There’s discussions on this all over the place - this is what I’ve been posting:
They are fictional characters in a fictional world. That we embrace them so fully into the fabric of our culture and even engage in these seemingly meaningless or nonsensical debates illustrates how much we have integrated these characters into our lives. We hold them as exemplars of ourselves and seek to find ourselves within them and thus present ourselves to the world. And ultimately, with all such things, the arguments are not meaningless nor devoid of purpose; but they do finally rest upon one truth. The question really is: Do they love each other? And the answer is, of course: Yes.
@alahmnat Yeah… the official response suggests a terrible lack of understanding of how children work.
If you’re of an age where you think of the puppets a “puppets” or “objects” rather than “nonhuman persons,” you’re not the target Sesame Street audience. It would be foolish of the show’s creators to not assume that children will assume that every puppet is capable of every human emotion and activity, and I do not believe Bert and Ernie’s creators were that foolish.
I will also say - we all realize that Bert and Ernie were created in a time before homosexuality was publicly acknowledged and accepted. And as with older fictional representations of close male friendships, like Sam and Frodo, a lot of what today we read as vaguely “gay” may not have seemed like that at all back then. Anyone here remember 1969 and how Bert and Ernie seemed back then, in that cultural context? I didn’t really learn what “gay” meant until long after my Sesame Street years, and to me Bert and Ernie (in the late 80s/early 90s) just felt like Felix and Oscar from the Odd Couple did a couple of years later when I watched reruns on Nick at Night.
I also say as someone who, even today, routinely anthropomorphizes lots of things in my life. I feel weird putting stuffed animals in plastic bags and tying them shut. I give appliances and cars names. This Ikea commercial made me tear up.
Well, as a gay dude who was watching Sesame Street back in the 70s onward, I guess I’d say that it was meaningful for me as a kid unsure of himself to see two guys living together, cooking meals, singing songs, fighting, finishing each others’ sentences, and doing the things close friends do. There wasn’t any need to say “they’re boyfriends”. Seeing that guys could be close friends was what was important, not a label.
It’s just the IMDB link which I am surprised existed even. If you can imagine a 1970’s bad porno with muppets that is all you need. I couldn’t be bothered to make it to the end of the film it was that bad.
Yeah, I think it’s legit to say B&E are just friends, but given this list I don’t think “Puppets don’t bang” is a valid defense when so many puppets on the show have romantic partners.
To be honest, I think there’s a lot of homophobia in the world and if the creators want to pull a JK Rowling and slip a gay character in under the radar in kid’s media, I’m OK with that.
True, but there was that one episode (ok, they were in other episodes as well) with the junk collector that helped John and Dargo get through the Flax. And of course the entire episode you think he is a he, until she comes on to Dargo and explains that she is considered very attractive amoung her people…awkward.
Very true. Farscape did a lot with gender identity. But still not the puppets of the show. Which while there were ancillary ones through out the primary two were Rygel and Pilot.
