by Jason Adams
Okay so I was maybe the easiest mark in the world, broad and tall as Snuffleupagus, for Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street, Marilyn Agrelo's documentary adaptation of Michael Davis' book about the origins of the PBS puppet upstart turned cultural touchstone. I have, after all, read that book more than once. And for another like maybe most of you reading this my first playmates in this world were all Sesame Street inspired -- I had dolls, I had books and records; heck I could show you right now a photo of me in kindergarten wearing Big-Bird-patterned pants (but then I'd have to kill you)...
Suffice to say I already knew basically every story told here, and had even seen the majority of the footage included to boot -- besides the many documentaries already made about Jim Henson, Carol Spinney, Elmo and all The Muppets, the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens has had a world-class Jim Henson exhibit on display for a few years that I've been to more times than I can count One Beautiful Exhibit, wah ah ah! And yet even with all that information bouncing around boisterously in my felt-loving brain I still wept like a baby watching it all play out again. It'll get me every damn time.
But hey, maybe you're new? Maybe you grew up in another country, where it's my understanding that those poor haggard scrap-of-bread children didn't have the role models of Bert & Ernie there to teach them the hard truths about homosexual relationships. I weep for you as well, little ones. And I'd say that Street Gang makes the case for itself as the seminal telling, the perfect entry point, to the whole heart- and mind-expanding tale -- this is the one that brings it all together. Start right here.
It takes us right back to that original brilliant spark of an idea in the 1960s -- let's stop numbing kids with brainless TV and turn the "boob tube" into a teaching tool -- and shows us how the disparate voices of Joan Ganz Cooney, Lloyd Morrisett, Jon Stone, Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and on, how they all came together in one mad stew of monsteriffic genius, changing not just television but the world itself. However you measure it we're a better world because of Sesame Street and this doc shows us how, but more importantly why, it matters.