Sesame Street first aired on November 10, 1969. Even now, just humming the Sesame Street theme song to myself evokes a wave of emotions: nostalgia, safety, joy, playfulness, connection. As a scholar of Sesame Street, I explore the benefits Gen X-ers, the first children of Sesame Street, have reaped from Big Bird and Snuffy, Bert and Ernie, the lovable Grover, Oscar the Grouch, and the other diverse residents of our favorite street. Like all of us, though, Sesame Street owns a complicated narrative. While the social justice efforts of Sesame Street have and must be hailed, especially in this volatile era when we seem to be losing some of the progress that came out of the late 1960s, we also have to recognize the failures and limitations. As some scholars, including Paul S. B. Jackson, have pointed out, if the experiment of Sesame Street had been successful, we would be living in a better world right now. We must examine the complex legacies of Sesame Street, recognizing the ways it helped prepare a generation for a range of important conversations, including about diversity, disability rights, gender equality, racial justice, environmental justice, socioeconomic equality, and just plain being kind to each other. We must also confront the ways it failed us: the ways that the sunny days of Sesame Street, the optimism of its creators, the joy of fans (like me), and the vast (unrealized) potential set us up for something that could never be. And, we must own the ways we, too, failed Sesame Street. This presentation seeks to discover the ways that Sesame Street continues to help us learn from failure, come to terms with past harms, and revive hope and a sense of possibility for the future.
About the presenterDaisy Lantz Breneman
Daisy L. Breneman advises and teaches in the Justice Studies department, and co-coordinates the Disability Studies minor, at James Madison University.