab center trying to make a cookie by holding raw dough in the bowl of a spoon over a lighter flame as if it were heroin. In another episode, Lois sees Stewie dialing a real phone and mistakes it for a Sesame Street phone.

In "Mind Over Murder", Peter spends so much time inside his house that "all the TV programs are starting to mesh together". The example shown is Homicide: Life on Sesame Street, which mixes Homicide: Life on the Street with Sesame Street. Later in the episode, Bert is a gruff cop living with Ernie, who are shown as a bickering pair. In this scene, Ernie says "Bert, I wish you wouldn't drink so much." Which Bert responds with "Well Ernie, I wish you wouldn't eat cookies in the damn bed!"

The episode "A Picture Is Worth a 1,000 Bucks" shows Meg does some bird calls, which leads to Big Bird walking over and asking her what she wants. When she tells him that she wasn't calling him specifically, he gets mad and tells her how hard it is for him to live a normal life, ending with him spitting on her shoes, and walking away, muttering "Bitch."

In "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1", Peter and Brian were watching Sesame Street. After the Count had counted out seven bats, Peter asks Brian if "they ever show him doin someone in and feedin on em". The Count also appeared in another episode where Meg claims that she dated him, and then flashes back to a time where they were beginning to have sex (showing her taking off her shirt with the camera on to her back) and the Count started counting her nipples, but is repulsed on discovering that she has three (One nipple! HAHAHA! Two nipples! HAHAHA! Three nip-oh, hell no, I'm outta here).

In early episodes, Stewie also owns a Sesame Street Telephone toy.

American Dad!

Seth MacFarlane has also had Sesame Street in his other series American Dad!. In "Francine's Flashback", Stan Smith is seen watching television, pointing at the screen and yelling for one of the characters to "Shoot him!". We see he is actually watching Sesame Street, with Elmo and Cookie Monster having fun. The 'camera' cuts back to Stan, who is even more furious, shouting "Don't trust him! It may look like the Cookie Monster's eating, but he never actually swallows anything!". This is, of course, a sly joke at how whenever Cookie Monster eats, he inevitably sprays crumbs everywhere.

In "Lincoln Lover", Stan is invited to a party at a Langley branch of the Log Cabin Republicans (a group of republicans who identify with Lincoln's idea of republicanism, but are also gay). After learning of all the members' orientation, he asks "How can you be Republican and gay?" to which Greg responds "all these pre-conceived notions". He begins singing a song titled "Red and Gay" and sings about how they are gay like Bert, Ernie and Manet.

Damn! Show

The raunchy TV show Damn! Show featured a segment called "Clay Porn", which consisted of parodies of the Sesame Street Muppets (and one of Miss Piggy) as people constantly having sex, and it also included Bert and Ernie as a gay couple.

Gang t-shirts

On May 23, 2006, several T-shirts were banned from a Brockton, Massachusetts high school because they showed Sesame Street characters as gang figures, which violated that schools dress code policy. Because of this, the incident briefly made local and national headlines and the school, which enforced the ban, was awarded $650,000 as part of its anti-gang effort. As of May 2006, it is unknown about the fate of the person or persons who created the offending shirts and if the images on the t-shirt violated any copyright laws.^[1]

Robot Chicken

The popular Adult Swim show Robot Chicken made a parody of a parody of the MADtv skit in which Big Bird is shown having the bird flu. Snuffy is also seen, although in this skit he really is an imaginary friend. Elmo, Grover and the Count make brief speaking cameos, and Ernie, Bert and Cookie Monster can be seen in the background at one point, receiving vaccines from the Count. A brief parody of "One of These Things" is seen, with three dancing kids and one dead kid.

The Simpsons

In The Simpsons episode "Missionary: Impossible", a pledge drive interrupts Homer's TV watching which causes him to pledge $10,000 after actress Betty White proclaims that $10,000 is what will end the drive. However Homer doesn't have the money and a chase ensues which includes Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, and Elmo, each who want a piece of Homer which is in contrast to their character's true identity.

In "Bart Mangled Banner", after the Simpson family is sent to the Alcatraz (apparently reopened), when the family tries to escape, Homer says in a terrified state that "he doesn't want to end up like Elmo", where the screen is panned to see Elmo's shadow in the jail cell, having hanged himself.

In "To Surveil with Love", security cameras installed in a gay bar capture the antics of several customers all of whom resemble Sesame Street characters.

Rhymes With Orange

Rhymes with Orange's strip for August 28, 2008 had a reference to Sesame Street. The comic has a girl going to Sesame Street, and she needs directions to go there, so a guy gives her directions to go there.

The October 18, 2008 strip had a parody of Sesame Street called "Witch Way". The logo parodies the Sesame Street logo. The intro has a character named Abbot who asks "Which way to Witch Way?" Another character named Costello shows her the way. Then, he says "Where are you going?" Then Abbot responds "Witch Way!"

Mutts

Mutts has a character that resembles Oscar the Grouch, but it is a cat who lives in a trash can, who appears in some strips of the comic.

Angel

In the Angel season 5 episode "Smile Time", the title character Angel is turned into a puppet. The episode is a direct parody of Sesame Street, in which the Muppets were featured to teach kids on their long running and popular show "Smile Time", only to be revealed as demons as the episode progresses.

Other usages

• Although rubber duckies existed before Sesame Street, their pop culture icon status was mostly spurred on by Ernie's "Rubber Duckie" song, and subsequent appearances of Ernie's bath toy.
• In the 1974 film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Lt. Garber says of the subway hijackers, "Someone down there knows how to drive a train. You don't pick that up watching Sesame Street".
• In the Spider-Man 3 video game, after purchasing the 5 Hit Melee Combo Bruce Campbell (The Narrator) will say "Today's melee combo is brought to you by the number 5 and the letters O and W", referring to how Sesame Street ends.
• The Beavis and Butt-head book This Book Sucks makes reference to the program, stating that it would be televised after Barney & Friends and viewers could "get a class credit for watching".
• The Return of the Living Dead (1985): Dan O'Bannon purposely named two characters Ernie Kaltenbrunner and Burt Wilson, a reference to the show.
• In "Kansas," a fourth-season episode of the Jim Henson-produced SciFi Channel series Farscape, the show's alien characters are seen learning the alphabet from a Sesame Street segment in which Kermit the Frog teaches a young girl her ABCs. ("This child is slow!" one protests, referring to the girl onscreen.)
• In 2006, popular Sesame Street characters including Big Bird and Elmo joined Alex Trebek during an episode of Jeopardy! with the category, "Sesame Street Eats". The category focused on various elements found in healthy foods.
• Billy Joel mentions Sesame Street, along with the PBS station it appears on in New York City (WNET Channel 13), in his 1982 song "Pressure".
• In the online game Lost Souls, Discordians counting things using the built-in 'count' command may sometimes count things in the style of Count von Count.^[2]

How to get to "Sesame Street"

Some PBS member stations have also given their studios a "Sesame Street" address, either by renaming the street, or building a new street alongside their new studios. These stations include WCFE-TV Plattsburgh, New York and WCVE-TV Richmond, Virginia. Some communities in the United States also have neighborhoods and subdivisions with a "Sesame Street", though these streets are not necessarily connected with the show or a PBS station.^[3]

See also

• Sesame Street (comic strip)

References