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In an effort to shine light on the issue of drug addiction, Sesame Street has introduced a new character as the show continues to tackle more mature topics.
Sesame Street is no stranger to stepping back from the sunny, carefree world of kid’s entertainment, often reflecting on the raw reality of life for vulnerable children.
The show, which recently debuted a new initiative providing free resources for community providers on topics such as divorce, trauma and homelessness, aims to raise awareness about these problems to those facing them, and those fortunate enough to never have to.
In the past, Sesame Street has successfully championed diversity and inclusion making it a wonderful alternative to regular, more scaled back children’s television. While a few of the themes it has chosen to explore have been met with backlash, its intent to educate young (and old) audiences on important and less discussed issues seems to be having an impact on young people.
Throughout its 49-year history, the show has taught us about the difficulties of living with various disorders like autism and down syndrome, it has tackled racism head on, normalised breastfeeding, promoted girl’s rights and even featured a character – Alex – whose father was incarcerated.
Alex’s story was part of a one-year pilot project of multimedia resources, videos, and events to help children and their parents understand and cope with having loved ones in prison. In striving to encourage more sensitivity towards it, the show received mixed responses, with some praising its efforts to make people feel more comfortable talking about it and others criticising its normalisation.
This is also the case for Sesame Street’s more recent venture into expanding their repertoire of archetypes to explain complex subject matters to children. In May, they brought Karli to our screens: a 6-and-a-half-year-old green muppet who revealed last week that she’s in foster care because her mother is away with a ‘grown up problem.’
The problem is opioid addiction, another brutal reflection on a social issue that a huge majority of children’s TV and even adult-oriented shows are extremely reluctant to acknowledge, despite the fact that 5.7 million children live in households with a parent suffering from substance abuse.
‘There’s nothing else out there that addresses substance abuse for young, young kids from their perspective,’ says the show’s senior content manager, Kama Einhorn. ‘It’s also a chance to model to adults a way to explain what they’re going through to kids and to offer simple strategies to cope.’
It’s definitely a stark contrast to the anti-drug attitude taken by many children’s shows which, although well-meaning, tends to dismiss the topic entirely without actually approaching the root of the problem.
By ignoring the systematic issues that contribute to drug addiction and implying that there’s an element of moral failing on behalf of the addict, young viewers with struggling parents have nothing to relate to. But Sesame Street seeks to inform people, especially children, that the ‘grown up problems’ their parents are facing are not their fault and have nothing to do with anything they’ve done or said.
