Sesame Street’s producers, reacting to the “obesity epidemic,” have decided that the Cookie Monster should moderate his eating habits; a new song for C.M. will have the title “A Cookie Is A Sometimes Food.” When I read the story, I didn’t give it much thought; just another example of mindless anti-fat hysteria.
But as Jason at Positive Liberty points out, this isn’t just mindlessness; it’s bad art:
You know, even when I was a kid I think I understood the point of Cookie Monster, which was that you’re not supposed to be like him.
I know this is pedantic for most of you, but look at the original Sesame Street characters. They all had faults that kids were meant to learn about and avoid: Oscar the Grouch was dirty; Cookie Monster ate junk food; Big Bird could be a bit naive. Kids learned by watching that these traits aren’t always the best ones to have–but that they aren’t the end of the world, either. And we liked the characters anyway.
Dimensionality. Complexity. Literature, or as much as a four-year-old can understand of it. And they’re squashing it flat. Behold the damage that can be done by a momentary phobia passing through the pundit class.
I wish I didn’t suspect that it’s somehow patronizing for an uptight white guy like me to say “word,” because if I didn’t, then right here would be the perfect place for me to say “word.”
On the other hand, isn’t it sort of racist for me to keep myself from using obviously useful and eloquent words like “dis” and “word” just because I don’t want to seem patronizing?
So, then. Er.
Word.
So when are they censoring Bert and Ernie then? Or has that already happened when I wasn’t paying attention?
Good point, there. Even a 2-year-old knows that diving headfirst into a plate of cookies and making a huge mess, while fun, is not civilized behavior.
You know, I liked Cookie Monster as a kid. But, I tried to emulate him once. Took a plate full of mom’s freshly baked cookies and animal-scarfed them down.
a) Burned myself on too-hot cookies.
b) Made a mess I had to clean up
c) Got a lecture about
– Healthy eating habits
– Not making a mess
– Feeling bad for taking other people’s cookies.
d) Got tv privleges revoked.
Little kids can figure this stuff out after about one time. This is so not a corporate responsibility thing, this is a parents actually raising their kids thing.
Jason puts this better than I’ve seen anyone take on the absurdity of this. Kudos.
I know the Street has been concerned in the past with kids emulating characters, but it was for behavior that was easily immitated like the disrespect for authority of Roosevelt Franklin or the more risky banging of the head on a piano of Don Music. But even kids will realize that what the Cookie Monster does is just silly. And as has been pointed out, trying to follow his lead will only cause problems that a parent will quickly address. Cookie Monster is just the latest in a long line of absurd scapegoats for the existance of fat children.
Meanwhile, CDC links extra pounds, lower death risk.
Perhaps next year we can get the new classic, “Cookies are a Sometimes Food, But Maybe More Often Than We Thought Last Year.”
I think Jason is dead on in saying that the characters on Sesame Street had faults that were meant to be avoided, but I wonder if we need to also think about the context in which Sesame Street is now presented.
In its original, more marketing free context, Cookie Monster’s behavior was more clearly to be avoided. The contrast between his behavior and how you were told to act by others around you was clear.
Today, however, marketing generally encourages children to be much like Cookie Monster: to over-indulge, consume spontaneously, lack control. The contrast to his actions is less evident, principally because now his behavior is reinforced through the other media that are directed at children. The parent’s voice gets drowned out in an ocean of ads, product driven programs, sponsorships, and other media texts that encourage children to be like Cookie Monster.
Thus, Cookie Monster is, as Brian puts it, “the latest in a long line of absurd scapegoats for the existence of fat children,” just as the paranoia about child obesity is a blind obscuring the problem of how marketing encourages negative behavior in children.
Amp says, “Word.”
And I have a giggle fit at work :-)
It seems to me as though folks here consider any attempt to encourage good eating habits to be something terrible. What’s odd about this is that, at the same time, they complain that folks keep assuming that being overweight is the result of bad eating habits.
If it’s not, then why should attempts to encourage kids to eat well bother you?
Daffodil, considering your comments on the other weight discussion threads, I have to question your motives for this comment. I’m sure that the majority of the people voicing the opinions that you referenced in your comment have no problem with encouraging people/kids to eat “right”? (offering healthy, affordable food options in cafeterias, for example.) That’s not what I see this particular thread being about.
The point is that here you have an obviously overblown, hyperbolic character with one emphasized trait. Why were they emphasizing this trait? I believe the original intention, as others have pointed out far more eloquently than I can, is to make it obvious that this trait should not be copied. I mean, Oscar is a grouch. Does he encourage kids to be grouchy, or point out how being grouchy is not the best way to interact with others?
An example of a cookie monster type character in other media is Shakespeare’s Falstaff. Should we not allow Shakespeare to be taught in high schools for fear that the students will take his character as a publicly sanctioned inducement to booze, be lecherous, cowardly and manipulative?* When you sterilize and neuter characters in any media because you are afraid that people will be unable to correctly process them, you resign yourself to putting out only bland forms of “entertainment” with no real value.
*Side note: of course I was involved in boozy lechery in high school, but I figured that course of action out without reading any of William’s histories.
See, that’s what the old Cookie Monster did, and that’s why the revamped version is so absurd. That’s exactly what Jason’s quote from Positive Liberty says. We can’t even give children enough credit anymore to understand that a furry blue monster who only eats cookies (or drawings of cookies or the actual letter C, for heaven’s sake) is not supposed to be emulated? The point of the old Cookie Monster was to encourage good eating habits in kids by showing a counter-example. Plus it was funny. The new Cookie Monster has to lay it all out and tell children that they’re not actually supposed to eat an exclusively cookie-based diet. That’s not funny, or subtle.
I have to agree dejectedly with Tim about the prevalence of ads &c. encouraging children to consume & consume some more, though. It’s a bad scene when we can no longer tell that Cookie Monster isn’t supposed to be a nutritional role model. Dude.
Missing from this conversation is the unquestionable fact that Sesame Street, for at least the last 5 years, has totally and completely sucked. I mean completely horrid. Bordering on Barney/Teletubbies bad. If you are in your 20s or older, and are remembering Sesame Street from the 70s or 80s when you or your kids watched it, this just isn’t that show anymore.
They just teach letters and numbers anymore, not words or rhyming or anything like that. All the humor is gone. It has completely changed from a show for 4-6 year olds (and their parents) to a show for 2-3 year olds (and their little brothers). My four year old daughter (who I consider advanced, as all father’s do) hasn’t watched Sesame Street in well over a year. She is past it.
Jason writes:
But Jason was likely 2-4 years older than the current target audience of Cookie Monster’s ungrammatical rantings. Two year olds don’t get that subtlety.
All you have to do to see it is to witness Big Bird — the one character who has remained central throughout the show’s history. Big Bird used to be the Dr. Watson character — the guy who was just a little bit dumber than the audience, who could ask all of questions that the grown ups would answer for him (and the audience). Today he is the “big kid”, who answers questions for the younger muppets.
I am pro healthy eating habits, but I am against healthy moderation in drug use. Pass the heroin needle, my waistline is getting thick.
Does Cookie Monster still have that one eye that goes all googly when he stuffs cookies in his mouth?
It bothers me because its presumed that doing this will result in less fat kids. If I thought for a second that this was done out of concern about healthy eating and had nothing at all to do with fatness, then I might be less annoyed with it. This is being done explicitly in response to “childhood obesity”, not to encourage healthy eating or excercise. I think the later goals would be advanced much more effectively if they were divorced from the former. As long as the “problem” is fat children, I’m not going to like any “solution” offered. Crafting scapegoats for fat kids does nothing but increase stigma’s and prejudices that fat people are hopeless gluttons who sit around all day. If we want to encourage kids (and adults) to be active and to eat well, I’m all for it. If we want to tackle the “epidemic” of “childhood obesity”, count me out. You cannot effectively do both at once, but “childhood obesity” is a manufactured problem. We need to stop pressuring kids at younger and younger ages about their weight. Its creating weight obsessions that produce a life time of poor body image and/or yo-yo dieting.
Both of Cookie Monster’s eyes have always googled, for as long as I can recall. A trait that, unfortunately, was not passed along to “Trekkie Monster”, the Cookie Monster-esque character from Avenue Q. Although, I think in 20 years, his classic “The Internet Is For Porn” will be as embedded on popular culture as “C is for Cookie.”
I don’t blame Cookie Monster, my favorite when I was a kid, for my weight or lack thereof. But I do blame him for my hedonism and my inability to remember that it’s “toke toke pass”, not “suck the whole thing down”.
Kidding, kidding. I don’t smoke pot.
I wish I didn’t suspect that it’s somehow patronizing for an uptight white guy like me to say “word,”? because if I didn’t, then right here would be the perfect place for me to say “word.”?
On the other hand, isn’t it sort of racist for me to keep myself from using obviously useful and eloquent words like “dis”? and “word”? just because I don’t want to seem patronizing?
So, then. Er.
Word.
Indeed.
I wonder if I’m the only one who blames the advent of elmo for the downfall of the street, as he marked the start of rampant marketing and commercialization.
I remember when the proper muppets would show up (I understand they don’t anymore)
I remember Rolf showing up to sing, and Gonzo showing up to… umm, Gonzo it up, and ace reporter Kermit the Frog with hard hitting interviews (Hi ho, Kermit Dee Frog here! reporting on…)
of course, I also have fond memories of watching Rocky and Bullwinkle with my father, and having him laugh at things that went right over my head.
a few days ago, some friends and I were lamenting the lack of old school anthology television programs. PBS used to be full of them: Children’s lit interpretations, Mystery!, Masterpiece Theater, Twilight Zone reruns…
I’m curious about the idea that the “mildly overweight” were actually healthiest. I was once told, during a checkup, that I should make an effort to gain weight, since if I got sick I’d lose weight, and I didn’t have any to spare. I’ve remembered that as one of a long series of insults about my being too thin, but I’m wondering if I should have taken that seriously.
On the other hand, I’ve been within a pound or two of the same weight for my entire adult life, so I think this is pretty much natural for me.
Oops. Wrong thread. That should have been in CDC exaggerated “fat deaths”? by 1400%.
I’d suggest that even if the study shows some increased morbidity among the thin and even extremely decreased morbidity for the moderately fat, it would be wrong to assume that any given weight is right or wrong. The study merely shows that the basis for declaring an epidemic of fatness (and by extension, the need to take Cookie Monster’s cookies away from him) has no real basis. Certainly not the basis that had long been claimed. Health at every size, I say, fat or thin. No one ought to be taken to task for their body’s natural weight. Especially not under the guise of presuming what someone else’s natural weight really ought to be.
I would, however, like to know why those who have spoken and continuing to speak so direly of the risks of fatness would not start insisting that as a society we start fattening up the thin. There is more proof of the worth of that than there is in starving those same people now shown to be dramatically healthier than “normal” sized people. I never felt weight manipulation was the key to health, but I do wonder how those who do can rationalize not encouraging weight gain with all the vigor they encouraged weight loss. I guess by just ignoring what they don’t want to see. Quite lovely clothes on the emperor, don’t you think?
You’re not. Elmo and his baby voice grate on me no end. And he had the same effect that the baby characters had on cartoons in the 70s (Scrappy Doo, Baby Fangface, Baby Plas, Captain Caveman Jr., etc.): made a perfectly good show suck the pus from dead donkeys.
I am 16 and I think that by them taking away Cookie Monsters cookie he is not the same not even close. If they take away his cookies they may as well change his name to “I’m Just a Lame Monster Now” I mean he was cool untill they made him cut back on the cookie!!! And now he surves all most no good purpus except being lame. I wounder if the Sesame Street pruducers new how many people wanted cookie to stay the same if they would still change him. the awnser would probably still be yes. I mean there basially killing his charicter. And he hasn’t done any real harm to any one person there just giveing a reson to change him a reson that is not realy his falt. I think Jason nailed it right on! I say they should give Cookie balk his cookie
OK, I am 17 and I just everyone’s plog’s…I dont kow how old some of you are but it took me forever to figure out what some of you were saying, stop using big words and get to the point, people will listen to you no matter what you say because this is an imortant matter. I am writing an essay on why the cookie monster is going on a “diet”, jason is hitting it right on the nose, I think that the reason that children including myself(yes I still whach sesame street, with my students)(I am an TA at a preschool)emulate these characters is becasue they are nothing like them, they are the fantasy that comes out of a child imagination, it’s somthing they can look up to and know that being silly make you the indevidual that you are. I like some of these children shows becasue when I was there age (god that line is sureal) I not only had my parents to help find out what I wanted to do and be in my life but also figuring out how to create my own personality and what is important for me to do in my life, I created my own idividuality from watching these show on TV. Nobody gives children enough credit, they are smarter then we might think, they take in everything, and it’s not always what a silly blue monster says or does, it’s what a parent says or does to create’s the child that just might turn out to be eather a child with no imagination, no individuality, and no life, or the next president of the united sates.
So using the phrase that makes sense without using a college mindset dictionary of big words,
“WORD”