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Oh, my god. Scott Lynch gives us a brilliant summation of an excellent classic Sesame Street special: Against Big Bird, The Gods Themselves Contend In Vain.
My old library had a battered VHS copy of Don’t Eat The Pictures back in the day, and I swear we checked that shit out ALL THE TIME. It was awesome: as Lynch points out, we get to watch Big Bird aid a soul on its way to the afterlife and plead its case to the gods,* a thing that made complete sense to me at the time because OF COURSE Big Bird will defy the gods for you.** But he failed to mention the part where Cookie Monster teaches us that you should enjoy art with your eyes, by which I mean his shoulder angels have to admonish him to refrain from eating not only the priceless works of art in the museum, but also the MUMMIES.*** Yes, Cookie Monster has a crisis of conscience about whether he should eat the dried corpses of Ancient Egyptian pharaohs.
Tell me, when does Dora the Explorer ever deal with the real issues like this?
*Or, in small child terms, help a little kid find his parents again. These are the important things.
**Incidentally, I would like to submit that Carroll Spinney is one of the most badass actors on TV. Dude has spent forty goddamn years acting virtually blind inside a giant pressure cooker, he can motherfuckin' ROLLER SKATE while wearing giant three-toed foam feet, and somehow he manages to hide that Big Bird has a nonfunctioning right arm pretty effectively--took me years to notice. Also, he himself probably has a right arm like a California redwood. Or maybe an anaconda.
***Actual line from title song: “Mummy look yummy, but not for tummy!”
My old library had a battered VHS copy of Don’t Eat The Pictures back in the day, and I swear we checked that shit out ALL THE TIME. It was awesome: as Lynch points out, we get to watch Big Bird aid a soul on its way to the afterlife and plead its case to the gods,* a thing that made complete sense to me at the time because OF COURSE Big Bird will defy the gods for you.** But he failed to mention the part where Cookie Monster teaches us that you should enjoy art with your eyes, by which I mean his shoulder angels have to admonish him to refrain from eating not only the priceless works of art in the museum, but also the MUMMIES.*** Yes, Cookie Monster has a crisis of conscience about whether he should eat the dried corpses of Ancient Egyptian pharaohs.
Tell me, when does Dora the Explorer ever deal with the real issues like this?
*Or, in small child terms, help a little kid find his parents again. These are the important things.
**Incidentally, I would like to submit that Carroll Spinney is one of the most badass actors on TV. Dude has spent forty goddamn years acting virtually blind inside a giant pressure cooker, he can motherfuckin' ROLLER SKATE while wearing giant three-toed foam feet, and somehow he manages to hide that Big Bird has a nonfunctioning right arm pretty effectively--took me years to notice. Also, he himself probably has a right arm like a California redwood. Or maybe an anaconda.
***Actual line from title song: “Mummy look yummy, but not for tummy!”
