ANGRY BERT!

By: Helene Pederstad

Bert is one out of two Muppet characters that have appeared together since 1969 on numerous skits on the popular U.S. children television show Sesame Street.  Bert and his friend Ernie are have quite unique personalities, and the characters were originally intended to show that different people also could be friends. Bert was based on the shape and size of a banana, and is known for his expressive eyebrows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_and_Ernie. One other characteristic about Bert is that he easily gets annoyed or angry with his friend Bert. There is especially one skit of the two Muppets where Ernie wants Bert to pretend that he is angry because he thinks Bert is really good at it. 

 Of course it has later been speculations about whether or not the two characters are homosexual, because they “share the same bedroom and argue frequently”, but the producers of Sesame Street made an official statement that they “do not have a sexual orientation”. I can see why Bert would be an angry about that…

It was hard to track down how ‘Angry Bert’ first became popular, but it was clear that this character has been around and played with for a very long time. The video of Bert being angry appears on Television in 1971, long before Internet and YouTube. http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_0267. This particular video posted in 2011 doesn’t have that many views on YouTube, but it is the only movie posted on YouTube with both of the words ‘Bert’ and ‘Angry’ in its title. I found several t-shirts with Angry Bert, like the one on this page: http://www.threadless.com/submission/346963/Angry_Bert

Google Insights for Search also doesn’t have interesting numbers of the search for ‘Angry Bert’, but while doing research about Angry Bert I came across the term ‘Bert is Evil’.

In 1997, the parody website “Bert is Evil”, displayed Bert as an evil character being involved in crimes like the J.F.K. assassination. Another link was made in the aftermath of September 11^th (2001) between Bert and Osama Bin Laden. On anti-US posters made by protesters in Bangladesh, there were pictures of Bin Laden along side Bert, and the pictures have been connected to the original Bert is Evil website.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_and_Ernie. Many news reporters, both legit and amateurs, picked this up and posted the picture all over the web. While some web pages made fun of this whole incident, BBC and others were more concerned with copyright issues. The producers of Sesame Street was outraged explaining that "Sesame Street has always stood for mutual respect and understanding,". The creator of the original Bert is Evil site claimed that he had nothing to do with the image, but later decided to take down the site.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1594600.stm. Others have continued to develope Bert is Evil web pages, like http://www.bertisevil.tv/. 

Google insight for "Bert is angry"

The Evil Bert phenomenon was later picked up by other humorists: 

News about Bert:

Bert has a major role in the Sesame Street movie called “Follow that Bird”. I guess for that and other reasons, Angry Bert has been associated with Angry Birds. The amateur news blog ‘The Malingo Sentinel’ reported a scandal on Sesame Street: “Bert Admits to Fathering Yellow Angry Bird”. http://malignosentinel.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/scandal-on-sesame-street-bert-admits-to-fathering-yellow-angry-bird/ (Posted on June 21^st 2011).

These posters also show how Bert has been linked to the angry birds (see top photo).