The Muppets are a great example of this. When puppets are done right (and they don't get any more "right" than the Muppets) on TV, they can seem very real. Even if everyone knows they're not. Sesame Street had good puppets too -- but of course they are very similar to Muppets and were under the supervison of Jim Henson. I'm not sure if the Sesame Street characters are officially known as "Muppets," but they're close enough. Mr. Rogers' puppets were quite obviously fake. As I pointed out in the other thread, their mouths didn't even move, which was a little disturbing to me.

But I guess the thing about Mr. Rogers is that he clearly drew a line between what was real and what was make-believe. We always knew that as soon as the trolley went through the tunnel, the show would have a "fake part." And then when the trolley came by again, it returned us to "reality." I don't remember ever seeing Mr. Rogers and a puppet together, unless there was an episode on puppetry -- and I'm not sure he would have shown one of the Land of Make-Believe puppets to explain it all to children. Maybe I'm wrong; I haven't seen every episode. But my point is that these set boundaries between real and make-believe are what made Mr. Rogers special. Sesame Street didn't draw these lines; The human characters interacted with the puppets as if they were as real as themeselves, and never suggested that it was imaginary. It was presented as real. Of course, even as I kid I wasn't naive enough to think that Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch were really alive, and knowing that negated the reality of the show for me. Real things presented as "real" and fake things presented as "fake" are good. Fake things presented as "real" are bad -- or they were to me as I was growing up, anyway. At least with Mr. Rogers' show, I had the impression that some parts were real and some parts were fake, and they were presented as such.

I don't think there's a child anywhere who thinks puppets on TV are real people. But when kids get wrapped up in the story, the reality of the situation seems to slip away from them, being replaced by the excitement of the plot. Of course, they can always remind themselves that the puppets are fake, but unless they're consciously thinking about it, their minds will be wholly focused on the drama. That's my theory, anyhow. I think the capacity to think about multiple things simultaneously develops with age.

At any rate, children know that puppets aren't real. But their imagination really gets captured when they see convincing perfomances by puppets. This is why Muppets are so popular. Nobody thinks the Muppets are alive, but there's something magical that the Muppet crew can do to give that illusion of reality. We know in our minds that we're being fooled, but we like it because the mastery of the Muppeteers is so cool. At least this is why *I* like the Muppets. The integration between the puppet world and the human world is always so perfect in a Muppet presentation. Of course, I'm a "how did they do that?" kind of person, so maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way.

I love Muppets, and I watched Sesame Street every day as a kid. Just because it seemed fake to me didn't mean that I couldn't enjoy it. But at that time I thought Mr. Rogers' show was so great because it appeared so much more real. I thought he really lived in that house, and I thought Mr. McFeely was the real delivery guy. I thought Picture-Picture was a real device and asked my parents to buy me one. I even panicked, if only a little bit, when Mr. Rogers forgot to feed the fish. Things like this didn't seem so consequential in Sesame Street, because I *knew* that show wasn't real. Kudos to Mr. Rogers for making a TV show so believable.

-useless"He sure had ME duped"ness