The Roadmap to Sesame Street

Here's an interesting read for you guys. It's about the trouble and tribulations of creating a Sesame Street for the Middle East that reflects the changing political cliamte and the ongoing peace process. Who would have thought that the Muppets would have been so political?

An Israeli boy out riding his bicycle takes a wrong turn, gets a flat tire and winds up stuck in a Palestinian neighborhood. There, behind a wall, he spots . . . a couple of shaggy Muppets.

Happily, this is Middle Eastern "Sesame Street," where Jews and Arabs are on friendly terms even though they live on separate streets. So the Palestinian Muppets get to work replacing the tire. Stereotypes are shattered, everyone smiles and all ends well.

Or does it?

"When we interviewed Palestinian preschool teachers, they were angry about the segment," said Cairo Arafat, an expert on preschool education here. "They said, 'The Israelis have taken everything from us--our homes, our land--and now we're giving them a bicycle wheel?' "
...
"We asked ourselves, are we producing 'Mission Impossible' or 'Sesame Street'?" said Lewis Bernstein of Children's Television Workshop in New York, project director for the Israeli-Palestinian co-production.

Classified under: politics,television