Elmo has moved into a brownstone on the corner of the road. Abby is starting an urban garden. In addition to his standard trash can, Oscar will be popping out of recycling bins and composting receptacles.
After 45 years, the street that’s sweet is being gentrified.
“Sesame Street” is changing its set, upgrading each character’s homes to make them more closely resemble what historic New York neighborhoods look like today.
This experience will most likely be very jarring for children. Vice UK spoke to Dr. Eugene Beresin, executive director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, about how changes to a familiar landscape can upset growing minds.
“Most younger children, most children in general, really like consistency,” Beresin said to Vice UK. “The reason you read ‘Goodnight Moon’ over and over again, or the reason you watch the same episode of ‘Sesame Street’ over and over again is because they really thrive on familiarity.”
Beresin goes on to urge parents to watch their children as they watch television and tells them to turn off the monitor if their child becomes visibly upset.
What is happening on “Sesame Street” is the equivalent of what millennials endured when “Blue’s Clues” sent Steve off to college and brought in Joe. Their young worlds are being changed in irreparable ways, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
“Sesame Street” says these changes are being made to bring more of a community feeling to the street. But community always has been one of the show’s main themes. Sesame Street is a place where kids learn to share with one another, to get along with the people around them and always to engage the angry, homeless person in the neighborhood in conversations about morals.
This change is about more than simply building a more cohesive set. It’s about giving children a dose of reality.
Children growing up in urban areas have watched their neighborhoods change around them. It only makes sense that they would identify with a street looking completely redone at the start of a new season.
Across this country, the general dirt and grime of and an American city has been scrubbed fresh, to entice new business owners into adding Cuban-fusion restaurants to areas previously occupied by bodegas.
For children who have yet to witness an inner city takeover, this change will serve as a warning. Changes come to every corner of the country, and it’s not just the neighborhoods that are evolving.
The comfort the Street and its familiar faces once brought children each day will be gone overnight. Instead, they will see all of their old friends in an alien setting, navigating the world as if nothing has changed. Even though children can clearly see that everything is different, their friends are walking around and talking to each other as if nothing has changed.
Now, when the famous question is raised — “Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?” — kids may not have an answer. This change will serve as their introduction to having familiar spaces become isolating, and teach them that there’s nothing they can do to put thing back the way they once were.
However, this change may have some positive effects on its viewer base. Maybe this experience will prepare children for the inevitable changes they will face later in life.
Thanks to this change, children might escape the pitfalls of nostalgia culture that plague millennials. They might learn to accept changes, to let things go when the time comes and to evolve as the world around them does.
Our generation somehow missed these lessons and has remained determined to cling to the past. Though this change to the iconic Street may upset children at the moment, hopefully it allows younger generation to learn how to move on.
Logan Anderson is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Houston, Texas. You can reach her on Twitter @LoganD_Anderson.