Ah, the timeless debate about whether or not Sesame Street’s beloved “roommate” puppets are actually a gay couple or not continues.
In a piece for The Hollywood Reporter celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street’s inception, Brown Johnson, an executive VP of the non-profit that produces the show, offered up this non-comment:
“People can think whatever they want [about Bert and Ernie]. You want to think they’re gay? OK. You want to think they’re not gay? They’re not gay.”
While it doesn’t seem like much, and really isn’t, it’s at least a change from the previous claim of the same non-profit, Sesame Workshop.
“As we have always said, Bert and Ernie are best friends,” they posted to Twitter in September of last year. “While they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics, they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”
The tweet appears to have been deleted since then, but it was kind of a harsh stance to take, and an obviously hypocritical one, considering other Sesame Street puppets, such as Elmo and Zoe, have been noted to be in a (heterosexual) relationship by the show.
The 2018 statement came after writer Mark Saltzman commented to Queerty that he “always felt that without a huge agenda, when [he] was writing Bert and Ernie, they were [gay].”
“I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them,” he added.
Famed puppeteer Frank Oz, who helped create the characters, also jumped into the conversation at the time, stating that “They’re not [gay], of course.”
\u201cIt seems Mr. Mark Saltzman was asked if Bert & Ernie are gay. It's fine that he feels they are. They're not, of course. But why that question? Does it really matter? Why the need to define people as only gay? There's much more to a human being than just straightness or gayness.\u201d— Frank Oz (@Frank Oz) 1537295463
Oz later spent time engaging with Twitter users trying to understand why it seemed so important to them to view these characters as gay and in a relationship, and seemed to somewhat change his tune.
\u201cA last thought: If Jim and I had created B & E as gay characters they would be inauthentic coming from two straight men. However, I have now learned that many view them as representative of a loving gay relationship. And that\u2019s pretty wonderful. Thanks for helping me understand.\u201d— Frank Oz (@Frank Oz) 1538104771
So while Johnson’s recent comments don’t seem like much on the surface, and certainly not the inclusivity of queer characters on children’s programming that many think we need to start seeing, it’s at least better than the flat-out denials that previously plagued the show.
Whew! The bar is so low.
Anyway, Bert and Ernie are definitely gay.
