CBR18 Bingo – Middle: Between 1st world problems and 3rd world problems, there is Sesame Street. I mean, there are 2nd world problems. This book is about Russia’s problems after the collapse of the 2nd world and Sesame Street, with the author in the middle of the storm.
Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia was written a few years ago as Natasha Lance Rogoff’s memoir.
The Soviet Union ended in 1991. Sesame Street was already global, so it was decided that Russia and other former Soviet countries would be next.
Natasha had done a documentary about the Russian economy for PBS, which was good enough for those seeking a producer. She accepted the job after her sensible sister pointed out that Natasha had no knowledge or experience with children or children’s education, and that this project would cross with her optimal pregnancy era. She never even watched Sesame Street as a child.
Natasha may not know children or Sesame Street, but at least she knew Russia… or did she? No. No one knew Russia anymore. Communism was over and everyone was trying to figure out what was left in its place.
In Russia, Natasha and Ulitsa Sezam struggled to get funding (no dirty money, no mafia money, no laundered money, no car bombs…). A disgusted and disdainful staff said Russians don’t need to be taught puppetry, and they especially don’t need to be told how to write or raise their children. AK-47 armed soldiers shut down their office for whatever reason, while also looting the office for their children (this was the Tickle Me Elmo era). They were told Russians wouldn’t get The Three Little Pigs because it implied home ownership and that Oscar the Grouch would have been jailed for dissidence. He was also unsanitary. People were murdered.
Natasha found a producer whose credentials include being very big, a prosecutor, race car driver, and Japanese metal trader. Her musician was afraid of contemporary music. Writers turned in skits with
… a sad furry Muppet slowly mopping a linoleum floor and the letter D comes up on the screen as a voice narrates: “D for Depressia.”
Russian Sesame Street seemed hopeless and useless for anything but parody. But they made it. That isn’t a spoiler – it’s right in the title.
