It’s Not Easy Bein’ Brown: Rita Moreno, Lena Horne and The Muppet Show (original) (raw)
David Livingstone Sunny Day Everythings A Ok The Radical Vision of Sesame Street Abstract
Voices of Diversity, 2024
Launched on Public Television in 1969, Sesame Street is most known for its remarkable puppets (Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, etc.), later known as muppets, created by the legendary puppeteer Jim Henson. These muppets were often larger-than-life, especially in the case of Big Bird, and have become part of the imagination of generations of Americans, and not only. A number of new muppets have been added over the years, some remaining as stalwarts, while others only for a certain period of time. I will argue, among other things, that the eccentric muppets normalized alternative lifestyles, behaviour, body sizes, racial tolerance, different skin colours and diversity. It was also revolutionary, however, for its focus on intercity minority children and inclusion of a diverse range of crew members (women, African-Americans, Latinos, disabled people, LGBT, among others). The regular inclusion of guest celebrities (the list is extensive to say the least) also provided not only entertainment, but progressive ideas concerning race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. This paper will explore the cultural significance of this awardwinning and groundbreaking television classic, which celebrated eccentricity, creativity, tolerance and diversity.
Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 2021
Through the abundant use of the bawdy, humorous songs of British music hall, The Muppet Show delivered a potent critique of constructed notions of a protectionist childhood. Paradoxically perhaps, the music hall songs, carnivalesque comedy and frequent depictions of sex, sexuality, and violence also did much to construct The Muppet Show’s intended “family” audience while simultaneously providing a direct challenge to its normative sanguinuptial (blood and marriage) construction. This intergenerational family audience is crucial to the child’s interpretation of The Muppet Show’s complex and contentious content - subject matter that is rarely included in media made for a solely child audience. While the musical sketches open up an interpretive space for the child to encounter, resist, and subvert the range of fluid identities hinted at onscreen, the process is simultaneously constricted by the musical-visual texts themselves and by The Muppet Show’s family-reception context. As such, this case study reveals the inherent tensions of targeting a family audience through music and television.
Bridging the gaps? Sesame Street, 'race' and educational disadvantage
2019
Sesame Street is the longest-running children’s television show of all time: it has become almost a sacred institution, which is guaranteed to generate a warm, nostalgic glow. Yet fifty years on, it’s important to recall some of the controversy that surrounded its early days. In this essay, drawing on original archival research, I go back to the origins of Sesame Street and the Children’s Television Workshop, the non-profit organization that created it. The programme was targeted at preschool children in general, but particularly at disadvantaged, inner-city children – and, at least initially, at African-American children specifically. It did this in two main ways: firstly, through its representation of inner-city life, and of racial diversity; and secondly, through attempting to raise the educational achievement of black children in particular. In exploring these two issues, I show that this was a difficult – and at times, quite confused and contradictory – endeavour. This essay is part of a larger project, Growing Up Modern: Childhood, Youth and Popular Culture Since 1945. More information about the project, and illustrated versions of all the essays can be found at: https://davidbuckingham.net/growing-up-modern/.
Sophie Tucker, Racial Hybridity and Interracial Relations in American Vaudeville
Theatre Research International
This article discusses Sophie Tucker's racialized performance in the context of early twentieth-century American vaudeville and black–Jewish interracial relations. Tucker's vaudeville musical acts involved mixed racial referents: ‘black-style’ music and dance, Jewish themes, Yiddish language and the collaboration of both African American and Jewish artists. I show how these racial combinations were a studied tactic to succeed in white vaudeville, a corporate entertainment industry that capitalized on racialized images and fast changes in characters. From historical records it is clear that Tucker's black signifiers also fostered connections with the African American artists who inspired her work or were employed by her. How these interracial relations contended with Tucker's brand of racialized performance is the focus of the latter part of the article. Here I analyse Tucker's autobiography as a performative act, in order to reveal a reparative effort toward some...
The Shifting Ideologies of 'Sesame Street'
My dissertation will be exploring the ideological shifts present throughout Sesame Street since its conception in 1969 to the present day. Stemming from my academic interest in the relationship between ideology and media, I decided to explore which ideologies are represented in Sesame Street and whether they are consistent or change over time. Due to the fact that this project explores over forty years of broadcast history, through my analysis I have identified two broad distinctions in Sesame Street's lifespan. Under a public service model, the first era of Sesame Street enveloped a counter culture ideology of collectivity and community values. Since 1985, the new era of Sesame Street sought to reflect and reinforce the dominant ideology and socio-economic model of neoliberalism. In order to comprehensively and objectively approach this project, the paper firstly examines which research methods I will apply, the reasons for them, and the limitations they may have on my research project. Secondly, the Literature Review will cover all the relevant critical theories needed to approach my analysis. This section explores Sesame Street's history, the relationship between media and children, Western ideologies, and the development of American politics in relation to such ideologies. My Content and Analysis will use the theories discussed in the Literature Review and apply them to the content of Sesame Street. Using textual, semiotic, and visual analysis, my study argues that the program has two ideological eras. From 1969 until 1984, the content and style of Sesame Street reproduced values and beliefs of love, equality, and community, rooted in the ideology of the counter culture. From 1985 onwards, the ideology shifted to neoliberalism, promoting capitalist ideals of consumerism and individuality.
Brownface Minstrelsy: ‘‘Jose´ Jime´nez,’’ the Civil Rights Movement, and the legacy of racist comedy
Abstract This study examines US comedian Bill Dana, of Hungarian-Jewish descent, and his Latino minstrel character, ‘‘Jose´ Jime´nez,’’ during the civil rights period. By situating Dana and Jime´nez within the social and political context of Latinos in the US during the 1960s, I argue Dana’s comedy continued the tradition of racial ridicule at a time when blackface minstrelsy was increasingly unpopular: a result of contestation by African American civil rights groups. Analyzing primary sources (oral histories, news articles, and audio/visual media), I examine the initial popularity of Jose´ Jime´nez in the early 1960s, the mechanisms used to ridicule Latinos, the role of media in constructing narratives of non-racism and acceptance by Latinos, and the resulting contestation of the character by Chicano/ Latino media activists and civil rights organizations. I conclude that public racial ridicule of Latinos has not been constrained as some have suggested, but that it has changed since the civil rights era.
The lovers and dreamers go corporate : re-authoring Jim Henson’s Muppets under Disney
2011
To my parents, who taught their children to be imaginative and hard working, and who introduced me to Jim Henson's work. v Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor and reader, Thomas G. Schatz and Mary Celeste Kearney, for their invaluable role in facilitating my research and writing process. Their knowledge and experience has inspired me to push myself beyond my own expectations. I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends, especially Charlotte Howell, who for the last 18 months kept me up to date on all Muppet-related news on the Web.
2019
Peruvian mass media has failed in addressing and representing the cultural and ethnic diversity of its country, as the presence and representation of ethnic minorities (indigenous and Afro-Peruvian) are almost exclusively reduced to the reproduction of stereotypes in comedy shows, in which they are often racialized and the target of offenses directly related with their ethnic identities. The analysis will focus on the figure of El Negro Mama, a very popular character in Peruvian television thought to be a portrait of the Afro-Peruvian population. Through the use of textual analysis, the paper will explore of this character in order to determine the performativity of blackness in national television and the use of racist discourses in the national media and their direct relation with the reproduction of stereotypes and racist language. The research, then, seeks to provide an analysis of the transformation of the discourses that this character produced to show the variations of the racist discourse affecting this ethnic group and the transformation of the portrayals and interactions of the character when publicly rejected by the Afro-Peruvian civil society