Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 11:01 pm
For some reason "Saying Goodbye" from The Muppets Take Manhattan popped into my head earlier today and won't dislodge itself. I was young but I remember seeing this movie on the big screen when it came out. I was raised in Mr Rogers and Sesame Street, but remember most the Muppets movies (and Muppet Babies and Fraggle Rock). The Muppet Movie was the first time I ever saw Bob Hope onscreen (as the ice cream seller), The Great Muppet Caper my first Charles Grodin movie. My favorite song when small (I mean pre-school age) was Rainbow Connection. I loved Labyrinth more than Dark Crystal (the Steksis scared the hell out of me and, even at a young age on my part, I enjoyed watching Jennifer Connelly more than a muppet).
Why bring this all up here? Because the Muppets are a lot more special to me than I ever realized. And with hindsight, they were a lot more sophisticated than I was aware at the time. Much as Brad Bird has been romping around these past few months talking about how animation isn't a genre but a tool and how animation directors are always overlooked, I think Jim Henson is an overlooked genius. I know there are places to go for muppet-love on the internet, and since I started this with a rambling sample of my personal love for Henson's work it looks like that is the tone I'm trying to set here but it is not. I wanted to get it out of the way and to focus a conversation on
How Henson and his Muppets' films and television shows are worthy of a critical analysis ala Kubrick or Kurosawa while leaving emotional baggage at the door.
But can that be done? (consider this a metaquestion about all analysis)
The songs of the Muppet films are what draw my memory to the specific scenes but I doubt that I could remember specific dialogue. What is it about the musical choices that make them stand out above other films? THe songs are more whimsical, more poignant, more emotional than in most movie musicals.
Why are we attached to pieces of felt animated by a hand or a rod? Is Kermit the everyman of the late 20th century that Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse were supposed to be for an earlier generation? Do we as an audience place ourselves in the cypher of Kermit and experience his trials and tribulations and exultations for ourselves? Or do some people empathize more with Miss Piggy or with Gonzo or Fozzie?
What genre do these films belong to? Are the action/adventure or dramas or musicals or comedies? Are they only children/family films, as if that is a genre unto itself? Is it fair to lump them with animated films that more often than not follow Disney's pattern of main character, talking animal sidekick, a villain and six songs? Would The Great Muppet Caper, for example, hold up against any other heist film if it didn't star felt but real people?
If Jim Henson was the creative genius behind the Muppets, what about others like Frank Oz, who also directed, produced, "animated," voiced, and created some of the most memorable characters, or Brian Henson, who is trying to keep the quality of his father's work alive? Where do the many others not mentioned figure into the Henson/Muppet universe, especially when it is as diverse of Big Bird and Yoda, Storyteller and Farscape, Fraggle Rock and MirrorMask, the upcoming Astro Boy and Hitchhiker's Guide?
Hearing "Mah-Na Mah-Na" being used to advertise diet-added-flavor-carbonated beverage made me more irritated than seeing "I'm Spartacus" used for a rival company. Why am I protective of The Muppets more so than Kubrick? I guess, all in all, they seem to get no respect except from the rabid OCD fanfolk who's brethren worship at the feet of Lucas, Tolkien, Roddenberry, comics, et al. I am not nor ever have been diagnosed with OCD, am meerly a life-long fan, and yet they have affected me. Where do the Muppets and Jim Henson stand in the realm of film and film fans? (I wonder too where they stand with puppeteers across the world, but have no clue about that scene and wouldn't know where to ask). Thanks for reading this (if you really have) and please share. So it goes.
Why bring this all up here? Because the Muppets are a lot more special to me than I ever realized. And with hindsight, they were a lot more sophisticated than I was aware at the time. Much as Brad Bird has been romping around these past few months talking about how animation isn't a genre but a tool and how animation directors are always overlooked, I think Jim Henson is an overlooked genius. I know there are places to go for muppet-love on the internet, and since I started this with a rambling sample of my personal love for Henson's work it looks like that is the tone I'm trying to set here but it is not. I wanted to get it out of the way and to focus a conversation on
How Henson and his Muppets' films and television shows are worthy of a critical analysis ala Kubrick or Kurosawa while leaving emotional baggage at the door.
But can that be done? (consider this a metaquestion about all analysis)
The songs of the Muppet films are what draw my memory to the specific scenes but I doubt that I could remember specific dialogue. What is it about the musical choices that make them stand out above other films? THe songs are more whimsical, more poignant, more emotional than in most movie musicals.
Why are we attached to pieces of felt animated by a hand or a rod? Is Kermit the everyman of the late 20th century that Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse were supposed to be for an earlier generation? Do we as an audience place ourselves in the cypher of Kermit and experience his trials and tribulations and exultations for ourselves? Or do some people empathize more with Miss Piggy or with Gonzo or Fozzie?
What genre do these films belong to? Are the action/adventure or dramas or musicals or comedies? Are they only children/family films, as if that is a genre unto itself? Is it fair to lump them with animated films that more often than not follow Disney's pattern of main character, talking animal sidekick, a villain and six songs? Would The Great Muppet Caper, for example, hold up against any other heist film if it didn't star felt but real people?
If Jim Henson was the creative genius behind the Muppets, what about others like Frank Oz, who also directed, produced, "animated," voiced, and created some of the most memorable characters, or Brian Henson, who is trying to keep the quality of his father's work alive? Where do the many others not mentioned figure into the Henson/Muppet universe, especially when it is as diverse of Big Bird and Yoda, Storyteller and Farscape, Fraggle Rock and MirrorMask, the upcoming Astro Boy and Hitchhiker's Guide?
Hearing "Mah-Na Mah-Na" being used to advertise diet-added-flavor-carbonated beverage made me more irritated than seeing "I'm Spartacus" used for a rival company. Why am I protective of The Muppets more so than Kubrick? I guess, all in all, they seem to get no respect except from the rabid OCD fanfolk who's brethren worship at the feet of Lucas, Tolkien, Roddenberry, comics, et al. I am not nor ever have been diagnosed with OCD, am meerly a life-long fan, and yet they have affected me. Where do the Muppets and Jim Henson stand in the realm of film and film fans? (I wonder too where they stand with puppeteers across the world, but have no clue about that scene and wouldn't know where to ask). Thanks for reading this (if you really have) and please share. So it goes.
