Voice of Change

Last week a man came forward alleging an inappropriate relationship with Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash. However the accuser, who is described as a 'struggling model', later recanted his statement after reportedly coming to a settlement. At that point most people were willing to look the other way and chalked the incident up to the price of fame. But then a second man came forward with similar claims. Since once may be an accident but twice is a trend that was enough for Disney and PBS, and today Clash 'resigned' from "Sesame Street". It's been kind of strange to see the mixed reaction on the internet. Of course, there are fans out there who see this incident as nothing more than people trying to get rich through a frivolous lawsuit. But in the wake of the Penn State scandal people have begun to look at accusations like this with a much more serious eye. In their minds where there is smoke there is fire and the police should get involved, not just civil lawyers. As I so often do when these type of news stories break my personal plan is to slowly back away from anyone who wants to talk about it, because I don't know the people involved and don't want to rush to judgement until more of the facts roll in. It makes me a bad editorial writer, but I feel like it makes me a better man.

So, leaving that part of the story alone, the other aspect of this story people have been talking about is what affect this is going to have on the children. In the time between when I stopped watching "Sesame Street" back in the early '80s and the next generation of my family came along in the late '00s the show became all about Elmo. (I still think his name is a result of hours of testing to see what name kids could say from the earliest age. There are kids who can't say 'hi' who know how to say 'Elmo'.) Those kids won't understand what happened - all they know is they love Elmo and are worried he is going away. I saw several websites today which had articles about how parents should approach this subject with their kids. As you would expect from the internet, the advice ranged from being completely honest to totally ignoring the situation. Well, I have good news for those parents who were dreading that talk: I really don't think they will have to have that conversation. Much like last week's story which claimed Hostess was going to be shut down only to have it come out that the recipe would be sold to another company and Twinkie production would most likely continue, I highly doubt Elmo is going anywhere.

There is no doubt that Elmo is a beloved character to children across the world. But, everyone needs to remember he is just a collection of felt and wire that can be operated by any human and voice actors are incredibly replaceable. Unlike when trying to cast a live actor to fill a role which forces you to find a person who closely resembles the previous actor, when attempting to switch voice actors all you have to do is sound like the character. I'm willing to bet that until all these allegations started flying around most people wouldn't have had the slightest idea what the person behind Elmo's voice looked like. Heck, sometimes you don't even need to sounds that much like them. You show me a beloved children's character that has been around for more than 10 years and I will show you a character which has been played by multiple voice actors. Even Big Bird, who held down the spot as most popular character on "Sesame Street" until Elmo came along, had his voice change along the way. Mickey Mouse, Porky Pig, Kermit the Frog - all of them are currently being played by people who didn't originally have the role. They sound a little off at first, but before too long it goes the other way and hearing the original actor sounds strange.

If you need any more proof that Elmo is probably sticking around, look to the case of Gilbert Gottfried - he was fired as the voice of the Aflac duck after Tweeting some inappropriate jokes following the Japanese tsunami and the company decided to distance themselves from him by bringing in someone who was essentially doing a Gilbert Gottfried impression. That was their chance to go in a totally different direction and they didn't do it. If a company like Aflac thought it was that important to maintain one voice for a character who just says one word and which hasn't had 1/100th the impact of a children's start like Elmo than it is a pretty safe bet that auditions are already underway to find a suitable replacement to keep "Elmo's World" chugging along. Not to mention this will be a business decision. There is too much money left to be made and I just can't see Disney letting it go to waste. Even if Kevin Clash is the one holding the copyrights to Elmo it would be in his best interest to let the character keep stamping his name on toys. At this point if they could find someone who sounded enough like Elmo they would train them on how to be a puppeteer. I'm always saying that people in Hollywood need to remember that people are rarely tuning in to see them - they want the characters. Actors leave shows all the time and the show just keep chugging along. Why should the guys behind the puppets be exempt from that?