If you remember the documentary scene with Reverend Jesse Jackson leading the kids in like a Black power chant, you would never see something like this on Children’s Television today! Things have gotten very politically correct and things have gotten very safe. “When it first started, the USA was embroiled in the civil rights movement and revolution, and this is very evident in the show. This would never happen in this day and age,” says Agrelo, who describes those early years as experimental and daring. “The US government gave the producers of Sesame Street 8M which is equivalent to 57M dollars today.
Sesame Street was funded by the US government to help literacy and help close the learning gap, so that all American children entered Grade 1 with fundamental knowledge about reading and counting. It’s a fascinating story that began in 1967 with a few impassioned individuals exploring the possibility of TV, and asking themselves: Can children’s programming be both enthralling and educational? Can the TV medium teach kids how to read? And how can we make a show that will reach the children that need it most? While the book tells the full story, covering fifty years, the documentary focuses on the first 20 years of Sesame Street-the origin story. Street Gang was inspired by the book Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis. “ Sesame Street came out of the civil rights movement and was started by activists who wanted to change the world, and wanted to revolutionize television, and reach inner city kids…and do all of those things,” says Director Marilyn Agrelo ( AN INVISIBLE SIGN, MAD HOT BALLROOM), who described working on this film as an absolute dream job. Hooper’s store, which is stained and gritty, but colourful-an accurate reflection of most corner stores in New York City at that time.Īs the camera pans down, to street level, we see a mix of small children, muppets (with sweaty puppeteers beneath them), and a crowded set of camera crew, some with cigarettes hanging from their mouths. The film opens with a birds-eye view of the set, modelled after a block in Harlem: the wide and inviting brownstone steps, Oscar’s garbage can to the right, Big Bird’s nest in the back alley and Mr. Watching Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street filled me with feelings of comfort and wonder, and allowed me to float back to some of my warmest chapters of childhood. No assignment has brought me greater joy this year than this one.
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