So I have two takes on this: 1) This comes directly from a friend, whose daughter works in the entertainment department at Sesame Place (although not as Rosita) - to summarize:
- The performer (male) playing Rosita is black, so unless he's self-hating, it's unlikely the incident was racially motivated. - There was a woman who asked him to hold her baby. That's against policy - hence the waive-off. - This was happening in the middle of a parade, and he had to hit his mark for choreography that was coming up. Characters must be on the floats at a certain time for them to progress down the parade route. 2) Having worked at a theme park myself (albeit not in costume), I have some idea of the narrow field of vision these costumed characters actually have. Given what we see in Mac's video, it's entirely possible that "Rosita" didn't even see the kids hovering just in front of her. Either way, this is ridiculous. There are so many opportunities for character interactions, to say this one moment broke your kid to the point that you need to lawyer up? Ugh. On Tuesday, July 19, 2022 at 2:16:58 PM UTC-4 Mark Jeffries wrote: > A Twitter video from Black "digital strategist" Leslie Mac showing the > costumed "Sesame Street" Latina Muppet character Rosita waving off Mac's > 4th birthday-celebrating daughter and her Black friend after high-fiving > white kids at Sesame Place, the suburban Philadelphia theme park licensed > by Sea World from Sesame Workshop, has received the predictable hubbub from > the tweetybox, including similar videos from others and celeb comments from > former Destiny's Child Kelly Rowland and Audra McDonald--the park says that > the wave-off is a symbol indicating a policy that characters cannot hold on > to kids for photo taking and invited the Mac family for a private > meet-and-greet, Mac says that the invitation never happened and accused > them of lying, Sesame Workshop says that they are asking the park to > initiate anti-racism training for employees: > > > https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/sesame-place-viral-video-1235182473/ > > And I assume the rightwing channels are having a field day with this. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/26257c4a-741c-4f0f-9aac-997988de2f79n%40googlegroups.com.
