For almost 50 years, Bert and Ernie, the 2 lovable puppet roommates of Sesame Street, have been on the middle of a relentless query relating to their private identities: Are Bert and Ernie lovers? Whether introduced as a considerate query concerning the portrayal of queer characters on tv or just as a joke, the query surrounding the puppets’ relationship has existed for many years.
Speaking with Queerty, Marc Saltzman, a former author for Sesame Street, says that he at all times understood that the 2 Muppets have been, in reality, homosexual. “I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were,” he stated. “I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them.”
Saltzman went on to say that his personal relationship with movie editor Arnold Glassman served as a supply of inspiration for the characters, saying that even the couple’s buddies would discuss with the pair as Bert and Ernie. “It was the Bert & Ernie relationship, and I used to be already with Arnie after I got here to Sesame Street,” he stated. “So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them but as a loving couple. I wrote sketches … Arnie’s OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And that’s the Bert & Ernie dynamic.”
Despite Saltzman’s claims that Bert and Ernie are in a relationship, the creators of Sesame Street are nonetheless definitively saying that they don’t seem to be. “As we have always said, Bert and Ernie are best friends,” learn a press release launched on the Sesame Workshop Twitter web page. “Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”
Along with discussing the rumors surrounding Bert and Ernie’s relationship, Saltzman additionally talked about different moments within the present with explicitly homosexual themes, together with a personality named The Sublime Miss M based mostly on Bette Midler and the elephant Muppet Snuffalupagus being Big Bird’s “secret good friend” earlier than with the ability to be “seen” by everybody.
Read Saltzman’s full interview with Queerty here, and browse the assertion from Sesame Workshop under.
Please see our assertion under relating to Bert and Ernie. pic.twitter.com/6r2j0XrKYu
— Sesame Workshop (@SesameWorkshop) September 18, 2018
