Bert and Ernie | Photo: Sesame Workshop
It’s a debate that stretches back decades: are Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie gay?
The question is headline news once again this week, after Sesame Workshop issued a denial on the subject following comments made by one of the show’s former writers, Mark Salzman.
Queerty published an illuminating interview with Mark on Monday, in which he claimed ‘without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert and Ernie, they were [gay]. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them.’
He added that he often drew from his own relationship with late documentary filmmaker Arnold Glassman, saying ‘more than one person referred to Arnie and I as “Bert & Ernie”. […] I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple.’
The Emmy-winner never offers a definitive answer on the characters’ love lives, nor claims to have invented them or have been the sole writer depicting them. He offers no statement of fact. He simply explains how he sees it, and for an 80s/90s kid like me, that counts for something.
However, his ‘misinterpreted‘ words prompted countless misleading headlines (‘It’s official! Bert and Ernie are out!’), which in turn prompted the following corporate claptrap from the cowardly killjoys at Sesame Workshop:
‘Sesame Street has always stood for inclusion’
‘As we have always said, Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different to themselves. Even though the are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.
‘Sesame Street has always stood for inclusion and acceptance. It’s a place where people of all cultures and backgrounds are welcome.’
The last two sentences are now for me untrue. If they’d not commented, or said ‘it’s open to interpretation’, which of course it is, I probably wouldn’t be reacting this way.
But in issuing a denial so forcefully and defiantly, Sesame Workshop – a nonprofit educational organization, whose mission is to ‘help kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder’ – have really dropped the inclusivity ball.
They’re effectively forcing Bert and Ernie back in the closet, like being gay is something to be ashamed of. This is a show that’s done unparalleled work instigating social change since its 1969 debut. But the message it’s sending to kids (and parents) this week is troubling.
‘Are Muppets sexual?’
Yes, aspects of this conversation are ridiculous. ‘Are Muppets sexual?’ is just one unhelpful question doing the rounds this week that conflates gayness with hypersexuality. This isn’t about the representation of sex (gay or otherwise) in a children’s TV show, but loving relationships. That’s a conversation worth having.
Bert and Ernie are indeed puppets. If the fact they aren’t real means they can’t be gay, how come Sesame Workshop permits them to identify as male? Or as platonic friends? Or as representative of anything? Art is subjective, and Sesame Street, inarguably one of the most important and influential TV shows of all time, is art.
Of course, Bert and Ernie’s fellow Muppets Miss Piggy and Kermit are allowed to be a couple. Nobody addresses the weirdness of a frog and a pig going at it, because the male-female arrangement enforces heterosexist ideals.
There are so many child-friendly pop culture couples engrained in our hearts who we assume are straight. Homer and Marge Simpson. Friends’ Ross and Rachel. Where are the same-sex examples?
Sesame Workshop have really missed a trick here. In my view, there’s no way to really know Bert and Ernie’s sexuality. (If only we could ask them…). But I strongly feel the organization doesn’t get the final say on how they’re perceived. These characters belong to the public.
But in attempting to settle the debate by saying the guys aren’t together because ‘they’re best friends’ and ‘don’t have a sexual orientation’ is gay-erasing.
Maybe Bert and Ernie are simply inanimate objects without genitals who don’t have sex. But in millions of imaginations, they love each other. For their creators to deny that so completely is cruel, and quite literally anti-gay.
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