“Muppet Diplomacy”

Brian Balogh: Today on the show, in celebration of Sesame Street’s 50th Anniversary, we’re walking down memory lane and bringing you a history of America’s most beloved children’s show.

Ed Ayers: We’ll learn how the show has been successfully exported all over the world.

Brian Balogh: We’ll find out how a Sesame Street writer advocated for disability representation throughout her 45 years on the show.

Joanne Freeman: And you’ll hear from a special furry friend.

Joanne Freeman: Sesame Street might be one of the most famous streets in the United States, but it turns out there were and in some cases still are international versions of Sesame Street all across the world. I’m talking about Russian versions of Sesame Street, German versions of Sesame Street, Sesame Street in Northern Island, Canada, South Africa and the Middle East. But these versions aren’t the same thing you would see in the United States. In all cases, they’re tailor made to reflect the local concerns and issues of children.

Joanne Freeman: For 20 years, Charlotte Cole helped develop international programming for Sesame Workshop. I got in touch with her recently to find out what it was like developing Muppet characters that connected with kids all over the world. But I started our conversation by asking Charlotte to explain the international model of Sesame Street and how it developed in the days before she joined the project in 1994.

Charlotte Cole: What evolved in the ’70s very early on was this co-production model where initially about 50% of the content was from Sesame Street in the United States and then another 50% was produced locally. In the German show, which has been on for years, and years and years, you’d see Bert and Ernie and those segments were dubbed into German, but kids living in Germany really thought of Bert and Ernie as German. So much so that there were even postage stamps in some of these countries there were … Yeah. But the difference when I came was that there were some opportunities to really look at how you could use Sesame Street to promote international development aims.

Joanne Freeman: I’m assuming then that would be a combination of American producers and educators, working with producers and educators in whatever, Russia or South Africa, and coming up with what that message ought to be, or is that really mostly coming from the country where the show is going to be?

Charlotte Cole: It was a collaboration that was just the most … Some of the most exciting elements about working on these programs was this opportunity to be working with these amazing minds all over the world. The Sesame Workshop model, which was used and is still used today in the United States was innovative in that it brought together researchers, educators to work over the course of an entire project with the producers.

Charlotte Cole: Then in the international realm, you layer in that whole element of bringing in educators from whatever region you’re working in, whatever country. They’re working with researchers there and the production team, and then collaborating with experts at Sesame, and so it became this uber collaboration.

Joanne Freeman: Let’s talk about an example of that, just so people can get a sense of that. Maybe talk about working on the Israeli and Palestinian version. How did that work, what messages were you developing together, and then what did the outcome look like?

Charlotte Cole: With that production, we began first by having meetings that were separate with Israelis and Palestinians, and then there’s also a group of Palestinian/Israeli citizens who were Arab citizens of Israel. I had a meeting with experts from those three groups, and then having a separate time to really have them articulate what did they want the program to bring their children and what did they want their kids to learn. Then we had an opportunity to bring people together in a seminar that was fascinating.

Charlotte Cole: There were people that joined who had never been in the room with somebody from the other group. They really talked about what should kids know and what should they learn. What’s amazing, I think, in terms of Sesame Street and why we were able to work in these different realms was for all of the discourse that might be negative across group divides, everybody wants a brighter future for their children.

Charlotte Cole: Children become a huge unifier. You could get people to talk about their kids, and talk about what they wanted for their kids, and even be a much more playful engagement just because everybody was focused on kids. That particular project, it had its ups and downs in accordance with what was happening politically, and it morphed into different things. But the essential core was to 1) it had a basic curriculum that was very much like the curriculum here in the United States of literacy, numeracy, basic social skills, but it was also to help introduce Palestinian children to Israelis and Israelis children to Palestinians.

Joanne Freeman: Now, I understand that particular show, as you put it, morphed over the years explicitly because of the politics of the situation, particularly having to do with the idea of one street. Is that true?

Charlotte Cole: Well, there had been a program in Israeli for a long time that was quite beloved that was a Sesame Street program. That was produced by Israeli Educational Television. This was an extension of that in many ways at the very beginning. But the innovation was that there was a Israeli street and there was a Palestinian street.

Charlotte Cole: Really what evolved was basically two different shows. Then there was some crossover between the characters where Israeli characters would come to the Palestinian program, and vice versa. But there were distinct differences between the end products for a lot of reasons. Well 1) the Palestinian program was in Arabic and the Israeli was in Hebrew. Then it did have some Arabic elements to it.

Joanne Freeman: Is there a character, or a segment, or something that really stands out to you from the Israeli/Palestinian version of Sesame Street that really captures what that was all about?

Charlotte Cole: Well, let’s see. In terms of characters, each of the Israelis had their cast and the Palestinians had their cast. Then they had other characters that would talk to each other, like there’s a beautiful exchange between these two little Muppets that are just these happy-go-lucky Muppets that are exchanging, and at one point they’re realizing one speaks Hebrew and the other speaks Arabic, and they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to communicate.

Charlotte Cole: In the end, they realize that they share a love of falafel. So they just started echo back to each other, “Falafel, falafel, falafel.” The falafel becomes their shared word and their shared love. It’s this idea of finding your common humanity.

Joanne Freeman: Let me shift from the Israeli/Palestinian version that we have been talking about, to another one of these international Sesame Street editions that had educational and then some kind of deeper message to it. That’s South Africa. I understand that you helped develop a character named Kami for the South African version.

Charlotte Cole: Yes. This was really wonderful. Early on, Sesame had visited South Africa. It was a little bit before I arrived, they were invited to come and talk to people, and see if it would be possible to do a Sesame co-production there. The company was very interested, but had decided they wanted to wait until after apartheid.

Charlotte Cole: Once apartheid ended, they decided to do a program that would support South Africa’s new curriculum. This Sesame piece was going to support that. But after the program had been on for a year, the program’s called Takalani Sesame, there was, and this was true from the very beginning, the educators in South Africa really felt that any educational program in South Africa needs to address HIV and AIDS.

Charlotte Cole: At the time, there was a wonderful Minister of Education. His name was Kader Asmal. He had seen Sesame Street and he was very familiar with it. He knew its potential. He also was deeply concerned about the situation of HIV and AIDS in South Africa. I think he felt it was a responsibility of the Ministry of Education to be educating the population about the issues of HIV and AIDS. He also believed in starting early. This was a country where one in nine South Africans was affected by the disease, and so it was impacting them on a huge level. He felt very strongly that even young kids can even learn about this.

Charlotte Cole: It was really his drive that set us up. We began by just looking at what should young kids know and we did formative testing to find out what do kids already know. What we found out was the kids, they associated HIV and AIDS with a negative valence. They knew it was something bad, but they didn’t know what it was. They didn’t know it was a disease.

Charlotte Cole: Really what emerged was there was such a huge culture of silence around HIV and AIDS, and what people felt was that we need to give kids a lexicon for talking about HIV and AIDS, kids and their parents. The result of that was the development of this character, Kami, whose name means hope. Every aspect of her was deliberate.

Charlotte Cole: First of all, she’s a more humanoid looking Muppet. The reason for that was that it’s a human disease. They didn’t want there to be confusion with a more animal like character. She’s female because of the disproportionate number of women who are infected. All the different elements of her personality and who she was were debated by these educators, and working with the creative staff. She became this vehicle for helping kids learn about HIV and AIDS. It really became a wonderful thing.

Charlotte Cole: What’s interesting is the feedback that we got from parents, from kids. It really worked. It was a way for people to talk about it. She became a champion for children, for UNICEF. She got an official, I don’t know, it wasn’t exactly Ambassador title because I don’t think you can be an ambassador if you’re a Muppet, but she was as close as you can be.

Kami: Mr. President. I have a very important question for you. What does our former Mr. President do?

Bill Clinton: Well, Kami. One of the things I do is talk to people about things that are important to them, about things that will make a difference in their lives.

Kami: Oh, yes. Well I do that also. I like to talk to people about my school, and my friends, and my favorite things. Oh, and I also talk to them about HIV and AIDS.

Bill Clinton: Me too, Kami.

Joanne Freeman: Now, actually talking about whether a puppet can be an ambassador or not. I understand that you’ve used the term Muppet diplomacy before in talking about this work. What actually do you mean by that?

Charlotte Cole: To me, Muppets are playful, they are endearing to people. I’ve seen people be in meetings and will have little plush toys sitting on the table. When things, the discussions get difficult, people will start fiddling around with these plush toys. A certain amount melts. I think that Muppet diplomacy is really about getting at that common humanity that we share and the Muppets just do that.

Joanne Freeman: Charlotte Cole is the Executive Director and co-founder of Blue Butterfly Collaborative, which supports locally made educational programming in low income countries. For 20 years, she was Senior Vice President of Global Education at Sesame Workshop. Thanks to UNICEF for the audio you just heard of Kami with, if you couldn’t tell, Former President Bill Clinton.