Hinrich Sachs
The children's programme ‘Sesame Street’ presents itself – on its website, for example – as a ‘non-profit educational organization.’ In reality, though, it is a big company that has put in place a sophisticated franchising system and generates income through the profit-making sale of rights to adapt characters to different cultural environments in different countries, such as Mexico, South Africa, Egypt, or Russia. The South African character ‘Kami’ is HIV-positive, whilst Xiao Mei Zhi, the Chinese character, is a female computer genius. Sesame Street's national characters reflect national conditions, but remain copyrighted items. Kami, Cookie-monster, Bert und Ernie (all together now...) was produced by Marres, Maastricht. Hinrich Sachs, Khokha, Cookie-monster and Xiao Mei Zhi spoke on Saturday 25th of June in the series of presentations.