"Sesame Street" vs. the Arab street

Public television's attempt to bring Big Bird and friends to Arab-Americans has been curbed by reluctant corporate sponsors -- and a wary immigrant community.

By Christopher Farah

Jan 22, 2004 | Warren Avenue does not particularly resemble "Sesame Street." It's located in metro Detroit, with four lanes of rumbling traffic, and it features a jumble of shops that would look equally at home in Jordan, Egypt or Lebanon: Shatila Pastries, Layalli Zeman Cafe, Nasim's Barbershop. Their signs are as likely to be in Arabic as in English.

Unlike any of the show's characters, the people who live on Warren, who pray at its churches and mosques, are likely to speak in either language, and many of the women and girls cover their heads with hijabs, or scarves.

But these differences are exactly what attracted the people of Sesame Workshop to the area. Three months ago founders of the famous children's show proposed a new program called "Sesame Neighborhood." It would take place in South Dearborn, off Warren, and provide an inside look at the life of a community that boasts a population estimated at anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 people of Middle Eastern descent. The goal was to produce five half-hour shows that would be available for syndication on Public Television stations across the country.

But with every idea comes a demand for money. And in this case, the lack of corporate sponsors -- and a notable lack of financial commitment from a conflicted Arab-American community -- have kept "Sesame Neighborhood" from coming alive.

Sesame Workshop typically develops a list of potential sponsors who would have a natural interest in funding any new show. For "Sesame Neighborhood," that meant Michigan-based corporations, Arab-American businesses and members of the Arab-American community in general. So far, none of those possible sources have come through in a significant way. Production, originally scheduled to begin this month, has been postponed, awaiting the same $300,000 in funding that Sesame Workshop needed three months ago.

And while the people of Public Television don't expect Arab-Americans to foot the bill entirely for a show about them, they have been increasingly frustrated with a community that initially seemed enthusiastic about "Neighborhood" but has since failed to pony up any cash to pay for it. The heart of the problem, though, seems not to be apathy or a lack of generosity, but the age-old issue that has faced all American immigrant communities -- the struggle to remain true to old values and homelands, and a wariness of a new culture that hasn't always been fair in its depictions. All of this, of course, has been made much more complex by the pressures of America's post-9/11 War on Terror and its implications for this country's Arab citizens. Arab-Americans have generally grown much more suspicious of American authorities and institutions -- to the point where some would rather insulate themselves from American pop culture than embrace it.

Ironically, the Sept. 11 terror attacks are exactly what sparked Sesame Workshop's initial interest in developing an Arab-American "Sesame Street" in the first place.

The idea for the show was inspired in part by a study of the emotional well-being of American children, commissioned by Sesame Workshop in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The survey tried to gauge how secure and safe kids felt in light of the recent events and focused special attention on the feelings of Arab-American children in Detroit, Houston and northern New Jersey. The study found that Arab-American kids tended to "feel under suspicion" and were "experiencing more vivid and immediate anxieties than the overall group."

Sesame Street already featured a regular segment called "Global Grover," in which the scratchy-voiced blue Muppet traveled to places around the world and talked to children. But Sesame Workshop wanted to target Arab-Americans specifically. "Arab-American children were feeling greater isolation and shame, not surprisingly," says Ann Gorfinkel, who's in charge of the nascent "Neighborhood" project. "Ideally we wanted a series that families would watch together -- Arab-Americans would see a positive representation of themselves on the screen, and non-Arab-Americans would learn about another culture."

The programs would feature Arab-American children -- and maybe even Arab-American Muppets -- playing, praying and learning in their homes, churches, mosques and schools. If this effort went well, the five shows could possibly launch "Neighborhood" into other communities -- Asian-Americans, Indian-Americans, Russian-Americans and pretty much every hyphenated group you can think of.

To develop and promote the idea, the president and CEO of the Sesame Workshop, Gary Knell, traveled to Dearborn for a series of meetings with politicians, representatives from Detroit Public Television -- which would produce the show locally -- and leaders of the Arab-American community there.

"All the people showed up, and initially the general attitude was, 'I'm here, it's late, after my work. What do you want?'" Knell says. "Then we started talking and it immediately became, 'We love this idea. Let's make it happen.'"

But with relatively little progress since then, those optimistic tones are starting to change. "It's been mystifying and somewhat frustrating," says Steven Antoniotti, president of Detroit Public TV, and one of the series developers. "Arab-Americans come to us, to Sesame Workshop, to have this discussion, saying, 'We want to see more Arab-Americans represented on television,' but when it's time to put up the funds for it, there's nothing.

"I guess the message is, We'd like to see this, but it would be nice if somebody else does it for us."

Sesame Workshop has been approaching various Michigan-based corporations to help sponsor the project. If a corporation decided to pay for the whole program tomorrow, production of "Sesame Neighborhood" would begin, and there would be no need for any money from Arab-Americans. But so far, that just hasn't happened.

Next Page: With satellite TV, why tune in American culture?

• View blog reactions