Elmo's World

Posted by Vicki on 01.10.05

Given the current controversy about feeding children anti-depressants like candy it is fairly appropriate that I am in mourning for Elmo, or more specifically for the show 'Elmo's world'. It featured Elmo occupying a largely animated world in which he encounters everyday things that children would encounter in the real world, as well as providing a blue print of a dark and twisted futuristic world.

In recent weeks these have included telephones, computers, family, bird (singular), tree (also singular), sleep, and hands (plural). All of these shows have presented their subject matter in a way that could be seen to prepare the viewing audience for a live of servitude in the services industry - aka customer services - in any of it's many guises. Incidentally, since expressing and developing this theory I've discovered that Elmo's World is in fact part sponsored by McDonalds.

Elmo's wanderings through the world are controlled by a sinister fish called Dorothy who expects Elmo to read her thoughts in order to gather her "suggestions" about what they should think about today. Dorothy is the perfect Orwellian dominant force: she is an overwhelmingly silent and brooding character yet her every whim is fulfilled with grim cheerfulness by the ever-grinning Elmo.

Elmo's attempts to investigate Dorothy's latest command are inevitably hampered in some way by his computer which dances abound the room chanting, "Elmo has mail!" until he has begged it to calm down sufficiently that he is permitted to fleetingly view his mail. Anyone who has ever worked in an office can identify with this loathsome character, although for the record I must state that Elmo has yet to receive a Nigerian bank scam. Another source of reference for Elmo is his TV, which every episode comes up with a new appropriate show for him to watch in order to improve himself. This is a more efficient vision of the future than the current diet of reality TV, whilst no doubt having much the same numbing effect.

Elmo's emotional and social development was so stunted by Dorothy's regime of forced interaction with both the TV and the computer that in one episode Elmo sat and filmed the telephone as he babbled at its inert form. Dorothy's evil plan of subdigation of the prospective workforce is aided by Mr. Noodles, who is frequently called upon to demonstrate now not to go about using the episodes theme; for example, when asked how to demonstrate washing his hands he first put his socked feet into the sink. His purpose in the coming New World Order is to con the despondent workers into thinking that life could be worse - after all, they could be just like him.

Once the suspicion that Elmo's World had this subtext it meant that it was hard to view the episode concerning the family without instantly think of sweatshops. However, in Elmo's defence, he doesn't know any better and may well think that he is teaching valuable life lessons in saying, "a skateboard doesn't eat a banana, but a monkey riding on a skateboard will eat a banana. A chair doesn't eat a banana, but a monkey on a chair will eat a banana. A banana doesn't eat a banana, but a monkey holding a banana eats a banana..." - despite the fact that such lessons will only be important is the world is overrun by zombies, and the struggling brainwashed workers try to recall if eating your own kind is now socially acceptable under recent anti-terrorism laws.