Street Smart: Lessons from a TV Icon Review – ‘Tía’ Maria

Street Smart: Lessons from a TV Icon
(USA, 84 min.)
Dir. Ernie Bustamante
Prod. Steve Canals, Maor Azran

 

For all the songs, jingles, and life lessons she shared as Maria, TV icon Sonia Manzano finds a moment of reflection with a quote not from Sesame Street, but from a Martin Scorsese film. As Manzano reflects upon taking the role of Maria on Sesame Street and wrestling with the responsibility of being a Latina lead on national TV at a time when very few People of Colour had roles of any significance on the airwaves, she cites a line from The Color of Money. “He’s got to learn how to be himself – but on purpose,” Manzano says, drawing upon Fast Eddie Felson’s observation.

Being herself, but on purpose, explains why Manzano entertained and educated generations of kids on Sesame Street. The documentary Street Smart: Lessons from a TV Icon gives Manzano her flowers by sharing how she blew the doors open for onscreen representation by acting intentionally with Maria. This straightforward celebration of the star considers what it means to put one’s platform to good use. It’s also an important reminder about the power of representation and the necessity of giving generations of audiences the chance to see themselves reflected on screen. At a time when major players in the media landscape are merging and pledges to diversity, equity, and inclusion are disappearing, there’s a lot to learn from Manzano’s story.

This focus greatly helps Street Smart amid a respectable field of Sesame Street documentaries. Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and Elmo have all had their documentaries, while the show itself was fêted in 2021. Now it’s Maria’s turn. Additionally, and somewhat amusingly, Street Smart adds to the recent swell of Godspell nostalgia, as Manzano was juggling her performance in the Stephen Schwartz musical while taping Sesame Street during the daytime. The film offers a touching look back at Manzano’s legacy as a children’s TV performer, but it also illuminates her work as a writer on Sesame Street, which includes a whopping fifteen Daytime Emmy wins plus a Lifetime Achievement honour, through to her more recent work with the animated series Alma’s Way.

Director Ernie Bustamante, in his feature debut, invites Manzano to tell her life’s story through a series of direct-address interviews. Manzano’s career of speaking to children through the television ensures that Street Smart articulates its message with clarity, but also an upbeat tempo. She sets the scene for an average childhood growing up in a working class family in the Bronx. Her Puerto Rican parents, she explains, had an on/off relationship that meant the family moved all over, but always stayed in the Bronx. This anecdote comes into play throughout the story as Manzano shares how her television was often her best babysitter. When she started bringing Maria to life, she could easily imagine being the child on the receiving end of the message.

Her story imparts a lesson of hard work, being bold, and taking chances. She shares how teachers and eventually casting directors and directors would underestimate her abilities simply because she’s Latina. But that’s where her titular street smarts kicked in. Manzano tells how she would often play against expectations and use the element of surprise to overshadow any blind spots in her resume or limitations in her skill-set. Her voice, for one, notably falls into the latter category. She’s quite funny when she recalls how her mother matter-of-factly chirped her limited vocal range. Alternatively, Stephen Schwartz shares how he simply adapted Manzano’s tunes for Godspell to her limited vocal register. The joke, Manzano reveals, is that the person who hired her for Sesame Street never asked her to demonstrate her singing chops, assuming that her off-Broadway credits were evidence of a great voice.

Other talking heads appear throughout the documentary to echo how Manzano was the tía to generations of kids through her lively and reassuring presence. Notable voices include Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a fellow Sonia from the Bronx who relates to many of Manzano’s experiences regarding access, representation, and inclusion. The film often serves the bigger picture best when it focuses on these talking points, as the more general looks behind the scenes of Sesame Street often revisit familiar material.

For example, Street Smart explores Maria’s relationship to the young audience with the episode about the death of the character Mr. Hooper. Manzano explains how the actor who portrayed Mr. Hooper, Will Lee, died unexpectedly. Instead of taking the convenient alternative of recasting the role or explaining his absence with a throwaway line about the character moving away, Manzano notes that the Sesame Street team respected and trusted children’s intelligence by using the death of a friend as a teachable moment. As archival clips from Sesame Street show Manzano shedding real tears as she tells Big Bird about the loss of a neighbourhood fixture, the doc proves very moving, if somewhat repetitive as this milestone serves as a key narrative beat in nearly every other Sesame Street doc.

However, there’s also something striking to that sense of déjà vu. If Street Smart echoes previous Sesame Street docs, there’s an underlying observation that Hollywood struggles to change even as performers like Manzano were making waves on public television. There’s no fair reason why Maria only gets a documentary of her own now when docs about individual puppeteers on the show came out well over a decade ago. Those subjects obviously merit their doc portraits, but the lag speaks to the double standards to which women of colour continue to be held. Even at 75, Manzano’s still teaching us affordable lessons. After learning to play Maria with a purpose, she carries that duty throughout daily life.

Street Smart: Lessons from a TV Icon screens at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Dec. 10 as part of the Doc Soup series. It has an encore screening on Jan. 10.

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