original audience were adults (i.e., the play Much Ado About Nothing). Parody can alter the
context in which the original content was re-created and subsequently interpreted, and this reappropriation should serve a purpose, even if it is comedic relief.
Sesam e Street as Postmodern Pastiche
One of the qualities that made Sesame Street a pioneer in educational television was
the role research played in designing the show. While part of the research was dedicated to
creating specific lesson plans for each episode, part of it was also dedicated to the format in
which these lessons would be shown to children. Precisely because Sesame Street was
created to reach a wider audience via television, both researchers and producers, needed to
make note of how this information would be presented. During the show’s initial design stages,
research indicated that limited attention spans of preschoolers would present a challenge.
According to Gerald Lesser, one of the show’s original chief advisors, Sesame Street
championed this challenge by using “many short segments . . . and a variety of styles and
techniques (mixing animation, puppets, live-action films, pixilation and any other visual devices
the producers could invent)" (76). In order to help “sustain attention or retrieve it when it is
lost,” Sesame Street still combines fantasy and reality by mixing “four main ingredients:
puppets; the cast of live adults and children on the set; animation and pixilation; and live action
films” (Lesser 129).
Upon incorporating and mixing together these stylistic elements and technological
advancements, Sesame Street came to function as a form of pastiche and subsequently
redefined educational television. Sesame Street did not create the medium of television, nor
did it create the various aesthetic styles it incorporated within the show. What Sesame Street
did do however, was to change the content and context in which these various elements
functioned. For example, Sesame Street did not create animation in and of itself, but reappropriated its contents (to teach children the alphabet), and changed its context (to become
part of the educational process). The show borrowed heavily from previously established
technologies and styles, but it used these borrowed elements to produce a brand new format
for children’s television. By using the term “borrowed heavily” I am not in any way implying that
Sesame Street directly imitated previous televisual styles; on the contrary, it used these styles
to completely change the context in which they originally functioned.
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