Productive Parody on Sesam e Street
In viewing numerous Sesame Street parody segments, I found that these parodies
function in a number of different ways, including, but not limited to, teaching children to count,
add, subtract, recite the alphabet, recognize body parts, and even be conscientious about their
hygiene habits. These short video segments are content-driven and generally humorous and
light-hearted in nature. While I do argume that Sesame Street provides us with great examples
of productive parody, I cannot ignore the fact that the show is also meant to entertain;
therefore, not all parody segments are productive in the sense of directly providing content
meant to educate, but I have yet to find any aspect of these segments (or the show itself) that
fails to entertain. Thus, even if a parody piece is not clearly indicative of having embedded a
particular literacy lesson for children, its secondary function is to parody simply for
entertainment purposes; though, examples of “entertainment only” parodies on Sesame Street
are the exception and not the rule.
Sesame Street’s Monsterpiece Theater, hosted by Cookie Monster as Alistair Cook ie, is
a parody of PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre, whose original show host was British personality
Alistair Cooke. Monsterpiece mimics the format of Masterpiece Theater, not only in its host
persona, but also in its introduction and broadcast of a variety of classic works. Sesame Street
uses the platform of Monsterpiece Theater as fertile ground by which to parody a number of
classic and popular works in film, television, literature and theatre. Generally, each
Monsterpiece segment begins with an introduction by Alistair Cookie, which is then followed by
a parody sketch and subsequently ends with Cookie’s closing remarks and possible mention
regarding a future episode. Monsterpiece Theater is itself a parody of a classic British
television series and the sketches shown within the segment are yet another parody, which in
turn makes this popular Sesame Street segment function as a dual parody or a parody within a
parody.
I viewed a total of fifteen Monsterpiece episodes that parodied four films, two television
shows, three plays, four musicals and two books. There are many more episodes, but I will
limit discussion to those that I viewed. Only two episodes (i.e., “Waiting for Elmo” and “Twin
Beaks”) out of the fifteen were primarily entertainment for adults, rather than education for
children. Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and David Lynch surrealist TV drama Twin
Peaks, are somewhat difficult texts to comprehend and Sesame Street’s parody of these works
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