Jan 2, 2020

"Sesame Street" crack Monster exemplifies the enduring impact of animation on the audience

As we begin a new year (and a new decade), animators (especially those who work in the field of children's animation) will find that the work they create is an example of its impact on audiences, thanks to this series of public radio show Studio360, which explored subcultures based on shared childhood fears in the Sesame Street segment. 2019 Ep

For decades, numerous Gen Xers from multiple countries have longed to find out if the old Sesame Street comics that scared them in the mid-70s actually existed or were the product of mass psychosis. But it wasn't until someone eagerly searched it that the mystery behind that clip became even weirder.

"Cracks" (or "The Cracks Monster", where people online said they didn't know the actual title) was one of many animated shorts played out among the live-action segments of Sesame Street. It shows a young girl who discovers the shape of an animal in a crack in her bedroom wall and encounters a terrifying crack master, an angry face that destroys itself from pure anger.

During the broadcast, host Kurt Andersen has been obsessed with short stories since childhood and does not know what "Crack" was trying to instill in a young audience, the Boston Globe reported. He also interviewed John Almond, an actor from Israel. "I think the message they were trying to convey is that 'you're not mean or your face might crumble'."

The show is about Almond's long-lost Chestnut, which is absolutely worth listening to, as it plays like an unsettling mystery. Even more interesting is the extent to which this unnamed animated work had at the time due to its influence on such a large number of young children. This probably not only narrates the power of public television, especially in the past, when educational or child・friendly entertainment options were not as wide as today.

In his quest for answers, Andersen also chatted with Sesame Street executive producer Ben Lehmann. It will be.He offers his theory as to why short could maliciously fall out of rotation. He believes it may have been a reaction to the emergence of crack cocaine as an epidemic or to the sight of a house with a pronounced crack that can be seen as insensitive to poor people living in precarious conditions. They are both solid hypotheses.

Above all, "crack" shows the cognitive effects that an animated medium can have on an audience. The work that animators create can stay with people for a lifetime, something that workers in a few other lines of work can insist on. Animators exert great power in shaping cultural conversations, and recognizing the strength of the medium as a communication tool is the first step to making the most of animation.