Go behind the scenes at your own risk. For much of its now middle-aged target audience, Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street will raise the fraught prospect of illusion-shattering scandals. Relax. The awful truth of this poignant documentary is solely one of sweet-natured people pursuing noble ends. (Though you will have to navigate the wobble to reality caused by footage of actor Caroll Spinney in only the lower half of his Big Bird costume.) Director Marilyn Agrelo spotlights the early years of the beloved show. The rhyme with the present is implicit but unavoidable. We begin in 1969 — a time of political division, with “everyone screaming at everyone else” and widespread anxiety about children glued to screens.
For all the nostalgia value to Gen X latchkey kids made misty by Oscar the Grouch, the film also reveals itself as a record of a grand, unlikely experiment. Cooked up to counter the thickly commercial landscape of American children’s TV, the equation added pedagogy to mass entertainment to create a boisterous, urban answer to the more sedate Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood. The result is now an institution but was a giant leap in the dark at the time — Jim Henson’s Muppets side by side with real children, infectious jingles written not to sell cereal but introduce the number 10 or letter Y.
The many fathers and mothers of the success that followed are celebrated, including but not limited to Henson (arriving as a business-savvy hipster), producer Joan Ganz Cooney, larger-than-life composer Joe Raposo and ursine writer-director Jon Stone. Take the film in part as a masterclass in creative practice. First assemble a team of highly driven one-offs, then leave them to meet the weird challenge of their brief.
But a collective ethos sprang up too — a refusal to talk down to young viewers. Agrelo is fittingly upfront about the show’s social mission. Cue another layer of poignancy. The film delivers no end of joy. It also can’t help but invite us to imagine the response in our present culture war to a smash hit launched with government funds, tailored to represent inner-city black children. Hard too, with everyone’s kids in the hands of TikTok, not to ask in which direction they might now find a place of friendly neighbours, where everything is A-OK.
★★★★☆
On digital platforms in the UK from January 31 and in the US now
The story of Sesame Street is brought to you by the documentary Street Gang
Pinoy Variant