WI Poorly Handling Hooper's Death Cancels Sesame Street

One of the most memorable points in the history of the famed PBS educational show Sesame Street had to be the death of Mr. Hooper and the actor who portrayed him, Will Lee. Lee died of a heart attack on Dec. 7, 1982 just after taping segments for Sesame Street as well as appearing in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade that year.

The producers of Sesame Street were very gutsy in their decision to realistically deal with Mr. Hooper's death. They actually debated continuing to have the character but have a different actor play him just like with Dick Sargent & Dick York with Bewitched. They even could have taken the easy way out by saying Mr. Hooper retired and moved away to Florida. But they didn't - after consulting many experts on how to discuss & deal with death, Norman Stiles wrote a powerful script that made for a very memorable episode of Sesame Street. Airing on Thanksgiving Day in 1983, Big Bird and the cast of Sesame Street dealt with the death of Mr. Hooper. The show was praised and still is for handling death so well for children.

Now here comes the $64,000 question - what if Mr. Hooper's death was not handled well on Sesame Street? Let's say the POD involves a different writer making the final script, not enough research being done or just a bad job done by Norman Stiles.

Would a poorly handled episode about Mr. Hooper's death have led to Sesame Street's demise? Could angry parents of traumatized/confused children bombarding PBS with hate mail and nasty phone calls could have led to PBS executives, media watchdogs or even the federal government pulling the plug on Sesame Street? Thoughts?
 
The only way I can think of for this to happen is Muppet Hooper. On the surface it seems perfect. No awkward death talk, and the status quo remains. But in practice millions of children have nightmares about their loved ones becoming felt and complaints mount. Sesame Street wouldn't have to be pulled, the ratings would do it for them.
 
I'd have a much tougher time soothing my son; that's for damn sure. No Sesame Street, no Elmo. Elmo doesn't want to not exist.

Indeed. In OTL, the experts consulted made it clear to the Sesame Street producers not to say things like "Mr. Hooper was very sick" or "Mr. Hooper died at the hospital". That might have made children terrified of death if they got sick, went to a hospital or even made a visit to a doctor, nurse, dentist, etc. Had one of the characters during the scene even made a passing comment along these lines - i.e. "Mr. Hooper was sick; it was just his time to go" - that very well could have caused a huge backlash.
 
If they handled it wrong, and caused any amount of distress among younger viewers, I'd speculate that it could have a negative impact on Sesame Street's relationship with its political paymasters. I could imagine the family-values crowd and libertarians(such as they are) saying "See? This is what happens when government gets mixed up in things that should be the responsibility of parents", and use it against PBS when its funding comes up for review.

Might not be QUITE the equivalent of Mapplethorpe or Piss Christ, but with parents all across the country recalling the trauma inflicted upon their kids, probably not something to write off as a triviality either.
 
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For the record, Sesame Street did garner a certain share of right-wing detractors over the years. From National Review...

Rare is the op-ed page or Sunday supplement that hasn't run a jokey anti-Barney piece--a wry lament, according to the requirements of the genre, by a baby-boom parent appalled at Barney's uplift, and at his child's mesmerized response. The articles are always meant to be funny and usually aren't--being, instead, strained exercises in the irony that is my generation's gift to popular culture. "So saccharine it can send adults into hypoglycemic shock" the Washington Post.."Ugly and sappy" the New York Times. So go the blurbs. Even the creators of Sesame Street criticize their PBS colleague, for Barney's high sugar content.

And the show is indeed wholesome-wholesome without relief. Unlike Sesame Street, set in a scene of urban decay, Barney entertains from a suburban schoolyard, swept clean of graffiti and trash. None of Barney's friends lives in a garbage can, and none grunts hip-hop. The pace is slow and lingering, a technique at odds with Sesame Street's barrage of spastic, quick-cut graphics that prep the kids for the countless hours of MTV awaiting them in adolescence. And instead of Sesame Street's multicultural insinuations, Barney's message revolves around the importance of brushing teeth, exercising, and even--this is how deep it goes-chewing with one's mouth closed.

Arguably, the difference between Sesame Street and Barney might be one of age-group, rather than a simple urban/suburban dichotomy. A kid living in even the toniest subdivision, after reaching a certain age, is unlikely to be impressed by a kids' show totally devoid of any reference to current musical trends or gritty street life.

(That article is from the NR originally, but I don't know anything about the site archiving it at the link)
 
More of the political background to Sesame Street...

In the mid-1960s, as one of his grand social initiatives, Lyndon B. Johnson took up the cause of National Educational Television (later known as the Public Broadcasting Service), a lackluster confederation of chalk-dusted channels. Like the show she developed for PBS that would define the network, Cooney was steeped in the ideals of Johnson’s Great Society. In New York, while working in publicity for commercial television, she was introduced to William Phillips, co-founder of Partisan Review, the small but vastly influential journal of highbrow leftist opinion. In her spare time, Cooney did publicity for Partisan Review and produced a fund-raiser at Columbia that was attended by Norman Mailer, Mary McCarthy and Lionel Trilling.

Cooney’s ability to transcend the divisions between high and low culture defined her success at “Sesame Street,” which brought Madison Avenue advertisers and game show creators together with New York intellectuals and the education department of Harvard. Lloyd Morrisett, through his connections at the Carnegie Foundation, helped Cooney line up the millions in grants to cover the research, writing and production needed to create a show that could compete with the commercial networks. McGeorge Bundy, one of “the best and the brightest” in the Kennedy administration and by then president of the Ford Foundation, sharpened the show’s political edge by homing in on the children of the urban underclass. “Sesame Street” would be the television equivalent of Head Start, the federal child-welfare program founded by Johnson in the belief, Davis writes, that “the tyranny of America’s poverty cycle could be broken if the emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs of poor children could be met.”

Interesting that it was the Ford Foundation which pushed the show into focusing on an urban demographic. In contrast to the idea that foundations are essentially conservative, seeking to rein in the radical tendencies of the projects they fund.

link
 
The following is a transcript of the scene from the 1983 episode of Sesame Street where Mr. Hooper's death is revealed and the Sesame Street cast handles the loss.
----
Big Bird: [has drawn caricatures of Luis, Susan, Gordon, Bob, Maria, David, Olivia, and Mr. Hooper. After handing out seven of them, he sees that Mr. Hooper is missing] Say, where is he?

Maria: Big Bird, don't you remember we told you? Mr. Hooper died. He's dead.

Big Bird: Oh, yeah, I remember. Well, I'll give it to him when he comes back.

Susan: Big Bird, Mr. Hooper's not coming back.

Big Bird: Well, why not?

Susan: Big Bird, when people die, they don't come back.

Big Bird: Ever?

Susan: [shakes her head] No, never.

Big Bird: Well, why not?

Luis: Well, Big Bird, They're *dead*. They... They can't come back.

Big Bird: Well, he's got to come back. Why, who's going to take care of the store? And who's going to make my birdseed milkshakes, and tell me stories?

David: Big Bird, I?m going to take care of the store. Mr. Hooper - he left it to me. And I'll make you your milkshakes, and we'll all tell you stories, and we'll make sure you're okay.

Susan: Yeah, we'll look after you.

Big Bird: Oh, hmm.

[walks around as he thinks]

Big Bird: Well, it won't be the same.

Bob: You're right, Big Bird. It's... It'll never be the same around here without him. But you know something? We can all be very happy that we had the chance to be with him, and to know him, and to love him a lot when he was here.

Olivia: And Big Bird, we still have our memories of him.

Big Bird: Oh, yeah, Our memories. Right. Why, memories... that's how I drew this picture. From memory. And we can remember him, and remember him, and remember him... as much as we want to.

[looks at Mr. Hooper's picture]

Big Bird: But, I don't like it.

[chokes up]

Big Bird: It makes me sad.

David: We all feel sad, Big Bird.

Big Bird: He's never coming back?

[David and Olivia shake their heads]

Big Bird: Well, I don't understand! You know everything was just fine. Why does it have to be this way? Give me one good reason!

Gordon: Big Bird, It has to be this way... because.

Big Bird: Just because?

Gordon: Just... because.

Big Bird: Oh.

[looks at the picture]

Big Bird: You know, I'm going to miss you, Mr. Looper.

Maria: That's *Hooper*, Big Bird. Hooper.

[she and the others chuckle]

Big Bird: Right.

[as he continues to look at the picture, the others gather around him. Our view pulls back to a wide shot of the set, and the screen slowly fades to black]
----
That was indeed very powerful. And it was all done in one take; the emotions there were so strong and so real that they couldn't have lasted through a second shooting.
 
Making a lot of dumb decisions as to how to address the situation (He died at the doctor's office would be a horrible line to use) along with even possibly making a joke about the situation could and probably would cause the situation to go absolutely nuclear. There's also the thought that if the producers handled it poorly, people could quit which would make things really bad.
 
Maybe they do air the segment as is, but due to some production snafus (maybe the tapes get aired out of order, or they put in older segments in the new episodes), segments with Hooper accidently do air after the announced death, confusing children.
 
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CECBC

Banned
Maria: Big Bird, don't you remember we told you? Mr. Hooper died. He's dead. *gruesome autopsy photo flashes on screen*

We Interrupt this program for technical difficulties.......

That'd do it.
 
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