Big Bird in China

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Movie
Original title Big Bird in China
Country of production People's Republic of China , United States
original language English
Publishing year 1983
length 75 minutes
Rod
Director Jon Stone
script Jon Stone, Joseph A. Bailey , Caroll Spinney
production Kuo Bao-Xiang , Xu Ja-Cha , David Liu
music Dick dear
cut Ken Gutstein
occupation

Big Bird in China is a children's film by Jon Stone , which was made in 1983 in cooperation with the US film production company Children's Television Workshop and the Chinese state television company China Central Television . The film is based on the television series Sesame Street and is the first Sesame Street special to be set and filmed outside the United States.

action

Big Bird is in a Chinatown , where he discovers an old document with the mythical Fenghuang bird on it at a dealer . The trader explains that the bird lives in China and is difficult to find. You have to go to four places shown on the script, where the Monkey King Sun Wukong gives tips on how to find Fenghuang. Big Bird then travels to China in a small boat with the dog Barkley. Once there, they meet the girl Xiao Foo, who accompanies them on their journey. The way leads them to Beijing and to sights such as the Great Wall of China or Mao Zedong's mausoleum , at each of the stations they meet the monkey king who helps them until they find Fenghuang. On the way they meet schoolchildren or dancers and learn the duck dance and a song to learn Chinese words. In the end, they learn from Fenghuang that the stations they went through were a plan of his so that Big Bird could find out everything about China, after which they return home.

In a subplot, Oscar the Grouch also tries to get to China by digging his way there from his garbage can. When he finally arrived, he found the country boring and returned immediately.

background

In his memoir, the Big Bird player Caroll Spinney describes how he came up with the idea for a Sesame Street special in China. His first stay there was in 1979 as part of a TV show that Bob Hope shot in China, where various vaudeville artists and musicians performed and Big Bird also had an appearance. This appearance inspired him to initiate a Sesame Street show from this country. In the same year as the film premiered on NBC , a children's book of the same name was also released under the direction of Jon Stone .

reception

Reviews of the film after its premiere in May 1983 were mostly critical. While Arthur Unger in The Christian Science Monitor is content to state that Big Bird is only tolerable in moderation, Tom Shales in The Washington Post notes that both the Bob Hope show and Big Bird in China made the impression on viewers , the main activity in China would be the performance of folk dances. In addition, Ronald Reagan has never been to China, while Big Bird has been to China twice, which could give the impression that Big Bird is some kind of semi-official representative of the State Department . Richard Stengle criticizes in The Time that the film in no way reflects contemporary China and fades out normalities such as cities full of cyclists in favor of a mythical China. In addition, the film often shows pictures of children who appear frightened at the sight of the grotesque appearance of the Big Bird.

Awards

Big Bird in China was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program at the 1983 Primetime Emmy Awards . The film was nominated in the Outstanding Video Tape Editing - Limited Series or Special category.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Caroll Spinney, Jason Milligan: The Wisdom of Big Bird (and the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch): Lessons from a Life in Feathers. Random House Publishing Group, 2003. ISBN 0375507817
  2. ↑ Jon Stone: Big Bird in China . Random House, 1983. ISBN 0394856457
  3. ↑ Arthur Unger in The Christian Science Monitor , May 27, 1983.
  4. ↑ Tom Shales in The Washington Post , May 28, 1983.
  5. ↑ Richard Stengle: Innocent Abroad, With Feathers . In: Time , May 30, 1983.
  6. ↑ 35th Emmy Awards ( Memento from February 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive )