Ernie and Bert Your Shouting Again

NAKED BERT & ERNIE

Bradley Bazzle

I'm sitting on the floor with my daughter, who just turned 2. She's watching me draw Ernie, of Sesame Street fame, continuing shirtless in cherry swim trunks. In one of his hands I draw a banana; in the other, an ice cream cone. Behind him there'south a reddish barn with a fox inside. Elmo waves from a nearby tractor. It's a fairly idyllic scene, past our standards. So my girl starts shouting "Bert! Bert!"
I hesitate. I know where this volition lead. Only my girl gets what she wants.
I begin with Bert's face, which ends upward larger than I intended. "Naked!" my daughter shouts, and so I start on Bert's shirtless body. I draw the body big plenty to friction match the head, but in doing then all only ensure that Bert's lower one-half will end upwards behind the barn, so I skip downward and first drawing Bert's legs. That way, I can position the legs how I want them and not go tangled upward by the barn later on.
Possibly I'one thousand cartoon too fast, maybe I'yard flustered by my daughter's yelled commands, but soon I realize I've made a mistake: there isn't room betwixt the legs and the torso for the boxy swimsuit I usually depict. I improvise and draw something skimpier, but then I worry my wife will think it'south underwear so I color it dark purple and make up one's mind (in my mind—I say none of this to my daughter) that information technology's a European-way bathing suit. Then, driven by the frantic energy that sometimes overtakes me during these sessions, I find myself drawing green sparks shooting from Bert's outstretched hands. I stop cartoon and sit down back, a little stunned.
There's a moment of silence while my girl admires the cartoon. Then she smiles and points. "Bert," she says. "Bert naked!"

     I tin can't recollect how it started: if my daughter learned the word naked and started enervating we draw the usual characters naked, or if she demanded they be in puddle or pond and so, naturally, I drew them shirtless. But actually, the whole thing is almost certainly my own fault. I'm sure I stuck Bert or Ernie in a bathtub without thinking, as one of the many variations I draw in order to proceed myself engaged. After yous've drawn Bert and Ernie 2 or 3 hundred times, appointment is hard to maintain. Other variations include the popular "sea Bert," a sort of merman Bert with a fish tail and webbed fingers, and the less popular "crab Ernie."
However it started, we got to the bespeak that no cartoon was complete without a naked Bert or Ernie or both, or multiple naked Berts and Ernies sitting in bathtubs, other bodies of water, lying on towels at the beach, lounging under umbrellas, doing tricks on dirt bikes. Ernie smiling in a bathtub while Bert, shirtless, flies a kite. Bert, shirtless, climbing a tree to choice apples while Ernie, likewise shirtless, watches from within a cyclone of my daughter's scribbles. Ernie, shirtless, coming out of a tube ("tube!") while Bert, too shirtless, stands with an octopus and a 2d shirtless Ernie does a wheel kick and a 2nd shirtless Bert holds a flaming band for a kitten to spring through. Bert and Ernie on the embankment in tiny, loving cup-similar bathtubs while a second Bert and Ernie stand up with Cookie Monster in the matching leotards of circus strongmen. Bert, in a swimsuit, doing the splits on pinnacle of a brontosaurus while Ernie does the splits on a triceratops and a second Bert and Ernie stand up shirtless in the foreground and a third shirtless Ernie shoots out of a tube with a smiling turtle. Ernie sleeping on a beach towel while a 2nd shirtless Ernie holds a cupcake and a third shirtless Ernie, forth with Bert, stands in a shower whose nozzle is the tentacle of an octopus ("shower oc-pus!"). Ernie inside a bathtub, simply the bathtub has anxiety and Bert's head. A green-headed duck with Bert'south face. Two fish with Bert'south head and an octopus with Ernie's head. Freddie Krueger Bert accompanied by crab Ernie and serpent Ernie and a snake Bert that looks, I'yard afraid, less like a serpent than a sperm.

     Despite my daughter'south commands, my married woman refuses to depict Bert and Ernie shirtless, let alone naked, and recently went as far as adding shirts and pants to my own Berts and Ernies. In response, I started drawing their nipples and belly buttons in blackness and so my wife couldn't mask them with other colors. Non to be outdone, my wife started adding t-shirts with designs on them that happened to cover the nipples and abdomen buttons. Then one day, while my wife was out working somewhere, I drew a shirtless Bert with curly hair nether his abdomen button, and then a shirtless Ernie with a patch of directly, sort of sickly looking pilus between his nipples. When my wife came home and saw this drawing, which happened to be on the brownish cardboard back of the sketchpad, she chosen information technology "gross."
The discussion choice bothered me, but I let it slide at the time. That my wife didn't even try to mask Bert and Ernie'southward hairy torsos with t-shirts made me experience guilty, so I drew them myself. Just I drew them quietly, total of resentful feelings, and mayhap because of this mindset I found myself drawing a big skull on Bert'south t-shirt. To mask the curly hair nether his navel, I blacked out one of the skull'southward teeth and drew nighttime liquid (near certainly blood, though I never would have said this) dripping from the socket where the tooth had been.
When she saw the t-shirt, my wife made no annotate, and I felt even worse than before. To be honest, I too was bothered past the cartoon. The skull t-shirt reminded me of the Iron Maiden t-shirts kids used to article of clothing in heart school, and of the quiet surly kids who wore those t-shirts well into high-school, by which fourth dimension the collars were fraying and the black had faded to the sickly color familiar to anyone who has owned blackness t-shirts, like all the other dark colors (grayness, brown, navy) are trying, and declining, to guess black.
What bothered me, I think, wasn't the goriness of the skull with its encarmine tooth socket but the adolescent-ness of it. The boyish quality struck me as inappropriate, I realize now, only why? The people at the Sesame Street Workshop, formerly the Children's Television Workshop, play fast and loose with the ages of their characters, then isn't information technology possible Bert and Ernie are meant to be seen every bit adolescents? If not, how quondam are they supposed to be?
On one paw, Bert and Ernie are portrayed as children. They do childish things like collect bottle caps and bathe with safety ducks, and they play with all the other characters, including Elmo, the youngest. In the volume The Schoolhouse, for instance, Bert and Ernie are shown as Elmo'due south schoolmates, and the blazon of activities they exercise (building with blocks, playing with cars, etc.) suggests they're meant to exist in Kindergarten or maybe first course. And in It's a Undercover, the whole plot hinges on the fact that Bert tin can't count past one hundred. So how old can Bert possibly be? Seven? Viii?
On the other hand, Bert and Ernie accept no parents and live together equally roommates. They have, and take on, responsibilities. In the book Circle of Friends, they're shown organizing a neighborhood block party. How former would i have to be to do this? Sixteen? Eighteen? 40, more likely. What kind of teenager offers to "decorate the square with lights and crepe paper," equally Bert does? And in Bert and Ernie Go Camping, Bert and Ernie go camping ground—lonely. How old does one accept to be to venture into the wilderness unsupervised? My father was eleven when a sentry chief, feeling sick, sent him and his fellow scouts alone downwardly the Pamunkey River in Virginia, just that was in the fifties, earlier the Manson Family. Today, I would say xviii, i.e. college age—xvi at the accented earliest.
Reading this, anyone familiar with Sesame Street might contend that yes, Bert and Ernie are adults, but they seem like children because they're childish adults. This is a major category in Sesame Street. The classic example is Large Bird, who lives alone and doesn't figure in overtly childish settings like that of The Schoolhouse, but when he interacts with younger characters he converses at their level. Really, he seems to think at their level. In Information technology's a Secret, he tries to comfort Bert for not being able to count past one hundred by 1) writing him a terrible verse form, and ii) telling him that for his ain function he can't count past xx. This puts Big Bird in the dimwitted company of Television set and, more famously, the caveman-like Cookie Monster. Then, practice Bert and Ernie belong in this category? It's tempting to put them there, except that Bert and Ernie are never presented every bit dimwits. Quite the contrary. As Ernie states, when he tries to comfort Bert in It's a Surreptitious, "Oh no, Bert! Everybody knows that y'all are very smart!"
The singular ambivalence of Bert and Ernie'southward age may stem from an important difference between them and the other characters: whereas Telly and Cookie Monster are monsters, and Large Bird is a behemothic bird, Bert and Ernie are quasi-human. As the master quasi-human characters, Bert and Ernie are, with the possible exception of Elmo, the characters with whom children most easily identify, and then Bert and Ernie can't be dimwitted; they have to be smart, and they must behave responsibly. They can play like children, aye, simply simply as long as they bear the correct style, setting an example for Elmo and the kids at home. This holds true not only in their behavior but in the wearing apparel they wear, which are, in Bert'southward example especially, like dress an adult would wear, or like dress a kid would wear if that child had domineering parents who dressed him equally an adult. Whether the domineering parent is existent or in Bert's mind, it circumscribes his choices, and and so we'll never see Bert stroll out of the apartment he shares with Ernie at 123 Sesame Street in a threadbare Iron Maiden t-shirt, let alone naked.

     The upshot of the skull t-shirt incident was that I decided to ratchet things back. I didn't cease drawing Bert and Ernie shirtless, of course, merely I limited myself to beach and bathtub scenes, and I was careful not to pigment myself into corners that demanded European-style bathing suits. I similar to call back my married woman and I reached an equilibrium: I drew them shirtless, she drew them clothed, and my daughter seemed to enjoy the mix of the two.
To empathise what happened adjacent, I should go into a little more than detail about my procedure. When I draw a Bert or Ernie, I start with the face. The moment I terminate the face, my girl shouts "body!" And then, the moment I start the body, my girl shouts "naked!" Just sometimes, in my haste to stop the face before she starts shouting "body" and "naked," I'll accidentally depict the collar of Ernie's crewneck sweater or of Bert's turtleneck, which he wears beneath his 5-neck sweater. I used to ignore the beginnings of the sweater and speedily sketch Bert or Ernie's naked body, complete with nipples and belly button, to distract my daughter from the misplaced line, but recently my daughter has gotten fixated on mistakes. Mayhap it's her age, or perchance it's the repetition (she knows exactly what Bert and Ernie should look like, either shirtless or clothed), but she just doesn't let mistakes go anymore.
And so, a few days subsequently the skull t-shirt incident, I was cartoon Bert for my daughter when I made the mistake of starting his turtleneck. As usual, I recovered speedily. I even jumped downward and started cartoon his arms, to distract her, only my girl kept pointing at the line around Bert's neck. I told her the misplaced line on Bert's neck was "like a collar."
"Leash," my daughter said, nodding earnestly.
"That's right," I said, "a leash. Similar a canis familiaris has."
My daughter started pointing at the empty space side by side to Bert's neck, and then I had no option but to depict a long leash extending from the collar and then, naturally, to end information technology with a hand.
"Ernie!" my daughter cried, and I colored the paw orange. "Ernie! Ernie!" she persisted, and then I drew the rest of Ernie's body. In my caput a footling voice (my married woman's?) told me I should depict him clothed, or, improve yet, in his traditional jeans and horizontally striped sweater, and then I did this, over my daughter'south strident objections, only then what I had in front of me was a cartoon of Ernie, clothed, walking Bert, one-half-naked, like a dog.
While my daughter ate her snack of crackers and orange pieces, I tore the drawing out of the sketchpad and stashed it in a drawer. I suppose, looking back, I should take thrown it abroad, just I've ever been reluctant to throw away images of other people. I take a drawer full of old Christmas cards that show my friends smiling with their spouses and children. I approximate that's superstitious. Now I know my superstition extends to drawings, fifty-fifty drawings of puppet people. Anyhow, my wife found the drawing and, predictably, declared it "gross." Also predictably, I took umbrage with the discussion gross. I told her it was her choice not to draw Bert and Ernie naked, simply that it wasn't cool to call Bert'south body "gross." Neither was it cool to imply that my conclusion to draw that body was somehow "gross." Hadn't we had lengthy conversations well-nigh how not to brand our daughter feel ashamed of her ain torso? Isn't that why we use the word vagina and so liberally? And if we don't want her to think her ain torso is gross, how can we call Bert's body gross? I was saying some version of all this to my wife. Then I said, "Really, if you think about it, I should be drawing Bert's penis. Just I don't. And I'k not even asking to draw his penis, just his torso and sometimes his upper thighs."
"He's on his easily and knees," my wife whispered, and so my daughter, notwithstanding snacking, couldn't hear her, "wearing a ternion. Ernie is walking him like a fucking dog."
This was a proficient indicate. There was a difference between drawing Bert shirtless and thereby (I would contend) celebrating his body, and drawing him on his hands and knees being walked like a canis familiaris. But I couldn't let it go. As usual, I stewed in silence throughout my daughter's snack time and my own work time, which followed.
A annotation well-nigh piece of work time: we were spending the semester in Oxford, where my married woman was teaching, and had no daycare. My wife was taking the mornings for her ain piece of work and usually worked through the finish of my girl's nap, leaving me with a couple hours in the afternoon for my writing. Information technology was a reasonable setup, given that my wife, a university scientist, is the breadwinner in the family, merely there was office of me that resented the disparity, and so I may have taken special umbrage at criticism of my artistic methods when I was the 1 who had to do so much art. I was easily drawing 3 or 4 Berts for every single Bert my married woman drew.
Stewing, I started to wonder if what my wife really idea was "gross," though she would never acknowledge information technology, wasn't the semi-nakedness of Bert and Ernie simply what that nakedness suggested about their human relationship. Onetime, after drawing a Bert and Ernie with such prominent dark nipples that my wife didn't even attempt to cover them with shirts, I felt bad and drew loose, pastel-colored tank tops that covered about of their torsos without having to cover their nipples. I thought this was a clever solution. I sketched an umbrella and fabricated it a beach scene. But my wife took one look at the ensembles and called them "totally gay." I judge I wasn't surprised. I mean, my gay friends are more than likely to wear tank tops than my straight friends, but honestly the gayness or straightness of Bert and Ernie's wearable had never occurred to me.
Does calling something "totally gay" mean my married woman is prejudiced against gay people? I don't think so. My married woman actually identifies as bisexual, or queer, which brings me to a question: how is information technology that my hip, queer wife, who has a nose ring and wishes she could spend more time rock climbing, is such a prude when it comes to Bert and Ernie? Well, information technology turns out just virtually everybody is a prude when information technology comes to Bert and Ernie. I've made tentative ventures into this story with several people, conversationally, and I would depict their reactions as falling somewhere between "confusion" and "uncomfortable laugher." And I didn't fifty-fifty prove them the drawings!
Just I think I might be a niggling obtuse when it comes to this upshot, perchance because I lived for so long with male roommates. It never occurred to me, during the years I spent in New York City after college, that people might have assumed I and my closest roommate, a human being named Dave who's married at present with a baby and a gastroenterology practice, were adult men in a closeted gay human relationship. Only we spent a lot of time together and, maybe more than chiefly, wore similar clothes. My wife tells me older women with similar hairstyles and wearing apparel are oft lesbian partners. I had no idea. Am I naïve? Apparently, simply and then once more, did information technology really matter that some people mistook Dave and me for lovers? And does it matter that Bert and Ernie, with their striped sweaters, might exist romantic partners instead of only roommates? Actually, wouldn't it be preferable? Sesame Street is diverse in every other way, and then why not in this way? Why not expose our children to the multifariousness of homo experience?

     The volume Elmo Loves You is a archetype, every bit anyone familiar with the Sesame Street bibliography knows. In it, Elmo takes us on a tour of dearest in its many forms. Similar a furry crimson Virgil, he shows usa how babies dear dissonance, kids love toys, Bert loves pigeons, pigs love mud, and the Count loves counting things. What's missing, at least in the written text, is any mention of romantic dear. This is particularly strange considering that Elmo Loves You is a sort of Valentine's Mean solar day volume, full of pinkish and imperial hearts. The book ends with Elmo request for a buss. Your kid kisses the volume, at which point Elmo, on the side by side folio, declares, "Thank you! Elmo is a happy monster." Now, are all kisses romantic? Of course non. Are all valentines romantic? No. Petty kids substitution valentines at school. Just in a book nearly the varieties of love, isn't information technology a niggling odd that romantic love is so downplayed?
Downplayed, but not absent. On three occasions, characters are shown in what might be described every bit romantic situations. The first happens at the library. The written text is as follows: "Zoe loves the library. Grover loves information technology, too. Elmo whispers quietly, 'Elmo loves you!'" In the foreground, Zoe and Grover read together. In the background, Elmo peeps out from behind a bookshelf. At that place are two other kid-similar puppets—one is taking out a book, the other is reading on the flooring—and also ii adult puppets. We know they're adults because one, the male puppet, has feet that attain the floor even though he'due south sitting in a big armchair. The other, the female puppet, is a librarian. The "romantic situation" is that, although the human is reading and the woman, some altitude away, is carrying a stack of books, they're glancing at each other and grinning demurely. Their glance might be described as "stolen."
The second romantic situation comes most the stop of the book, in a sort of montage. Two monsters (they're furry) are shown sharing a drinkable, and nosotros can tell romantic love is meant to be implied because there's a heart around them and they're gazing sidelong into each other's eyes. As well, i of their hands (paws?) is resting on the other's. There are a few noteworthy things about this pair. One, they're stuck in the bottom corner, as if to de-emphasize them. The middle of the page is dominated by a heart containing Ernie and his rubber duck. Two, they're adults. Y'all can tell from the male monster's neckband and necktie. Three, they're no-name monsters. The male monster resembles Herry, only he's orangish, whereas Herry is bluish. Murray is orange but this monster looks nothing similar Murray. In other words, these monsters are a tier below even Herry and Murray, two of the to the lowest degree used monsters in the Sesame Street stable.
The third romantic situation—nearby on the same page, and then over again on the following page—is that of a pair of twiddlebugs clasping hands and gazing at each other in front of a red heart. For those of y'all unfamiliar, twiddlebugs are tiny puppets halfway between humans (they have artillery and legs, eyes) and bugs (wings, antennae). They're very small-scale and can be found at nighttime in Bert and Ernie'due south window box. Here, we tin can tell one is female considering she has eyelashes, and and then we infer this is some sort of heterosexual romantic love situation, but whether it'southward hetero- or homosexual doesn't really matter; what matters is that, yet again, romantic dear is left to anonymous characters in the groundwork or periphery of the volume. If you're reading with a very young child, she's unlikely to enquire you questions about these characters. My girl, for example, is much more than likely to signal at Ernie and bark either "Ernie!" or "duck!" And on the library page, she'due south then busy pointing at Grover and Zoe, and saying "peekaboo!" to Elmo, that she doesn't seem to notice the older humanoid puppets with their boring stolen glance.
More shocking withal: these downplayed, marginal instances of romantic beloved are the but ones in the entire catalog, every bit far equally I know. I've scoured the books we own and have borrowed from the library. When I found one possible exception, involving the Count, I was informed past my sis-in-law, whose children are six and four, that the purple female boob standing with the Count in Friendly Frosty Monsters while the Count counts snowflakes isn't his wife simply his female parent. I establish this shocking. The count has his hand on the back of the bejeweled woman, who, judging by their matching faces, is exactly the same age as the Count. Okay, maybe she'south ageless, an undead, but withal, why not give the Count a wife? A girlfriend? A boyfriend? He's an eligible bachelor. His castle is huge. Information technology's as though the people at the Sesame Street Workshop are going out of their style to avoid entangling important characters in romantic situations, or even implying that there's any romance in their lives.
I find this disheartening. Romance is a big part of life. My married woman and I are engaged in a long-term romantic relationship, and somewhen our girl volition (I hope) take a romantic involvement in someone. I can imagine that Sesame Street characters could assist our daughter sympathise the nature of romance just equally, for example, P Is for Potty helps her empathize the nature and use of potties.
Maybe if we watched the Television receiver prove instead of only reading the books, nosotros would see romantic dearest everywhere, but I doubt information technology. Gordon and Susan are married, sure, but would nosotros ever run into them renew their vows? Would we always see Big Bird sit with Zoe for an hostage chat about her unrequited beat out on Elmo? Would nosotros e'er hear the Count sing a song near the pros and cons of lifelong bachelorhood?
I promise I don't sound greedy or ungrateful. My complaints, similar my drawings, come out of dear. My daughter loves the Sesame Street characters. When she sees Bert and Ernie on the embrace of a volume at the library, she'll get so excited that she buries her face up in my side. Sometimes I'll first reading the book and she'll say "No, no," as though the pleasure of hearing about Bert and Ernie is just too much for her. And I'm excited too. "Expect at this one!" I'll hear myself maxim, if I find a Hautzig/Mathieu championship that wasn't at the library the final time we visited. "Grover's Bad Dream! What's that about?"
The books (similar the bear witness, I imagine) represent merely glimpses of what has go, for us, a Sesame Street world. While we appreciate the glimpses the Sesame Street Workshop and writers like Deborah Hautzig take chosen to offer, we know that to make the remainder of the world is upwards to us. Nosotros make it in our minds, with our imaginations, and if we make upward something we really similar, why not bring it to life ourselves, on the page?
Idea of that fashion, our drawings become a sort of fan fiction. We honey these characters and so much that we want to tell more stories about them, and to meet them in different situations. Earlier, I implied that the many variations I draw of Bert and Ernie (crab Ernie, Freddy Krueger Bert, etc.) are the products of boredom, and that'due south true, to some degree, but they also come up from a place of exuberance. It was exuberance that acquired me to depict sparks shooting from Bert's hands equally he loomed, gigantic and shirtless, backside the befouled.
And aye, it has occurred to me that my exuberance in creating my so-called "variations" has led me to describe variations that verge into the realm of slash fiction. Merely isn't slash fiction just a variety of fan fiction? To cite the archetype case, some enthusiasts aren't satisfied writing fan fiction about Kirk and Spock discovering even so some other alien race and saving the galaxy; instead, they describe Spock taking Kirk in his strong only tender arms for a passionate kiss on the holodeck. In the involvement of honesty—and here I'm existence more than honest than I've been with my wife, so far—I should admit that sometimes, after I draw swim trunks, if my daughter is still shouting "naked," I'll hear myself proverb things similar "Well, maybe Bert will strip off his trunks when he goes in the water." What Bert and Ernie do while they're naked in the h2o is left to the imagination, my daughter's and mine separately. Only whatever they do, they don't have to wear the same sweaters every day of their lives. They tin take off their shirts, swim in the bounding main, and shoot naked through tubes. They tin ride dinosaurs and leap with kittens through flames. They can ride in hot air balloons over trees that grow babe ducks. They can canvas the loftier seas while at the same time living as squid-men beneath the waves.
Naked Bert and Ernie get to do what they desire, in other words. And they're free to be who they—and we—want to be.

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In case you lot're interested less in watching Sesame Street than in reading the books again and again, here are my pinnacle ten:

i) It's a Hole-and-corner (1988), written by Deborah Hautzig / illustrated past Tom Leigh

ii) Grover's Bad Dream (1990), Hautzig / Joe Mathieu

3) A Visit to the Sesame Street Museum (1987), Liza Alexander / Mathieu

four) My Name Is Elmo (1993), Constance Allen / Maggie Swanson

5) Happy Halloween (2014), Lillian Jaine / Ernie Kwiat

6) I Don't Want to Go to School (2001), Sarah Albee / Tom Brannon

7) Sleep Tight (1991), Allen / David Prebenna

8) What'due south Upwards in the Cranium? (1987), Alexander / Tom Cooke

9) I Think that It Is Wonderful (1984), David Corr / A. Delaney

10) A Visit to the Sesame Street Library (1986), Hautzig / Mathieu

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Source: http://thediagram.com/19_4/bazzle.html

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