I feel like this is old news, but I guess we needed a second confirmation. Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie are totally homosexual. They are one with the gay agenda. They are not best friends who merely live together, shop together, cook with each other and sleep in the same room. They are gayer than Christmas. And why would anyone care? Love is love and Bert and Ernie like their privacy. I respected them for that. Now a Sesame Street writer says that of course they’re gay, like we didn’t know!
Sesame Street fans have always wondered whether Muppet roommates Bert and Ernie were more than just best friends. Hoping to put the speculation to rest, former Sesame Street writer Mark Saltzman addressed the rumored relationship during a Tuesday interview with LGBTQ lifestyle website Queerty, saying the audience should trust their intuition that the two puppets are a couple.
“I remember one time that a column from the San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked ‘Are Bert & Ernie lovers?’ And that, coming from a preschooler was fun,” Saltzman said in the interview. “And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it…. I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them.”
Saltzman said his treatment of the characters was reflective of his own relationship with editor Arnold Glassman. “More than one person referred to Arnie & I as ‘Bert & Ernie.’ I was Ernie. I look more Bert-ish. And Arnie as a film editor — if you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldn’t that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester. So it was the Bert & Ernie relationship.”
Saltzman also revealed that he would reference moments from his and Glassman’s own demeanors when writing for Bert and Ernie. “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. The things that would tick off Arnie would be the things that would tick off Bert. How could it not?” he told the outlet.
Despite seeing the puppet characters as a gay couple, Saltzman admitted that he “would never have said that to the head writer” or proclaim “Oh, I’m writing this, this is my partner and me.”
Nonetheless, Saltzman was very aware that Bert and Ernie “appealed to a gay audience.” “And [Snuffleupagus], this depressed person nobody can see, that’s sort of Kafka! It’s sort of gay closeted, too.”
Once you see the subtle ways adult writers slip messages, themes and ideas into kids’ shows, it’s hard to stop seeing them. Scooby Doo is a good example – have you ever watched the old cartoon as an adult? It’s such a trip. Literally, it’s about a pot-smoking hippie in a van with a talking dog, and he’s friends with a smart lesbian, a jock and a hot girl. And they solve crimes while baked. Anyway, as for Bert & Ernie: we been knew. They are charming old gay dudes who fuss at each other but secretly love every minute they spend with each other. They are the quintessential old married couple.
Sesame Street released a statement about it. LIKE HELL THEY DON’T HAVE A SEXUAL ORIENTATION. THIS IS GAY ERASURE. If Muppet “characters” aren’t allowed to have sexual orientation, then how do you explain Miss Piggy’s whole dominatrix-diva vibe?
Please see our statement below regarding Bert and Ernie. pic.twitter.com/6r2j0XrKYu
— Sesame Workshop (@SesameWorkshop) September 18, 2018
Photos courtesy of Getty.
Miss Piggy and Kermit got divorced but puppets don’t have a sexual identity? sure, Jan.
Yeah so frog & pig sex is ok but Bert and Ernie are “just friends”. Smdh..
Did you ever watch the Britcom “Vicious” with Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellan? I always thought of Bert and Ernie when I watched that. I really liked that show 😊
Here I am as “that nerd”, but The Muppets are different than the characters from Sesame Street. The Muppets do have much more developed, human adult characteristics while the Sesame Street characters are developed for kids without more adult characteristics. It’s a completely different show with completely different morals. Just because they’re both puppets doesn’t mean that they’re both the same. I’ll get off my Muppet soapbox now.
but their main defense is that they’re puppets so they don’t have a sexual orientation. 😒
Their main defense is that they are best friends and that sex has nothing to do with it. Why can’t two men live together without people assuming that they are gay? Yes, these are fictional characters made for children, but we have put so many societal constraints on them based on our own biases. Just let Bert & Ernie live together in friendship.
You’re right, Laura. That’s the difference. And for the record, I hated that Kermit was in a relationship with Piggy. I watched the Muppets as a kid and didn’t want to see romance interfering with the funny storylines.
You do realize there are kids out there with gay parents, gay siblings, gay friends and family, right? There’s no moral boundary being violated for them. That’s just their life being reflected back at them on screen. And for that matter, there shouldn’t be any moral issue related to homosexuality at this point, anyway. Two consensual, loving adults is not an issue unless you have strong religious moral compunctions – which in my experience, tend to be selective anyway.
I don’t know where you get the idea that society has an issue with men living together. We have fraternities. We have plenty of shows where men are roommates or best friends. There is something to be said for America’s bizarrely toxic masculine culture, but that’s not the rule across the board. What most straight male or female friends don’t do is sleep in the same room and go through the every minutiae of daily living attached at the hip. I grew up in a heteronormative family, but when I watched Sesame Street as a kid, I always assumed they were boyfriends. Didn’t see anything wrong it. Didn’t understand why anyone would. Sesame Street missed an opportunity here to not make a big deal out of something that isn’t a big deal at all, and in doing so, they said more with that adamant denial than if they’d said nothing at all.
I get the idea that society has an issue of men living together from the automatic assumption that most people have here, and many other places both online and in real life, saying that Bert and Ernie are gay because they are two men living together! That right there shows that many people are attributing their own ideas/beliefs/norms onto uninvolved, fictional characters that were created without that just to show that two people who are very different from each other personality wise can still be good enough friends to live together.
I could go on with this internet argument, but for the sake of my mental health, I’m backing away. The LGBTQ+ community needs the support of our whole society, Sesame Street included, and we do need to change deep-seated issues in our culture with toxic masculinity. Be kind to each other.
@ Laura I can concur with those differences. I never looked at any relationship on Sesame Street as sexual, it just seemed built for children, from a child’s perspective and mindset. The Muppet’s; however, were a slightly different animal. The Muppet’s seemed geared more towards adults but kids bought in to the puppetry, but the themes, ideas, concepts, and behavior are more adult. The Muppet Babies does a good job of being more child-like representation of relationships between characters; so that is clearly geared towards children.
I always assumed they were roommates, after all they appeared around the same time as The Odd Couple.
Since I am actually a member of the LGBT+ community, let me lay the inherent homophobia of this argument out for you: Bert and Ernie can be read as lovers for the same reason they can be read as super close friends or brothers or a myriad other human relationships. Because a homosexual relationship can be just as natural as any of those other options. Suggesting that somehow this specific connotation is problematic, that impressing the idea of “friends” or “brothers” is somehow different, despite the fact that they are ABSOLUTELY social constructs in and of themselves that are defined and interpreted by specific social behaviors, is homophobic. It implies that homosexuality is a unique categorical relationship separate from heterosexual, familial, platonic, and other friendships, when in reality, it’s just one more way that human beings can relate to each other. Morality has nothing to do with it. Even suggesting morality would have anything to do with whether or not a gay couple is portrayed is inherently homophobic.
Suggesting Bert and Ernie are a pair of f*cking twinks because they hug is homophobic and indicative of toxic masculine culture. Suggesting that two men may be lovers because they’ve lived with each other for decades, care deeply for one another despite their differences, and go through their days together, is not. That’s an entirely valid impression somebody might receive based on THEIR social and familial experiences, from people they know. The fact that Sesame Street went out of its way to dispute this particular reading is homophobic. It’s a slap in the face to kids who may have gay family members, for whom this would have been a perfectly acceptable impression. And more importantly, it’s homophobic because I damn well know they would never have done it if Bert and Ernie were opposite genders. Which leads us to the fact that Bert and Ernie’s setup would never be reproduced on the show as male and female specifically because the show would’ve assumed we would read them as boyfriend and girlfriend. And THAT isn’t toxic masculine culture at play. That’s presumptive heternormativity.
Edit: And the other reason I forgot to add that makes me angry about this is that the show has AN HIV POSITIVE CHARACTER. THEY HAVE AN HIV POSITIVE PUPPET BUT THEY DON’T WANT PEOPLE EVEN DISCUSSING GAY BERT AND ERNIE IN PASSING. What a giant f*ck you to the LGBT+ community to say “you don’t exist” but hey, the disease that literally ravaged your community for decades totally does.
I agree with you. Maybe this is too old school, but there were straight human relationships portrayed on Sesame Street. Gordon was there with his whole family. Luis and Maria even got married on the show. These were simple, child-friendly portrayals of relationships and family life. Bert and Ernie’s relationship can easily be read as the same kind of portrayal of of a gay couple. The only reason why we can’t even allude to Bert and Ernie being a couple without Sesame Workshop freaking out is there’s somehow still a sense that a referring to a gay relationship is inherently “inappropriate for children.” Despite many children being raised by queer couples and many more having friends and classmates who have same-sex parents. Kids aren’t naturally confused by same-sex couples! They have to be trained to find same-sex couples something worthy of note. I suppose Sesame Workshop just doesn’t want to alienate part of their audience, and I get that to an extent because funding is precarious out here and children’s programming is competitive. But they could have easily said nothing rather than actively refuting what this writer said. It’s the refutation that is offensive.
Actually, the muppet who is HIV positive is on the South African version of Sesame Street, called Takalani Sesame. Her name is Kami and she’s written as a five year old girl. I mean, yes, HIV is sexually transmitted, but in this case, that’s not how the character got it.
As for Bert and Ernie, it’s important to note that this writer started writing for them in 1984, whereas the show started in 1969. He didn’t create them, he only wrote scenes for them and he was one of many writers who did that. The actual personalities of Ernie and Bert came from Jim Henson and Frank Oz, who based them off their working relationship.
Now, all that being said, the relationship between Ernie and Bert is completely open to interpretation. You can see whatever you want there. It’s okay to see them as gay, it’s okay to see them as friends, and it’s okay to see them as cousins. You can see them how you want, but the only important thing is that they love each other and can get along with each other, in spite of their differences.
I am aware of what the character is. I am also aware of how HIV is spread since I have a biology degree. A child who has HIV was infected during childbirth because the mother was infected by a sexual partner. Period, end of story. Somewhere down the line somebody had sex and got it. But that’s not the actual point. The point is that Sesame Street is an American show, and in AMERICA, the AIDS crisis is inherently tied to LGBT+ history. It literally devastated an entire generation, and the government did *nothing* because the people dying were considered social deviants. It wasn’t until America woke up to the fact that it wasn’t just them gays dying of HIV infection that they did anything about it. Before that, nobody who mattered cared. Acting like that didn’t happen, that AIDS isn’t an intrinsic part of gay history, is a load of crap.
I honestly do not give a damn about how people personally interpret Ernie and Bert’s character. My irritation is with the implicit homophobia of how the topic is being handled, first by the producers of the show, and then my actual ire has been spurred by many of the comments here who are showing their ass without even realizing it.
Why did Sesame Street feel the need to release a statement about it? This has been a theory kicked around for years. It gets an official discussion that isn’t explicit and is entirely innocuous, and suddenly, it demands a massive denial?
(Answer: Homophobia. Because homosexuality still isn’t fully accepted by society and they’re afraid of backlash, so they’d rather be cowards than be neutral.)
Why do so many people on here keep bringing up morality? What does morality have to do with the presentation of a homosexual couple?
(Answer: Homophobia. You think of LGBT+ as deviant on some level or another, whether you admit you think of it or not.)
Why so much discussion about sexual content? How is thinking that Bert and Ernie are together inherently sexualized when no actual explicit content exist?
(Answer; Homophobia. You reduce LGBT+ people to their sexuality and can only frame their behaviors through that lens. Note that married heterosexual couples have shown up on the show and nobody said anything.)
(Love the person at the bottom who likened it to sexualizing children, by the way. Way to keep that pedophilia/LGBT+ conflation going!)
I don’t have the patience for the half-assed arguments. The only legitimate response to hearing people talk about Bert and Ernie as a potential couple is a shrug and, “Eh, maybe? Could go either way.” That’s it. That’s the end of the discussion. Because it warrants nothing further. Some people’s life experiences will make them read the situation as romantic because that’s what they know. Other people will read them as friends, others as family, and all of those groups should be able to coexist without somebody feeling the need to deny any of them. Because it’s not hurting anybody for people to impress their experiences on those characters that way. But it definitely hurts society to suggest that ideal is impossible and not acknowledge what social perception they’re impressing – particularly in the political climate we have right now.
I always thought they were brothers. Why do they have a sexual identity? They’re on a children’s show and they’re puppets.
Thanks for the clarification Captain Obvious at Sesame Street. Next you’ll reveal that Peanuts characters Marcie and Peppermint Patty are lesbians.
Scooby Doo and Shaggy got the munchies when they disembarked from the smoke-filled Spicoli van after burning the doobage.
Those crazy kids!
Patty may have been a straight or bi tomboy, but Marcie was DEF a lesbian. She had a huge crush on Patty!
Isn’t Peppermint Patty the one obsessed with Charlie Brown who doesn’t have a clue of her infatuation? I never got anything other than a straight vibe from her!
This brings me so much joy.
I reject that they are gay. No fashion style and Bert’s grooming, particularly his unibrow, is unacceptable:-)
good one!
I beg to differ! Bert has an obsession with Argyle socks! He may not be chic but he had very specific taste. There were Bert and Ernie couple portraits hanging on their walls, and they shared a room at night. I’m not sure why Sesame Street insists they are best friends. If they are not lovers, then it makes more sense that they are brothers instead of besties. My toddler is obsessed with Sesame Street, it’s the only thing on TV that catches and holds her attention (besides The Little Prince, for some reason she loves that movie too). We watch the Classics on HBO and our entire household knows every song word for word. There’s a Sesame Street song for every situation around my house lol. And we love Bert and especially Ernie!!
My kids love the little Prince!! I bet your little would LOVE room on the broom, and the stick too then. Short little beautiful claymation style movies 🙂
For what it’s worth, I have an old sesame Street treasury book, and it made me sad because Bert is really emotionally abusive in it, and Ernie gets verbally and emotionally destroyed by him constantly, which sets him up to be vulnerable in other situations with others who take advantage of him. I had never seen Bert like that and it made me sad.
Please stop calling out all of us tragically un-hip and unfashionable gays like this.
Nevermind
I KNEW it! This reminds me of when Rosie O came out.
They did not openly profess their muppet love so children of zealots could be free to enjoy their witty reparte and shenanigans. And guess what! It doesn’t matter one whit cause EVerybody loves these guys and there ain’t nothing they can do about it.
What? Oh, yeah. A bigot pass up a chance to spew hatred; I don’t know what I was thinking. Sodommites and they’re both going to meet the Teletubbies in Hades; got it.
What is the sesame street statement saying–to teach kids that they could be friends with people who are “very different” from themselves? I guess because one is orange with a round head and one is yellow with a conehead? Is that how they are different?
As a small child…I thought that two men (which is what I identified B & E as) living together meant they were TOGETHER…I just thought that when you were grown…you can be…TOGETHER with anybody you wanted…
Sigh…out of the minds…of babes….
I agree with Laura. Sesame Street is different from the Muppets in that the audience is kids (though I enjoyed it as a parent watching with them). I appreciate that the writer drew from his experience to depict a loving couple but he also says there was no agenda behind it. And that’s why it works – not to portray them as gay but to see the friendship and warmth between them.
Thanks MP 🙂
It’s a huge disservice to the wide array of human relationships to think that two men have to be gay to live together. Our culture can be so limiting.
Why would it matter if the audience is kids? Children’s shows have heterosexual couples all the time. Why would a gay couple be different?
According to Sesame Street they’re like the odd couple. They were polar opposite friends who lived in the same room in twin beds next to each other. Honestly that’s probably how they started out 40 years ago but even as a kid I thought they were probably gay.
Me too. Then when I started what it again with my much younger sister, yeah, it went from probably to, ‘yeah, they a couple’.
I guess I was super naive but I always thought they were brothers.
LOL Let me join you in that…brothers, cousins, friends…I guess as a kid I really didn’t invest much time thinking about relationship status…It’s not like Sesame Street was even focusing on heterosexual couples. Everyone was pretty much on their own. I don’t understand the big fuss now one way or another and I also don’t understand the “obviously they were gay”.
Still it is a big disservice what they are doing with that statement. No necessity for them to deny, what’s the big deal? As other said I find that very tone deaf to the challenges of the LGBT community. If the writer said he wrote them as a gay couple, then they are a gay couple.
Me too. And children. I just see this as another attempt in our society to sexualize children. Ick
Same, I thought they were little kids like me. Obviously children each have a sexual orientation but it would never have crossed my mind that Bert and Ernie were adults or having sexual relations with anyone.
Ohh, interesting. I never viewed them as related, but just friends.
I was going to write the same. I had to share a room with my sister growing up and like Bert and Ernie we drove each other crazy with our different personalities. So I always assumed they were brothers and not best friends or roommates or lovers or what have you. I didn’t learn what gay or lesbian meant until middle school (a summer at theater camp quickly taught me) so I didn’t even know that concept existed until I was exposed to it later in life. Therefore I never thought twice about Bert and Ernie. I didn’t really think about puppet relationships on Sesame Street and I didn’t overanalyze how Miss Piggy was low-key basically the equivalent of spousal abuse to Kermit.
Interesting how Sesame Workshop’s tweet is no longer available. I’m sure they rightly got chewed out by the LGBTQ community.
They’re an interracial gay couple tbh 🙂
And I’m not here for these “they’re muppets they don’t have orientations I don’t want romance in the funny storylines!” That’s absolutely gay erasure and ignores how meaningful that gay relationship might be to a child who is watching and has been questioning their orientation. Representation matters and I’m ignoring Sesame Streets bad take and missed opportunity here.
The problem is the underlying homophobia that marks homosexual relationships as somehow salacious or emotionally inferior to heterosexual couples. When really, the reason they read as boyfriends to so many of us is because *that’s what romantic relationships are.* They’re essentially a more intense level of friendship. Sometimes that includes sex, and sometimes it doesn’t, but pretending that friendship and romantic love aren’t intimately intertwined is ridiculous. That’s why so many people can watch these shows and read homosexual undertones into behaviors – because they’re *no different than if the characters were heterosexual.* Even for those who read them as brothers, the idea is the same – we read the familial affection there. There are a myriad ways to read that relationship because all human relationships have those overlapping aspects.
I wish people would take a step back and think about the implications of Sesame Street making an actual statement about this, rather than staying silent. How that makes LGBT+ people feel that even mild interpretation of homosexuality is seen as something that needs to be denied. Ask yourself – if Bert and Ernie were male and female, would there be such a rush to deny it? Would it be such a big deal if people read them as lovers or friends if they were heterosexual? Hearing people couch it in a narrative of people impressing socially restrictive roles on men and ignoring the very real restrictions and media erasure LGBT+ identities have to tolerate is so frustrating.
Frank Oz is claiming that he created the character of Bert, and that he is definitely not gay. Go check out the twitter conversations about this, he’s very very adamant about this!
I mean, I certainly don’t feel this way, as a gay person who also grew up wearing saddle shoes, but I guess Oz is allowed to be in denial of Bert if he chooses!
My guys and I had an entire conversation about the Scooby-Doo cartoons.
It was a slow day.
Freddie was gay.
Daphne was his bestest friend but not in a romantic way.
He was fit and handsome and wore an ascot or scarf or something for cryin’ out loud and he had perfect ’70s hair.
Shaggy was definitely a wake-and-baker. The guys reminded me of one episode where he exits the van and smoke pours out and Velma isn’t gay.
She’s smart so they made her unattractive and gave her an ugly name. Jerks.
Peppermint Patty is in love with, “Chuck”! Everybody knows that.
GAY ERASURE INDEED. Then wtf was with Kermit and Miss Piggy, huh?! My ass.
Let us have the gay Muppets!!!
P.s. my mom always called them “Bernie & Ert” and now that’s how I accidentally refer to them like every time.
Personally I’ve always interpreted them as friends. I remember thinking they were the “adults” on the show so they got to live together. It blew my mind and floored me when others thought they were gay roommates, but I figured to each his own.
Once art has been created it is up to the viewer to interpret the meaning for themselves. (Just ask the dude who drew Pepe the frog how little say an artist has in their own work!) I think it is important for children to learn to form their own ideas based on their own observations- this is the start of science, logic, reasoning, discretion etc. Give kids a chance to make up their own minds about E & B.
I loved the show as a kid. I watched the cast mourn Mr. Hooper. I watched Maria marry Luis though I felt she should have married Gordon instead because I liked them both so much. I wondered why people tolerated Oscar. I wondered why Bert couldn’t just lighten up and have fun like Ernie.
Yes, sometimes kids get it wrong. They may need some help to understand but let them try to figure it out for themselves first.
Exactly. That’s what actually angers me here – the fact that the producers actually went out of there way to say “no, that’s not it.” Why not? Why can’t it be that? For plenty of kids, this would be the exact same relationship playing out in their home between their parents. It’s hypocritical to say that such a reading of friends and brothers is natural but partners is not. People are going to impress on characters what is most relevant to their own experiences. Saying, “This experience isn’t valid” is impressing a social dialogue on them.
I must be really dumb because even as a child, I always thought they were brothers.
It boggles my mind when people imply that kids are too young to be seeing gay relationships. We introduce children to romance right from the start of their lives.
Citation: literally every Disney movie.
Such long responses to this story. Where do you people find the will? 😅
It reminds me of the Death Star / sub contractor conversation in Clerks.