Ernie vs Bert, Round Three

Ernie vs Bert

— Round 3 —

Mind Games

Here’s two classic Ernie and Bert sketches, circa the early-to-mid 70’s:

Color Commentary:

Now, I have no idea if these jokes were original to Sesame Street, or if they were already common schoolyard tricks that Ernie just appropriated. All I know is that by the time I was in elementary school, both of these jokes were in pretty common use, and they worked, pretty much all the way through second grade.

So there’s two options here. One is that these were already old chestnuts by the time Ernie and Bert came along. But the other option — and this is the one I prefer, myself — is that Ernie’s sense of humor is so perfectly attuned to the young child’s desire to dominate and control that the children of the world instinctively follow his lead.

Because you have to admit that impractical jokes like these are a fairly hostile form of gamesmanship. Ernie’s just humiliating Bert, really, for no good reason at all. In the case of the licorice whips, I suggested that Bert deserved to be treated badly, because he refused to stand up for himself. But in both of these sketches, Bert is suspicious from the start, and he refuses to play the games. In fact, he insists that the games sound stupid and contrived, and they do. He only gives in because Ernie bullies him into it — and then, as soon as the game gets going, Ernie plays his little trick, and Bert is left with egg on his face again.

Now, I’m not going to try to debate the morality of this little exercise. Clearly, there’s no moral justification for Ernie hatching these little humiliation schemes. The thing that I think is interesting is what all this demonstrates about the essentially hostile nature of schoolyard humor.

When you think about it, all the jokes that little kids tell are basically an attempt to trick other people. Riddles, knock-knock jokes, shaggy dog stories… they’re all tiny tricks, ways to surprise and unsettle other people. They’re like little experiments in using language to dominate people, a slightly more subtle version of the “made you look!” game.

Rough-and-tumble play is a way that kids test the limits of their physical powers — how high they can jump, how hard they can push, whether they can run fast enough to get away from someone chasing them. In a similar way, verbal play helps kids test their linguistic and social powers. When they tell jokes and play tricks, kids are testing out how to mislead, how to use words to make yourself stronger and your opponent weaker.

Ernie would never just walk up to Bert and push him down to the ground for no reason, just to laugh at him. Only a bully would push people around like that. But Ernie kind of does the same thing with words here, and somehow that’s okay.

Just like with the licorice whips, there’s an important lesson in here for kids. They don’t have to understand it explicitly, it just speaks directly to some hidden, anti-social desire deep in their selfish little hearts. The Sesame Street Muppets seem so sweet and funny; you’d never know they were feeding your darkest impulses. How’d it taste, Bert?

by Danny Horn