The Church of Kermit

FILM:
The Muppet Movie - 1979
Written by Jack Burns & Jerry Juhl
Music by Paul Williams
Directed by James Frawley
Produced by Jim Henson


I am deeply in love with The Muppet Movie; possibly even more now that I'm an adult than I did as a child.

The whole thing is a great big love letter to Imagination -- to the Muse, the Creative Spirit, to the flame in one's soul, Divine Inspiration, Dreams -- or as it's most commonly referenced in the film's metaphor of choice, the Rainbow.

The story is nothing new.  In fact it's something of an homage to musical comedies of the early silver screen.  The writers targeted the physical action to the kids, but the verbal dialogue is filled with gags for adults -- you know, like good family entertainment used to do.  Kermit starts out in his swamp, a mere dreamer, and over the course of his journey to Hollywood, accumulates a collection of similarly misfit dreamers, thus becoming a believer.

 A puppet in a swamp... think about it.

Just listen to those lyrics.  How passionately they love their muse.  I expect that Jason Segel, who wrote 2011's The Muppets sat crying tears of joy to this song (and its finale reprise) as a child, as did I and many other creative children who learned to value that voice from within.  While the film makes kind of a referential joke about the Muppets being accepted into Hollywood simply for making it there, it emphasizes the journey.  Kermit, Fozzie, Rowlf, Gonzo, etc. all feel within them that they have something to offer, and that there must be someone out there who wants and needs to hear that.  Not only do they overcome adversity (in Kermit's case, life-threatening opposition from an all-too-aptly metaphoric businessman who demands that he sell-out frogkind for an easy buck), but they find each other.  Their group provides not only support, but fellow travelers who pursue the call of the muse and recognize it in each other.  They don't merely seek support for their own specific dreams, but find the vision together of a better world created by dreamers.  Imagination is not just a thing; it's a way.

I believe it's no coincidence that it's in a church.

Again, listen to these lyrics.  To create, we must first imagine.  To imagine, we must allow ourselves, we must practice the craft of imagination.  "Use it if you need it, Don't forget to feed it, Can you picture that?"  Our imaginations are great tools, but also living things that need to be nurtured.  The lesson is hidden beneath the guise of a cartoonish version of psychedelia, but it conveys a fundamental and sadly, somewhat societally subversive message.  Isn't the biggest hurdle to making a new world in our collective ability to see it?

I actually own an original copy of this poster.

There's definitely a generational perspective at work in The Muppet Movie.  Post-hippie era performers raised on a mid-century film & television culture influenced by early film and vaudeville created this entertainment.  There's a respect for the past and a hope for the future.  In other words, it could be seen as anathematic to the jaded internet generation that seemingly does neither.  In respect to its forebears, The Muppet Movie is loaded with cameo appearances from both its mentors and its peer class.  Rather than listing them, here's one of the movie posters by poster god Drew Struzan...


The Muppet Movie was dedicated to the memory of Edgar Bergen, whose appearance was filmed shortly before his passing.

So, okay, yeah, family entertainment about "being true to yourself" and "counting on your friends" are not exactly rare, but ones that do it without being cloyingly saccharine and ringing of hollow compromise are not.  The Muppet Movie MEANS that.  That is its story, not just its catalyst for selling a new toy franchise.  The creative spirit is in the message as much as it is in the DNA.  The creators did things that hadn't been done before, showed us sights we'd never seen before.  When you realize that the movie was essential a contemporary of Star Wars, it's small surprise that these two creative forces would find areas of overlap and cooperation, most especially in Yoda, a key spiritual guru to generations since.

Now, as much as I've raved, there is one major negative to the movie, and indeed to the Muppets in general...

Miss Piggy is a straight-up bitch.

Yeah I said it.  She's a violent rage-beast with a screaming case of narcissistic personality disorder.  No, not mere narcissism of the "oh, you're so vain, isn't that cute?" variety, but a full-blown pathological case.  Throughout the movie, she ditches her "friends" to take a solo shot at fame and glory, only to come back when she needs their help again to achieve her self-centered goals.  She demonstrates no particular talent other than (alleged) beauty, seeking fame simply for fame's sake but offering nothing.  She threatens and assaults anyone who crosses her -- regardless of whether the crossing is real or perceived.  She is a terrible porcine being.  But she's blonde, so I can see her being a successful host on the Fox News channel.

Drew Struzan rules your lesser poster art!

I've always hated Miss Piggy, and it's been a lifelong bafflement to me that some women identify with her so strongly.  Not lately, perhaps, but she was once a popular identifier amongst the Long Island Iced Tea receptionist set.  I guess her modern equivalent would be Snooki.  In the 2011 comeback film, Piggy is handled as slightly less pathological, and slightly more competent -- a much needed change.  Nevertheless, I would strongly counsel Kermit against marrying this lifelong abuser. 

The Muppets, much as I love them, badly need better female characters.

Moving right along, I personally believe that The Muppet Movie (Miss Piggy notwithstanding) is an essential element to responsible parenting.  It encourages creativity, promotes diversity (hm, perhaps outside of gender), illustrates the power of true friendship and demonstrates the benefits of a commitment to perfecting one's craft.  So many family entertainments affect a happiness that comes from ignorant denial of life's hardships.  The Muppet Movie acknowledges that there will be adversity and people who don't understand your muse, and believes in the power of following it anyway until it leads us home, and home is other people sharing the same dream.

Der flim iss okey dokey!

Purity Is An Agenda

I was a number of years back that my friend Mike was talking about some narrow-minded twit from the anime message boards he frequented who complained that manga & anime (show-off words for comics and animation produced in Japan) should not intermix with comics & animation styles from the West. Now, of course, this is pure foolishness. The origins of Japanese comics and animation are tied very closely to direct American influences. Comics took off in Japan after World War II as a result of Japanese children being exposed to American comics by servicemen stationed there. The so-called "God of Comics" in Japan, Osamu Tezuka, was primarily influenced by Disney and Fleisher studio cartoons, and one would be hard pressed to find an artist in Japan who wasn't influenced by Tezuka, or at least someone who was. Anyway, long rant made short, the idea that American and Japanese comics and animation should not influence each other is so asinine that I'm kind of embarrassed to have validated it this much by even addressing it seriously.

What I'm actually writing about is the kind of though behind such wrong-minded assertions. Like I said, this originally came up a couple years ago, and it's been on my mind intermittently ever since then, and the conclusion I've come to is...


Purity is an agenda.

More specifically, attempts -- almost ANY attempt -- to keep something "pure" denotes the presence of an agenda -- almost always -- to impose control. It is my further contention that reference to purity should be met with caution and/or mistrust, and that purity itself is, in fact, a wrong thing.

Let us take the anime example. Now there are few people on planet Earth more xenophobic than the Japanese (but hang on, because I'll get around to the ones who are), but without the external cultural influence of American comics and cartoons, there very well might not even BE such a thriving and ubiquitous manga and anime industry in Japan, or, at the very least, not one we would recognize.

The flipside of that coin is that, after the comics crash of the mid-90s (following the glut of trash in the early-90s) both Japanese-influenced American artists, and Japanese comics translated into English, were a large part of keeping the floundering industry afloat. In the case of manga, comics gained a strong female following, which had long eluded "pure" (i.e. superhero) American approaches to comics.

So what does it profit the aficionado to rail against the inevitable winds of change, hoping to keep his beloved artform "pure" and self-replicating? Well, for one, it allows the most fannish of fans to keep the bounds of their chosen medium finite. If new works can only be created following strict limitations, then the fan can enjoy the certainty that he knows the precise limits and definition of the medium. He knows exactly where it begins and ends, and in so doing, can feel empowered by the knowledge, in control of it, utterly possessing the object of his affection. Furthermore, he wants this art to remain exactly as he has known it to be when he first encountered it. By attempting to hold this item in the past, in the place he once loved it, he is trying to hold himself in the past, denying himself the opportunity to grow and evolve alongside the particular medium in question. If he allows himself to grow as the medium grows and takes on new influences and discovers new things to say, his own view might be opened up, and he might grow away from this comforting relationship, in time. This is Life, and the purist fears its uncertainty.

The loss of purity spawns the seeds of Progress.

If that sounds vaguely sexual, then perhaps I'm being too vague. The intermingling of energies is the stuff of Life. Much as we humans wouldn't exist if our biological parents hadn't lost their "purity," cultures wouldn't grow and thrive without soiling the sheets of the creative norms.

We wouldn't have rock and roll if someone hadn't muddied the purity of blues and country music. We wouldn't have had country music in the first place, if someone hadn't violated the virtue of pure Irish fiddle music at some point. I'm no musical historian, but I know that we wouldn't have most (if not all) of what we have today, and what we'll have tomorrow, if someone hadn't mucked up the moons-old tradition of banging two rocks together by introducing the hollow log to the mix. Take your favorite medium and apply this principle as appropriate.

So far, I've mostly talked about art, but I believe that it applies to purity in virtually all areas of life. Purity sounds like a good and respectable thing, but it still means somebody is trying to maintain control. Of course, one of the most obvious and notorious "purity" agendas is racial/cultural/religious. Many of the same control motives apply here. By keeping races/cultures/religions anchored in the simple form that the individual first digested it as a child, the individual doesn't have to grow or confront challenging and uncomfortable questions. Further, it allows those who hold the reigns of that institution to continue to exert their primacy over those who would allow themselves to consider questions of the finer points. This would be the George W. Bush approach; the facts don't matter, as long as you commit to an unwavering decision. Ironically, we know scientifically that the merging of genetic strains provides an opportunity to make the species stronger.

And finally, of course, there's the sexual purity agenda, which is enforced by the religious agenda, although it actually cuts across cultural lines. The heightened value placed on virginity -- and of course this means female virginity in particular -- is part and parcel of male domination of women. Whether it's maintaining the "precious maidenhead" until marriage, to know that no one else has been breeding your prize heifer, or the premium paid for virgins in brothels, demonstrated in its most ritualized form in the mizuage ceremony for the auctioning off of an oiran's (the courtesan precursors to the geisha) virginity to the highest (and hopefully most socially advantageous) bidder. Transculturally, there is no premium placed on male virginity (BELIEVE ME -- am I RIGHT, fellas?), and male status is improved by planting his seed in any field that hasn't been guarded against him. Women, however, aren't expected to enjoy sex or have any basis for comparison beyond the man she "loves, honors and obeys." This topic has been considered more thoroughly by finer minds than mine, so I'm just going to leave it at that.

Life is impure. I know we'd all like it to be a little more simple, but that doesn't mean we should be simple-minded and unwilling to grow in ourselves and our appreciation for the wondrous variety in the universe.


Crosspost Classic! 8.22.2007