Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Parent Guide

If you’re under sixty years of age, chances are you spent at least part of your childhood glued to the TV, watching Sesame Street and chortling at the antics of Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Grover, Count von Count, Cookie Monster, and Ernie and Bert. (And if you didn’t watch it, your kids definitely did.) Within a few short years of its 1969 launch, this unforgettable cultural icon embedded itself in our hearts.

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street uses interviews and archival footage to share the show’s history and explore the factors that turned educational TV into must-watch entertainment for generations of children. That history begins with Joan Ganz Cooney, a young television producer who wondered “what television would do if it loved people instead of trying to sell to people.” Bringing together television writers, educational experts, and Jim Henson’s Muppets, Ms. Cooney won funding from the Carnegie Foundation and the federal Department of Education to create a program that would help inner-city children bridge the educational gap with suburban youngsters. After three years of study, test episodes, and focus groups, Sesame Street hit the airwaves in November 1969.

What this documentary makes very clear is that Sesame Street succeeded for two reasons: it was created by a fanatically devoted group of people and those people were managed wisely. In particular, producer Jon Stone astutely put few limits on their slightly manic lunacy. It’s that hint of craziness that appealed to children in 1969 and continues to charm them today.

Sesame Street endures not only because of its zany moments, but because it respects children enough to deal with serious topics, whether it’s the death of a main character or a new Muppet with AIDS. As one of the show’s early composers, Joe Raposo says of his song, “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, which was acclaimed for its take on race but which also has a broader message: “The song addresses that one thing that’s at the kernel of our being. We’re not sure what we are or what we can be. We know there’s potential…to know that we can become something that we perhaps never dreamed that we could be. That’s what Sesame Street’s about.”

Despite its messages, Street Gang is not a kid’s show; it’s an exercise in nostalgia and curiosity for adult viewers. Kids will be bored by the long discussions of adult motivations, although they will perk up for the clips from the early years. As for adults, it’s an enormous amount of fun to watch Ernie and Bert squabble or see real, unscripted children interact with the Muppets. If you loved Sesame Street when you were young, this documentary will “sweep the clouds away” and take you back to “where the air is sweet”. After all, don’t we all want to “get to Sesame Street”?