On the overnight flight from New York to Moscow, the atmosphere feels carnivalesque, with everyone wanting a piece of this new Russia, whether that involves money, sex, democracy, or the salvation of lost souls. And now I’ve joined this cabal plotting to alter Russia’s future. But my alchemy is neither religion nor politics; it is a children’s television show.
In its subtitle, Muppets in Moscow promises “The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia”, and that’s exactly what author (and the television show’s original Executive Producer) Natasha Lance Rogoff delivers. As a young documentary filmmaker, Rogoff was stunned to be recruited by the Children’s Television Network and offered the opportunity to develop a Russian version of Sesame Street (“Ulitsa Sezam”), but as a Russophile who was fluent in the language and had some contacts in Moscow, she was seduced by the opportunity to bring a fun and educational show about Western-style empathy and cooperation to children raised behind the recently fallen Iron Curtain. No doubt a little naive about the challenges she would face, Rogoff’s story unspools in a series of shocks and roadblocks, and as this is also a memoir about the author’s personal and professional life, there is an engagingly intimate angle to the stakes. The writing could have been a bit more polished, but as an eyewitness account of what was probably the only liberalised window in which this kind of American-Russian co-production could have been pulled off, I found the whole thing fascinating. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Lida adds, with a look of disdain, “Russia has a long, rich, and revered puppet tradition dating to the sixteenth century. We don’t need your American Moppets in our children’s show.” I start to feel short of breath. I thought selling the Russians on the lovable Muppets would be the easy part of making this television series. But these television professionals don’t even like the American puppets. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was apparently then-Senator Joe Biden who drummed up congressional support and financial backing for a Russian version of Sesame Street, believing that the Muppets were “ideal ambassadors to model democratic values and the benefits of a free market economy to children in the former Soviet Union.” With several other international versions of the show already in production around the world, the Children’s Television Network was on board with Biden’s proposal, and Natasha Lance Rogoff — with zero television experience and little practical notion of what her role would actually involve — was sent to Moscow to secure a local co-producer (who could provide funding as part of the deal with the American government and the United States Agency for International Development), a broadcaster, and all of the talent (from directors, to animators, to writers, to puppeteers) before a single frame could be shot. Not only was there incredible pushback from all of the creatives — people raised on Pushkin and Tchaikovsky were disinclined “to replace Russian education with ‘American chewing gum for the masses’” — but as the oligarchs and kleptocrats scrambled for riches “during the greatest transfer of wealth from public to private hands in Russian history”, there was actual physical danger involved as well:
During our production, several heads of Russian television — our prospective broadcast partners — were assassinated one after another, with one nearly killed in a car bombing. The day that Russian soldiers bearing AK-47s pushed into our production office and confiscated show scripts, set drawings and equipment, and our adored life-size mascot Elmo, most of my American friends said I should get out of Moscow while I still could. But what made me stay, even in the face of physical violence jeopardizing the production, were the cultural battles that touched nearly every aspect of the show — from the scriptwriting, to the music, to the Slavic Muppets themselves. I discovered that adapting the American children’s show in Moscow often pitted Sesame Street’s progressive values against three hundred years of Russian thought. The clash of divergent views about individualism, capitalism, race, education, and equality offered a window into the cultural discord and conflict between East and West that continues to dominate relations today.
As fascinating as the details of Rogoff’s story were (and they really were), I was most interested in what she writes in the afterword about how Ulitsa Sezam could never be made today — not only was it Putin’s people who forced the show off the air in 2010 after fourteen successful years, but Rogoff believes that the brushes with violence and assassinations she experienced were linked to Putin’s rise in power (the TV studio where they filmed is now used to produce and disseminate “pro-Kremlin propaganda and fake news”) — and I’m left wondering what the long-term (hopeful?) effects might be for this one generation of Russian children raised on Western “progressive values”. An “unexpected and crazy story” indeed.
