Obviously this is an adorable bit but I'm so struck by how different this is from so many little kid shows today like.......the muted colors. no background noise. no sound effects. you can literally hear Jim Henson breathing between his lines. Ernie is talking very slowly, meandering, letting the kids digest the info. it's a full minute before you get the payoff of it all. man
If people were too mean to you when you were growing up, a newborn animal will materialize inside your brain and it’s so so scared and shivering and it will stay there for years. Decades, even. And whenever you say something kind of weird but true to your heart the animal will tell you “Noo! You can’t say that! If you say that, everyone will hate you!”. The animal means well. It’s so so small and everything is so scary for them and it’s just trying to protect you. But listen to me. Listen to me. Whenever this happens, you can’t do what the animal says. You can’t. If you do, you’ll become as scared as the animal. You have to keep saying weird shit. You have to keep doing things the animal wouldn’t approve of. If you do enough things that scare the animal, maybe one day it’ll go to sleep.
Not to be a teacher on main but a lot of people in the "video essay" community need a reminder on what an essay is. an ESSAY is NOT an explainer, an account of an investigation, or a summary of information. It certainly can involve those things. However, an essay is an argument for a particular idea backed up with analysis and evidence that supports that point of view. "the themes of Barbie, explained" is not really an essay. "how the themes of Barbie reinforce gender essentialism" is an essay. "the story behind this cooky subculture" is not essay. "how capitalism co-opted this subculture" is an essay. "all the ways Oppenheimer isn't historically accurate" isn't an essay. "here's why I think Oppenheimer is about the cult of individualism" is an essay. "I spoke to all these people about this topic and here's what they all said" isn't an essay. "I investigated this topic, spoke to these people, and here's how what they said supports my thesis" is an essay. At its most basic level, an essay answers the question of "why the fuck should you care?" at every point. It doesn't get bogged down in context or summarisation. A lot of "video essays" are not really essays they're just people saying, "I found this thing and I wanna show you the thing" and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not an essay. Just because a video goes for longer than 5 minutes, doesn't mean it's an essay!!! I'm kinda annoyed at how the essay as a form is getting lost. A lot of people calling themselves video essayists are not actually making essays and as an essay enjoyer I am annoyed by this and think people need to call a long form video a long form video rather than calling all of them essays!!