Performer as “parent”; character as “child”–an extended metaphor

September 2, 2017September 24, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: disney, fraggle rock, henson family, intertextuality, jim henson, kermit, matt vogel, music, original disney deal, sesame street, steve whitmire, the schism, wembley 15 Comments

“How many of you are parents? If you are, then in all likelihood, you view your children as your most important ‘creations’, your ultimate concern, your life’s work. It doesn’t matter how old they get, or if they are adopted, you’re still going to do all that you can to protect them forever, to give them a safe place to grow and be themselves. That’s how I view the Muppets.”
–Steve Whitmire, “Acceptance, Fear & Hope” (August 1, 2017)

Even for those of us who aren’t parents, this lovely analogy from Steve offers us a lot of insight as to why he feels the way he does, why he’s made the choices that he has, and why he refuses to stop fighting. Therefore, I think that it is worthwhile to dig into it a little, to try to unpack it and see what new understanding we can uncover.

Potentially the most damning allegation against Steve in this whole smear campaign is the claim that he “blackballed” puppeteers that auditioned with Disney when Disney wanted to cast multiple performers for singular Muppet characters. Steve has addressed the issue on his blog and made it clear that, while he has been outspoken about character integrity and was one of the loudest critics of the “multicasting” initiative, he never had any authority when it comes to Disney’s hiring decisions…which makes sense, when you think about it, because if he did have that kind of power and authority, wouldn’t he have been able to, I don’t know…un-fire himself?

Nevertheless, it’s an idea that has gained some traction, and the people who want to discredit Steve just love to paint a lurid picture of Big Mean Stevie, throwing his weight around and acting too big for his britches, callously crushing the hopes of the innocent little puppeteers who dared to dream of working with the Muppets. It’s an idea that’s so insidious, it has even planted some seeds of doubt in the minds of some of Steve’s staunchest supporters.

To be perfectly clear: I do NOT give any credence to these allegations of Steve blackballing fellow puppeteers. But even if some inconvertible evidence were to come to light proving that he did so, I can see how he would feel justified in doing so. When viewed through the prism of this parent/child metaphor, the alleged behavior that has been characterized as “blackballing” theoretically seems like a reasonable and responsible reaction.

Consider this scenario: let’s say that you are married with one or more children (if–like me–you are not, then just pretend). And let us further assume that your in-laws are the interfering type, and so they get it into their heads to hire a babysitter for your kids–without your knowledge or consent. So all of a sudden the doorbell rings and there’s the babysitter that your in-laws hired standing on the doorstep saying, “Hi, I’m here to take care of your kids!” Would you welcome this babysitter into your home? Would you entrust him or her with the care of your children?

Of course you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t leave your children in the care of a total stranger. Instead, you would ask the prospective babysitter to leave. And it wouldn’t be a reflection on the babysitter herself (or himself); for all you know, the babysitter could be qualified and competent. But you wouldn’t know, because you wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to vet the babysitter yourself. To entrust the care of your children, in your home, to an untested stranger would be irresponsible parenting, if not outright negligence.

And if you are a nice person (and I assume that you probably are) you might well feel sorry for the babysitter, who was led to believe that he/she had a job lined up, only to have it fall through at the last minute, by no fault of his/her own, because someone who was not the parent of the child(ren) overstepped their boundaries.* Still, in that case it would be the in-laws who misled the babysitter, made the babysitter promises that they couldn’t keep. You couldn’t take the responsibility for their inappropriate actions. And you certainly couldn’t potentially endanger the well-being of your children, and the sanctity of your home, just to spare the babysitter’s feelings.

Just to be perfectly clear, in the preceding analogy, Steve is the parent, the Muppets are the children, Disney/Muppets Studio are the meddling grandparents, and the aspiring puppeteers are the prospective babysitter. The aspiring puppeteers may have felt ill-treated, and it is appropriate to feel sorry for them, but let us just keep in mind that it was Disney that falsely raised their expectations and made them promises that it couldn’t–or, at least, didn’t–keep.

At this point, I’d just like to restate Steve’s thesis statement, putting it into my own words as I understand it: Steve sees his responsibility to the Muppets as being comparable to that of a parent to his children, and even if some of his “children”–for example, Kermit and Beaker–are “adopted,” that doesn’t lessen his love and concern for them, and it certainly doesn’t lessen the responsibility that he feels toward them.

If that’s the case, then when Steve got the call from Disney last October saying that his puppeteering services would no longer be required, I imagine that it must have felt similar to being a parent and having Social Services just show up at your door one day–with no advance notice or warning, mind you–and announce that they had arrived to take your kids away.**

Imagine that you were a parent in that scenario. Would you just give up? Let it go? Move on with your life? Of course you wouldn’t! You would speak up. You would fight back against the injustice of it. You would do everything you could think of to get your kids back, no matter what the cost. Even if it were hopeless, you would have to explore every legal avenue and try everything that you possibly could…because you would know that if you didn’t, you would never be able to look yourself in the mirror again, and you would spend the rest of your life wondering if there was more that you could have done. Most of all, you would do it because you would know that your children would be counting on you to do the best that you could for their sake.

Moreover, if you didn’t try–if you didn’t make an effort–if you just passively accepted the decision, wouldn’t that only go to support the original argument that you were an unfit parent, because you apparently didn’t care enough to fight back?

Now, instead of imagining that you’re the parent, imagine instead that you are acquainted with a parent in this situation. And let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you believe the allegations to be true, that you believe that the parent is unfit. Would you say so to his face? Would you tell him to give it up, let it go, move on with his life, stop digging himself in deeper? Would you tell him that the kids are probably better off, and that he’s only hurting himself by prolonging the inevitable?

Assuming, as I have already done, that you are a nice person, I don’t think you would do any of those things. Even if you believed those things, it would be unnecessarily cruel to say them to his face.

Would you talk about the beleaguered parent behind his back? Would you post messages about him on a public Internet forum that, for all you know, he could very well be reading? Would it make a difference if you knew, or suspected, that he was reading it? That’s a trickier thing to answer; it’s a lot less cut-and-dried.

As Muppet fans, I think we should be discussing this issue. As I’ve said before, I started this blog in the interest of keeping the conversation going, to promote a dialogue in the interest of fostering understanding, rather than trying to sweep it under the rug. Because, as my beloved Phil Dunphy points out on Modern Family, in that scenario, eventually you end up with a lumpy rug.

(“It becomes a tripping hazard…”)

But at the same time, I think it is important to remember, first of all, that Steve is a part of our community; second–and most importantly–he is also a human being with feelings. As a rule, I would never say or write or post anything about Steve that I would be ashamed to say to his face. You never know what he might be reading, and when.

And by the way, that policy of not posting anything online that I wouldn’t say to Steve’s face goes for all the other players in this sad little drama as well. Disney presents itself to the public as a monolith, and so that is how I treat it, but I do try to be mindful of the Hensons as human beings and try to be sensitive about their feelings with regards to their father and the pain they must still feel over losing him. Nevertheless, I’m not going to afford them any special privileges on that account; I’m not going to hold back on calling them out on their hypocrisy in this matter just because they are Jim’s children. Some people may think that I’ve been overly harsh or critical in that regard, but I stand by every syllable that I’ve put out there in regard to the Hensons. They shouldn’t dish it out if they can’t take it.

If I regret anything that I’ve said about anyone in this scenario, it’s what I said about Matt Vogel after his Kermit video dropped. In this whole extended metaphor of parents/children, I view Matt’s role as that of a “foster parent,” taking care of Kermit for an undetermined period of time in the hopes that his “adoptive father” (Steve) will someday be allowed by “Social Services” (Disney) to take custody of Kermit and his other “children” (Beaker, Rizzo, etc.) once again.

Ideally, that’s the goal of the foster care system. In reality, of course, it rarely works out so neatly, and it seems unlikely to do so in this scenario either. Especially since Disney, the analogue to Social Services in this scenario, is more like Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford from Sweeney Todd than a modern-day social worker.

To those outside the Muppet fan community, and perhaps even to a few within it, it may seem overly precious or self-indulgent for a puppeteer to regard his characters as his “children.” But Steve’s not the only one who has said something to that effect. No less a personage than Mr. Caroll Spinney, performer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street, has said on more than one occasion that he regards Big Bird as his child.

The documentary about Mr. Spinney, I Am Big Bird, tells a story about when the Big Bird puppet was vandalized. The Sesame cast was on tour, they were rehearsing on a college campus and had the local ROTC contingent guard the unoccupied Big Bird puppet while they went out to lunch. Whether the ROTC students were temporarily possessed by some destructive demon or they were just horrible people at baseline, I don’t know, but apparently they thought it would be neat to have some of Big Bird’s feathers as souvenirs. And then, what might have seemed at first like a harmless prank escalated into something like a scene from Lord of the Flies. They plucked one side of Big Bird bare, they tried to remove one of his eyes and, when they couldn’t do that, they left it “broken and hanging off.” Then they apparently got bored of the brutality and left him lying on the ground.

Mr. Spinney describes the aftermath thus: “[Big Bird] was lying in the dirt, and I saw it and I burst into tears. It was like seeing my child raped and thrown on the ground and destroyed.”

I think most feeling people, if they have any sort of connection to Sesame Street at all, would have been moved by the gruesomeness of this senseless brutality against Big Bird. But as I have argued elsewhere, Kermit the Frog has recently suffered an act of cruelty and violation at the hands of Disney that is just as senseless and just as brutal. However, since it involves injuries to the soul of the character instead of to the outward, physical manifestation of the character, I think it is harder for people to understand or to take as seriously as the concrete, observable reality of a vandalized puppet.

Let’s go back to our extended metaphor and carry it to the other logical extreme: Have any of you ever had an elderly loved one suffer from dementia? If you have, then you know how painful it is to watch as someone you love slowly loses himself (or herself) and everything that makes them who they are. You know how disturbing it is to look into their eyes and see a stranger looking back at you.

That’s sort of how I view Kermit now, as someone that I love suffering from sudden-onset dementia. Just like that, all of Kermit’s memories of the Muppet Show days, and especially his memories of working with Jim, are all second-hand. Not only that, but his memories of everything that happened before the Muppet Show are now third-hand.

And at the risk of sounding like a scratched CD or a poorly buffered audio file (which I imagine are the 21st-century equivalents of a “broken record”), this is not, in any way, a criticism of Matt. I’m sure Matt is well versed in Muppet lore at baseline and will do his due diligence to keep Kermit conversant in his own history. Nevertheless, I fear that now, as Data says in the very best episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, those memories will be “reduced to the mere facts of the events. The substance, the flavor of the moment, could be lost.”

The attitude that really infuriates me from other fans is the idea that Steve is somehow being selfish or self-serving by wanting to regain custody of his Muppet “children.” To go back to the metaphor, any parent would try to get their kids back if they were taken away…and granted, some of them might do so for selfish reasons, but the overwhelming majority would do so out of concern for their children and a wish to protect them.

Furthermore, if trying to exert authority as to how Kermit is handled by Disney makes one selfish, then Jim Henson–according to that logic–was the most selfish bastard ever to come down the pike. Because, in the days of the original Disney deal, Jim wanted Kermit to have a separate, privileged status from the other Muppet characters. As told by Brian Jay Jones in The Biography:

“While Jim was prepared to hand over all of the Muppets to Disney, he didn’t intend for Kermit to go with them unconditionally. He was too important. ‘Kermit should be treated in the negotiations as a separate issue,’ recommended a confidential Henson Associates memo. ‘Since Kermit the Frog is so closely associated with Jim Henson, Jim must have control over the use of Kermit.’ For Disney, however, getting the Muppets without the free use of Kermit was like getting the cast of Peanuts without Snoopy. For the moment, Kermit was in a kind of legal limbo as both sides tried to figure out, Solomon-like, how to split the million-dollar baby.” (page 446, emphasis in original)

No one would admit to it now, of course, because nobody wants to speak ill of the dead, but I’d be willing to bet that some of the people working on the Disney side of the deal thought that Jim was making “outrageous demands” and being “difficult to work with.”

It’s clear from Jane Henson’s words in 1990 that Jim intended Steve to be Kermit’s “guardian” in the event that something happened to him. And regardless of what Brian Henson thinks about it now, he’s the one who appointed Steve as Kermit’s guardian after Jim passed away. Based on what little evidence that Disney has offered as to Steve’s alleged “unfitness,” it looks to me that Steve was fired for doing exactly what Jim Henson intended and expected him to do: not only to keep Kermit alive, but to care for him and protect him, as any parent or guardian would.

____________________________
*This actually happened to me once when I was about 12 or 13. It’s a long story, as so many of my stories seem to be.
**”Like in The Sims,” I was going to say, but even in the Sims games, they usually give you one warning before the social worker comes.

Fraggle Friday: “Eye to Eye”

September 1, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: fraggle fridays, fraggle rock, intertextuality, jim henson, music, steve whitmire, the schism Leave a comment

Let’s take a moment to appreciate one of the most upbeat and positive Fraggle songs that there is (which is saying something):

The irony here, of course, is that the Doozers actually are NOT seeing eye-to-eye with one another and are not communicating.

There seems to be a lot of that going around.

We haven’t been doing a very good job of seeing eye-to-eye in the Muppet fan community lately. I don’t exempt myself from that; I haven’t exactly been my best self the last few days.

I’ve been venting a lot of frustrations lately, and while that’s therapeutic, it’s not necessarily very friendly or congenial. It’s important to me to be straightforward in expressing my point of view. I won’t apologize for my loyalty to Steve, but maybe I could make more of an effort to be more diplomatic and less antagonistic. That might be more rhetorically effective.

I think that it’s important for me to say that I don’t fault anyone for making a conscientious decision. Wherever you stand on the Schism, if you’re there because you believe with all your heart and mind and soul and every fiber of your being that that is where you’re supposed to be, then I respect that. The best that any of us can do is to obey the inscrutable exhortations of our souls.

With that said, however, I think it might be a useful thought experiment if we were each to think about how we would justify ourselves and our position on the issue to Jim Henson if we had to…if we could.

I’ll have to think about that; there might be a future post in that.

Sympathy/Empathy for Matt

August 29, 2017August 29, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: disney, intertextuality, matt vogel, muppet pundit, steve whitmire, the schism, wembley Leave a comment

“Every whisper
Of every waking hour I’m
Choosing my confessions
[…]
Like a hurt, lost, and blinded fool–
Oh no, I’ve said too much.”
–R.E.M “Losing My Religion”

I look at what I posted yesterday, and I cringe. The jokes that I made were intended to be jabs at the absurd situation in which we find ourselves, but reading them today, they look like nothing so much as mean-spirited digs at Matt Vogel, which was not my intention at all. Frankly, I’m ashamed of myself; I usually make a point of thinking about the words I use before I use them, specifically what effect they might have on the feelings of others. Yesterday, I just went for the punchline. I was angry and upset myself, but that’s no excuse.

Regardless of what I said in my annoyance and frustration, I do have sympathy for Matt. I might even have empathy for him, but to explore that, I would have to break a good-faith agreement–or at least come close to breaking it–that I made eleven years ago, and I’m not prepared to do that.

There is one–and only one–sentence that Steve Whitmire has written on his blog with which I take issue. And actually, it is not even a complete sentence: “I am having trouble understanding his [Matt’s] support of the recast…” To be clear, I am sure that Steve intended no disrespect, which is pretty clear from the context. Nevertheless, I don’t think it is fair to say that Matt “supports” the recast. Based on my own past experience, I think that it is one thing to go along and try make the best of a bad situation, and it’s quite another thing to “support” the bad situation. One could consider it tacit approval to go along without resisting, and maybe it is, but I’m not qualified to throw stones at anyone in that regard.

But the important thing to remember is that this is not a matter of “Steve versus Matt,” or vice versa. The people who claim otherwise are trying to create a false dilemma, to distract from the real issue of Disney’s ambivalence toward the Muppets; to say nothing of Disney’s complete and utter disregard for the people who work for them, who are viewed as disposable, tradeable, negotiable commodities rather than human beings.

Let us not forget that Disney is the author of all our problems. If they hadn’t decided to muck things up, we’d have Steve performing Kermit, Matt performing Jerry’s characters, everyone would be right where they belong, and all the Muppet fandom would be perfectly happy about it.

Or, as Wembley Fraggle might put it, “Instead of recasting Kermit and making everyone unhappy, why not just let Steve perform?“

Fraggle Friday: Skenfrith

August 25, 2017August 18, 2018Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: disney, epiphany, fraggle fridays, fraggle rock, henson family, intertextuality, jim henson, muppet pundit, music, steve whitmire, the schism 7 Comments

Skenfrith monster

“Skenfrith needs our help. You see, we’ve gotta believe he’s not a monster […] He hates being a monster; only we can help!”
–Wembley Fraggle

I recently read a post by my friend Marni Hill on her blog, Just for the Halibut. (Fair warning: her post contains explicit language, but if that’s not an issue, you can read it here.) In it, she described feeling skeptical and working through lingering doubts she still had about Steve Whitmire as a result of the nasty rumors and snide insinuations that have swarmed unpleasantly around him. It was a challenging piece, and I had difficulty processing it. As I was thinking about how to respond, I was suddenly put in mind of an old saying, regarded as something of a cliché, if not an outright glurge: “Believing is seeing.”

It made me smile. It reminded me of my best friend from college, who hated that expression and wasn’t shy about saying so. (Truth be told, I’ve never known him to be shy about saying so when he didn’t like something.) I’m not necessarily inclined to agree with him, however; I think there’s some truth in the saying.

Then that put me in mind of the Fraggle Rock episode “Believe It or Not,” which introduced us to Skenfrith, a magical shapeshifting creature whose form changes as a reflection of the beliefs of those around him. To put it another way, he becomes whatever others believe him to be. It’s kind of a complicated concept; why I don’t I just let Skenfrith himself explain it:

When Jocelyn Stevenson created the character of Skenfrith for Fraggle Rock, she was trying to make the point that “belief affects perception [and] perception affects belief […] what you believe about things is then how you see them.”

And whether we’re aware of it or not, our beliefs about other people also affect our perception of them. For example, I recently read a fascinating article about how preconceived notions about another person’s emotional state can influence how we interpret their facial expressions. Not only that, but as we interpret the facial expressions of others, we subconsciously reflect the emotions that we are interpreting on our own faces. So, in a way, we’re all kind of reverse Skenfriths.

As I was thinking about all this, I was suddenly hit with another epiphany: What if Steve Whitmire is Skenfrith?

Not literally, of course. I’m well aware that Dave Goelz played Skenfrith on Fraggle Rock, (and, as far as I know, Steve is not a shapeshifter). But in a metaphorical sense, suppose that Steve is Skenfrith, and suppose that Disney and the Henson children are the Gorgs who–with a depth of malice only rarely plumbed by the actual Gorgs themselves–have gone out of their way to convince the Muppet fandom that Steve is a monster: a disrespectful, unacceptable-business conducting, outrageously demanding, understudy-eschewing, blackballing, destructive-energy emitting, brinkman-shipping, bitter, angry, depressed, unfunny monster.

I’ve now come realize that, for the fans who have been convinced of Steve’s multihyphenate monstrosity, everything that he says and does to try to justify himself gets filtered through that perception, like a funhouse mirror that twists and distorts the reflected image, so that the things that he says in his own defense are perceived as reinforcing Disney’s claims instead, and he is perceived as some sort of unhinged, bullying diva when, really, all he’s trying to do is stand up for himself.

And while I am dismayed and frustrated by this…*ahem*…phenomenon, at least now I understand how Steve can post fundamental Muppet truths on his blog–stuff that I consider to be really basic, like “the Muppet performers are not interchangeable“–and be met with eye-rolling contempt by certain factions of the fandom. While I don’t agree with the people who say things like, “Steve should have taken the ‘retirement package’ from Disney…he’s so disrespectful of Matt…he’s just digging himself in a hole…who does he think he is anyway to dictate what’s best for the Muppets?…” etc., at least now I understand where those comments are coming from. To me, it’s similar to what Red says in “Believe It or Not”: “I know that [Skenfrith’s not a monster]…but I found the two heads very convincing!”

One of my favorite authors is Madeleine L’Engle. Best known for writing A Wrinkle in Time, she was a prolific and eclectic author. There’s an idea that shows up in several of her works, but is perhaps best expressed in her novel The Young Unicorns: “People become trustworthy only by being trusted […] Not stupidly, you understand, but fully aware of the facts, we still have to trust.”

Notice that she doesn’t say that we have to be aware of all the facts. That would be ideal, of course, but oftentimes in situations like this, facts can only take us so far. And when it gets to that point, that’s when we have to make a choice whether or not to make a leap of faith in trusting someone. That’s a difficult, dangerous thing to do; to trust someone else is to make oneself vulnerable, to risk being hurt. It’s much easier and safer to sit back, to be passive, to accept what those in authority tell us. But the easiest choice isn’t necessarily the right one; in fact, in my experience, it’s more often the opposite.

It is now incumbent upon each of us Muppet fans to make a choice: Are we going to make Steve trustworthy by trusting him? Or are we going to make him into a monster by making him out to be a monster?

Empathy

August 24, 2017August 29, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: fraggle rock, intertextuality, miscellaneous sketches, music, slightly off-topic, steve whitmire, the schism 4 Comments

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

I have empathy for Steve Whitmire. Let me tell you why:

During my brief, undistinguished teaching career, there were two separate occasions in which students misrepresented things that I said, took well-intentioned statements that I’d made and blew them all out of proportion. I wrote about it last week, but because it was lengthy and not strictly Muppet related, I put it on a separate page.

One thing that I didn’t put in that story is that during the first year of my teaching assistantship in grad school, I had a student who was clearly guilty of plagiarism. It was a dead giveaway when the paper used the wrong documentation style, because we only taught MLA in Comp 101, and this paper used APA documentation. When I had to confront the student about it, the director of writing backed me up all the way. Because of that, I felt that he was on my side, that we were all on the same team, that I could count on him to support me. I don’t know exactly what changed over that summer between the first and second years of my teaching assistantship. I hadn’t changed in my approach to school or to life; I was still working to juggle the demands of being a teacher and a student at the same time, but always trying to conduct myself with integrity and stay true to my own personal ethos. In the past, that had always been enough…but apparently it wasn’t anymore.

Because of that experience, I know what it’s like to feel betrayed and abandoned by someone whose support you believed you could count on no matter what. I know how frightening and lonely it can be to have to stand alone in the face of baseless accusations and (for lack of a better word) trumped-up charges.

It feels exactly like this:

I can only imagine how disheartening it must be to have many, many people–who had previously claimed to love you–either turn against you outright, or else just turn away, stand back and watch while others are ganging up against you.

Two different students, on two separate occasions, bore false witness against me, dragging my name through the mud. But I think it’s important to think about their motivations. I think that the college student, in her panic at the prospect of potentially failing a required class, in her heightened state of emotion, exaggerated the event in her mind. I think that she believed that she was being honest, that she told the events exactly as she remembered them, even though her version was grossly inaccurate. I bear her no ill will.

Perhaps the high school student believed that she was being honest too, but she had nothing to gain by rehashing the story over and over again except for the satisfaction of provoking my righteous indignation. It wasn’t that she cared about the substitute teacher, either. She was motivated purely by the thrill of causing a sensation, by the pleasure of inflicting pain.

Basically, she was trolling me. She was a real-life, flesh-and-blood, in-your-face troll. And now that I think about it, in a way I have to admire that, albeit grudgingly. At least she had the courage to stand up and say those things right to my face, instead of hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet and harassing me from behind an assumed name and a bunch of virtual sockpuppets, like a coward.

Therefore, I know how it feels to have people saying things about me that are exaggerated at best and, at worst, are outright lies. I know how frustrating it is to feel powerless to defend yourself from people (a) bearing false witness against you, and/or (b) outright verbally attacking you.

“A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.”
–A quotation that has been falsely attributed to Mark Twain, ironically enough. (Still relevant, however)

That’s why I empathize with Steve. And why I stand with him.

Salient Themes: Duality

August 13, 2017March 5, 2018Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: dark crystal, disney, fraggle rock, intertextuality, interviews, jim henson, miscellaneous sketches, muppet movie(s), muppet show, music, salient themes, steve whitmire, the schism 4 Comments

“Mercury revolves around our mutual parent sun in such a way that one face is always turned toward the sun and is brilliantly lit and burningly hot; and the other side is always turned toward the cold dark of interstellar space. But Mercury oscillates slightly on its axis, and thereby sunside and nightside are integrated by a temperate zone which knows both heat and cold, light and dark. So the two disparate sides of Mercury are not separated by a chasm; the temperate zone mediates […] thereby making wholeness instead of brokenness.”
–Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season

I see this as a theme in a lot of Jim Henson’s work; the disparate halves of light and dark, warm and cold, inward vision and outward vision. And while I don’t claim to know what he thought and felt about things–while I always have to be very careful not to assume that I know–the fact that the theme showed up as often as it did in his work implies that he thought a lot about it, and perhaps he struggled to find that temperate zone between dayside and nightside.

This duality is present all through Jim’s work with the Muppets. It can reach the greatest possible heights of silliness, with explosions, boomerang fish, and characters eating each other, but it can also plumb the greatest depths of poignant emotion.

On Fraggle Rock, Jim played two different characters: Cantus and Convincing John–or, as I call them, the sage and the showman. I think that each represented a different facet of his personality.

(As an aside, I’m always amused by the fact that Convincing John’s baloobius, i.e. the tuft of fur at the end of his tail, doesn’t match the color of the hair on his head. The implication being that he dyes his hair. I think that’s hilarious.)

When you watch Jim Henson in interviews–particularly when he doesn’t have a puppet in his hands–he always seems very gentle and soft-spoken and often somewhat ill at ease, with a simultaneously endearing and infuriating habit of putting his hands up by his mouth, often muffling his words somewhat. In interviews, I find Jim to be very much the sage; for example, here’s an interview in which he makes some very farsighted predictions about the future of television technology. This interview is also interesting because you can see the difference between the way that Jim casually chats and laughs a bit with the people in the room before the interview starts (and after it ends) with his more calm and serious demeanor during the interview itself.

But he could also be a showman. There was a pitch reel–which, unfortunately, I can no longer find–for an early iteration of The Jim Henson Hour wherein Jim himself gets up and gives a pitch for this kooky TV show he wants to make, with a rotating schedule of content. From what I remember of it, he seemed much more comfortable in front of the camera (perhaps because he was working from a script and not answering questions extemporaneously); he assumed something of the energy, the gestures, and the vocal tone of the carnival barker, and his hands never went anywhere near his mouth. It’s a completely different attitude from that which he has in interviews. So, which is the “real” Jim Henson–the showman or the sage?

Well, that’s the thing–they’re both real. Or, in a sense, neither is real because a human being is more than the sum of his multiple facets.

There are other examples of this duality in Jim Henson’s work–Bert and Ernie come to mind–but perhaps the most dramatic example is the Skeksis and the Mystics (or urRu) in The Dark Crystal.

(WARNING: Thirty-five-year-old spoilers ahead.)

The first time I ever saw The Dark Crystal was fairly recently, within the last five years or so. I was completely blown away by it. At first the story seems like a rather familiar story of good versus evil. We have our protagonist Jen who–like Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter–is a lonely young orphan, fostered by the gentle urRu after his parents were killed, with a special destiny to go on a quest and defeat evil by finding a MacGuffin, in this case the crystal shard with which he is to heal the eponymous Dark Crystal, by which the Skeksis will apparently be vanquished.

Ah, but then Jim Henson throws us a curveball: it turns out that the Skeksis and the urRu are actually the same creatures, unnaturally split apart when the Crystal was broken, and when Jen heals the Crystal at the time of the Great Conjunction of the three suns, he sets off a chain reaction that reintegrates the two divided halves–Skeksis and urRu–back into their singular selves; the glorious UrSkeks.

This is not a straightforward story about good and evil after all. The Skeksis and the urRu need each other. One cannot live without the other. Without the Skeksis, the urRu lack agency. Without the urRu, the Skeksis lack moral fiber. It’s not that the Skeksis are evil and the urRu are good. The real evil is the division between them.

This is an old idea–dating at least as far back as Plato–with far-reaching social, political, historical, etc. implications around the world–but it’s applicable to the situation that we, as Muppet fans, are in now with regard to the Schism between Disney and Steve Whitmire.

It is not, as one faction might argue, that Kermit is good but Steve is evil. Nor is it, as another faction might argue, that Steve is good but Disney is evil. It is not that one faction of Muppet fans are good and any and all other factions are evil. But in each case, whenever we stop cooperating and start competing, whenever we start believing that some people’s contributions are not necessary or not important, whenever we start thinking, “I am right; therefore, anyone who disagrees with me is automatically wrong”…those are the things that divide us, and it is the division itself that is inherently evil. As Dumbledore says at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: “We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.”

So how do we bridge the chasm between sunside and nightside? How do we find the temperate zone that moderates the two? How do we move from brokenness to wholeness without subordinating one side or the other?

The reason I started this blog is because I think it is imperative to keep the conversation going in a civilized way; to firmly but gently probe and palpate the bruises, the open wounds, and the recently formed scar tissue–not with the object of causing more pain but with the goal of diagnosing and treating the wounds that this Schism has caused.

At the same time, I think it is equally imperative to respect and validate opinions with which we disagree. All too often–not only as Muppet fans, but as human beings–we fall into the trap of thinking, “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” We assume that the dissenter must necessarily be wrong. We equate “having a different opinion” with “having a bias.” We regard anyone who disagrees with us as an evil enemy. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, by the way.

However, it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to see things from another point of view without losing your own, and it is possible to recognize a valid viewpoint while still disagreeing with it. The more we are able to have a respectful dialogue, and try to see things from another point of view, the closer we can move toward a consensus.

If there’s one thing that I have in common with Jim Henson, it’s that I’m averse to conflict of any kind. And speaking strictly for myself, the reason why I’m conflict-averse is that I’m terrified of losing my temper. I’ve always seen myself as something akin to Jekyll and Hyde, or the Incredible Hulk; when I get angry, it’s as though I turn into a completely different person, and I’m terrified of what I might say and whom I might hurt while in that angered state. And I do work on trying to integrate the light and dark sides, and to channel whatever anger I feel constructively–to turn a negative into a positive–but it’s a constant struggle.

That’s why I prefer to write a blog, so I have the chance to rethink and revise my words before they are published, and also, so that I don’t come across as spamming other blogs and forums through lengthy, in-depth analysis.

It doesn’t come easily or naturally to me to jump into the fray and take the risk of being provoked into that angry state that I so fear, but if it helps to get–or to keep–the dialogue going, it’s well worth the risk.

Fraggle Friday: “A Friend is a Friend”

August 11, 2017August 15, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: disney, fraggle fridays, fraggle rock, gobo, henson family, intertextuality, jerry nelson, music, steve whitmire, the schism, wembley Leave a comment

This is from episode 304, The Grapes of Generosity:

I assume that most people reading this know what’s going on in this episode, but just in case there are some other latecomers to the Fraggle party, I’ll give a brief synopsis: Gobo discovers the magical Grapes of Generosity, which are so delicious that he refuses to share them with his friends. As karmic retribution for his selfishness, Gobo becomes weightless as a result–because apparently Fraggle karma doesn’t follow any discernible logic.

The puppetry in this is quite impressive. If I get the chance, I’d like to ask Steve Whitmire how it was all done. I recognize a few effects, ChromaKey being the most obvious, and at one point it looks like they’re using a “throwable” Gobo, and towards the end, it sort of looks like Jerry was on a different, higher level from where Steve was on the floor. So I can kind of piece it together from what I can see, but it’s always interesting to get the real behind-the-scenes story.

This song is an example of what I was talking about earlier in the week, about the otherwise indecisive Wembley always sticking up for his friends. It’s interesting that when Wembley stops to think about what is the right thing to do, he gets bogged down by indecision, but when he reacts instinctively in defense of a friend, his instincts are always spot-on.

I envy him that. I have to put a little more thought into things.

For example, I have a personal policy of not feeding internet trolls. It’s tempting to fight back, and I’ve been known to succumb to the temptation, but since they feed off of attention, to fight back against them is only to make them stronger and hand them weapons. The only way to win is not to play.

But then, what to do when a friend is being harassed by a troll? I observed just such a situation earlier this week, and it posed a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, I had just got done talking about Wembley not standing by when someone is being bullied, and I felt it was incumbent upon me to follow Wembley’s example. On the other hand, feeding the troll could make things worse for everybody. Ultimately, I decided to ignore the troll completely but address a comment to my friend with words of support and encouragement.

As another example, what do you do when someone you care about has been accused of something awful?

There was a time in my life when I suspected one of my dearest friends of untoward behavior based on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. This is the first time I’ve ever been able to talk about it outside of a confessional. I can’t even go into detail about what happened; it’s just too embarrassing.

(Also, it requires too much exposition to be worth my time or yours.)

Suffice it to say, I was relieved when my friend turned out to be innocent, but I was wracked with guilt for having assumed the worst of him, especially for what turned out to be really no good reason at all.

Fortunately, I had the good sense to ask him about what happened instead of flying off the handle making baseless accusations, and I think I was successful in not letting on what I had been thinking about him–and, as far as I know, he still doesn’t know.

Nevertheless, I felt burdened by the knowledge that I had committed an act of betrayal against someone that I loved, even if it was only in the secret recesses of my innermost heart. I had no one to blame but my own foolishness and credulity; it was entirely my own fault. I never want to feel that way again. So I decided that, from that moment on, I would rather give someone that I care about the benefit of the doubt and risk being proven wrong than to automatically assume the worst.

Therefore, if somebody accuses someone whom I respect and admire of “unacceptable business conduct” or “brinksmanship,” etc., the burden of proof is on the accuser(s). If they want to convince me, they’d better be able (and willing) to produce some incontrovertible evidence.

I’ll check with Sam the Eagle but, as far as I know, in this country we’re all still innocent until proven guilty.

The False Dilemma Between Steve and Matt

August 10, 2017August 20, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: disney, intertextuality, kermit, matt vogel, music, steve whitmire, the schism 1 Comment

“They think me Macbeth; ambition is my folly.“
–Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda, lyricist)

It may seem like a bit of a strain to apply Hamilton lyrics to the Schism, but I use this particular passage to illustrate the unfortunate attitude of some in the Muppet community who have been unfairly characterizing Matt Vogel as some sort of undertalented, opportunistic usurper of the throne. I condemn this attitude out of hand; not only is it cruel and unfair to Matt, but it makes no sense: Matt has no more control over who does or doesn’t get hired than Steve does.

(Now that I think about it, you know what else doesn’t make any sense? My equating Matt with Alexander Hamilton. Steve is clearly Hamilton in this whole scenario. There’s not a comfortable analogue to Matt at all–at least, not as far as I can see. But I digress.)

Conversely, in other factions of the Muppet fan community, support for Steve Whitmire is sometimes being interpreted as disrespect toward Matt Vogel, and if one expresses the desire for Steve to go on performing Kermit, it is sometimes interpreted as a vote of no-confidence in Matt.

Let me state unequivocably that, as far as I am concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. I have complete confidence in Matt’s abilities and, more importantly, in his good intentions. In fact, I’ve felt a little sorry for him as all this has played out; Disney has put him in a terribly awkward position.

Though Matt has a fairly significant footprint on social media, he has not commented publicly upon the Schism one way or another–at least, not that I am aware of. Whether he has remained silent voluntarily or Disney has imposed a gag order on him, I don’t know. If it is his own choice to remain silent, I completely respect that. However, I don’t think he’ll be able to avoid it forever. Eventually, Kermit is going to have to start doing interviews again and, given journalists’ penchant for asking Muppets uncomfortable questions, sooner or later someone is going to ask Vogel!Kermit about Steve. What is he supposed to say?

Even looking at this from an executive’s point of view and considering it strictly as a personnel decision, by every objective measure, Steve is simply more qualified for the job of performing Kermit–not for performing in general, you understand, but specifically for performing Kermit—than Matt is. That is not to say that Matt is unqualified by any means; on the contrary, it is more to say that Matt’s time and talents would be better served elsewhere, like performing Jerry Nelson’s characters–in accordance with Jerry’s own wishes.

But just for the sake of argument, let’s think like an executive and take a look at the job description: Kermit is supposed to be able to talk about working with Jim Henson. Kermit is expected to be able to reminisce about working on The Muppet Show. On both counts–and through no fault of his own–Matt lacks the experience that Steve has in these areas.

Matt’s a qualified puppeteer. No one is disputing that. If it was a matter of necessity, I think he would be an excellent candidate to perform Kermit. But there’s the rub; it wasn’t necessary. Even if you take Disney’s vague rationale at face value, even if you genuinely believe that they were justified in dismissing Steve, the irrefutable fact is that they had a choice in the matter. For better or worse, they made their choice, and now they’re going to have to deal with the consequences, as all responsible adults must.

But I do feel sorry for Matt. I see him as a victim in all this too. As terrible as Steve’s situation is, at least he’s free now to speak his mind. On the other hand, Matt has been thrust into a situation over which he has no control and put on the frontlines in the charge to recreate the Muppets in Disney’s image. And I imagine that the circumstances of Steve’s dismissal must be hanging over Matt like the sword of Damocles: do a good job–play it the company way–or we’ll serve you the way we served Steve.

I support Steve and I will keep fighting for him, no matter what. I support Matt equally. If he does his best performing Kermit–and I have no doubt that he will–I will be grateful to him, just as I have been grateful to Steve for all these years.

Thank You and Welcome

August 9, 2017August 15, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: bert and ernie, frank oz, intertextuality, jim henson, music Leave a comment

Before I forget, I want to be sure and say “thank you” to Jarrod Fairclough for featuring my article “30 Years Late to the Fraggle Party” on The Muppet Mindset. I’ve been a fan of the Mindset for some time and even contributed some articles in the past. Thank you for your support, Jarrod; I’m grateful for the opportunity to reach out to more Muppet fans!

To those of you who may have surfed over from the Mindset, welcome! Consider yourself at home. Let me show you around a little and point out some features of interest:

For an introduction to this site and an in-depth explanation of what I hope to accomplish, click here.

For more detailed, and somewhat random, biographical information about me, click here.

For my policy on comments, either scroll down to the widget at the bottom of the page, or click here.

To watch Bert and Ernie make comments as they watch an aquarium filled with goldfish that go “mulm-mulm-mulm,” click here.

Salient Themes: Jim Henson versus bullies

August 6, 2017February 8, 2018Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: fraggle rock, frank oz, intertextuality, jim henson, kermit, labyrinth, miscellaneous sketches, muppet movie(s), music, original disney deal, salient themes, steve whitmire, wembley 2 Comments

“Dear Mr. Dionne:
What the f*ck are you talking about?
Yours truly,
Jim Henson”
–Response to the 1960s equivalent of an Internet troll (quoted in Jim Henson: The Biography)

Well, last night I received my first insulting comment on this blog–and, to be honest, I was a little disappointed; it was a pretty pathetic effort. In the ’60s, when trolls actually had to put pen to paper and make an effort to insult someone, people like Jim Henson got classy insults referencing ancient Roman emperors. Now that people’s attention spans are limited to 140 characters, all the creativity has gone out of gratuitous insults. Sad!

However, in a way I’m glad it happened, because now this seems like an opportune moment to examine how Jim Henson related to bullies, both in his life and in his work.

Jim was famously averse to conflict. In Jim Henson: The Biography, Brian Jay Jones tells a story about how Jim would create an excuse to fly to London rather than get involved in a dispute within his legal department in New York. From that anecdote, I think a person could get the impression that Jim was prone to be passive in his dealings with others. But I think that impression would be false, or at least incomplete.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that–interestingly enough–Jim was similar to Wembley Fraggle in his approach to interpersonal conflict. On Fraggle Rock, when there’s a disagreement or dispute among his friends, Wembley becomes paralyzed with indecision, not wanting to upset or disappoint any of his friends by choosing one side over the other. On the other hand, deep down inside, Wembley has the ability to stand up for himself–and it comes out when the situation is truly dire, as it did in the matter of the mean genie. Moreover, Wembley will never stand silently by while someone else is being bullied. Whether it’s the miniscule Cotterpin Doozer, the gigantic Junior Gorg,* or anyone in between, if Wembley sees somebody being victimized, he will immediately rush to his/her defense. It’s interesting to examine a previously unconsidered link between Jim Henson and Wembley because Steve Whitmire–Wembley himself–recently told a story on his blog about how Jim once stood up to some Disney lawyers on his (Steve’s) behalf.

In spite of his aversion to conflict, Jim was also known for his determination. He was capable of standing up for himself if he felt he was being mistreated. The early days of the original Disney deal were something of a love fest, but eventually the honeymoon period was over, and Jim found himself “in combat with [Disney’s] business affairs people,” as he put it. Frustrated, Jim wrote the following in a letter to Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg:

“The tone of the negotiations does not seem to me to be the way two parties should be relating to each other if they intend to go into a long term relationship. […] The kind of deal I like is one in which both parties try to arrive at a fair settlement and everyone walks away satisfied. […] My impression is that Disney is standing firm on all issues, assuming that my company is committed to this deal and thus we will eventually cave in. This is not a wise assumption.”–(quoted in Jim Henson: The Biography, my emphasis)

Oooooooh. Here’s a guy who’s willing to go toe-to-toe with two of the most powerful and influential men in show business. Cross Jim Henson at your own peril.

Another way that Jim dealt with bullies was through his work. His sketches, especially those variety-show staples that predate The Muppet Show, often featured a situation in which one character would throw its weight around by harassing another–usually smaller–character. Like in the story of David and Goliath, however, the bullying character usually–if not always–gets its comeuppance from the smaller character. Here are some examples:

Early sketches:
Jim used this theme in a couple of sketches that he performed in Hamburg, Germany at the US Department of Agriculture’s US Food Fair in 1961. One was a sketch about an army drill team being put through their paces by a nasty drill sergeant barking out unintelligible orders; at the end, the drill team turns around and blows the sergeant away. In another sketch, a group of characters–denoted only by the puppeteers’ gloved hands–listens calmly to some soothing (read: “boring”) elevator music. Another character comes along and spices things up with some band music. The other characters attack the dissenter, beat up on him (her? it?), and destroy his radio equipment…however, things don’t end well for them. Neither of these sketches have any dialogue, which is lucky, because the following footage has no audio:

(The drill team footage starts at 00:59; the other sketch starts at 02:39.)

Java:
In “Java,” a creature that appears to be a living dryer hose does a dance number, while a smaller creature wants to join in, sort of like a younger sibling tagging alongside an older sibling, like I did when I was a little kid. Unfortunately, the larger creature is less tolerant than my older siblings were of me…to its detriment:

Hugga Wugga:

“Do not take my sunshine away!” The way that little creature phrases it, it almost sounds like a threat–or at least a warning.

Beautiful Day:

“You are so awful that it is truly beautiful. You’ve probably worked all your life to be perfectly awful–year after year–to be just as bad as possible, and now all of your toil and self-sacrifice has paid off! […] In fact, you are the perfect example of beautiful awfulness!” Generally speaking, my policy is not to feed internet trolls, but sometimes I’m tempted to try this on some of the trolls plaguing Steve Whitmire’s blog.

The Muppet Movie:
But perhaps the most triumphant example of standing up to bullies in all of Jim Henson’s work is the climactic “showdown” scene of The Muppet Movie. Threatened with a sadistic choice by Doc Hopper–either sell his soul to a small corporation or be gunned down where he stands–Kermit appeals to Hopper’s humanity and sense of decency:

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. But Hopper gets what’s coming to him anyway in what–to me–is the greatest and most Muppet-y moment of all time:

Not even the lousy video quality and strange, floating window-blind reflection can ruin this moment!

So…to all those who want to come onto my own blog to try to tear me down, this is your last warning: You cannot hurt me. There is nothing you can say to me that I haven’t heard before.

In the past, I have endured verbal abuse that would make the Access Hollywood bus tape sound like a scene from Downton Abbey. You think you can hurt my feelings by calling me a “moron”? Please. My classmates came up with more creative insults than that in the fourth grade.

I’m a grown woman, and I’ve put up with more than my fair share of bullying nonsense in my life. I’m not going to put up with yours. I’m not going to indulge your pettiness and cruelty. I’m not going to give you a platform from which you can attempt to build yourself up by tearing others down.

You have no power over me.

_____________________________
*Yes, I’m aware that, in the episode I referenced, Junior Gorg had temporarily been rendered Fraggle-sized, but the point I am trying to make is that Wembley will stick up for a victim of bullying regardless of the victim’s size, color, species, etc.

The Violence Committed Against Kermit the Frog

August 2, 2017June 11, 2018Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: dark crystal, disney, epiphany, frank oz, intertextuality, interviews, jim henson, kermit, muppet movie(s), steve whitmire, the schism 2 Comments

https://youtu.be/J-m7I0cg83k?t=6s
“I don’t think you’re a bad man, Doc. But I think if you look in your heart, you’ll find you really want to let me and my friends go, to follow our dream. But if that’s not the kind of man you are, and what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense to you, well then…go ahead and kill me.”–Kermit the Frog, The Muppet Movie (1979)

There was a documentary on Jim Henson that was made in 1999, and in the middle of writing my previous post, I suddenly remembered that I had a segment of it tucked away in a playlist on YouTube wherein Steve talks a little about what happened when he first took up the mantle of performing Kermit. So I looked it up just now because I thought it might be helpful to me. And because I hadn’t seen it in several years, I kept watching it after the bit with Steve was over, and heard Frank Oz say that Steve “had to get in the soul of Jim to be Kermit.”

At that moment, I had an epiphany. All this time, I’ve been angry and sad and upset about how Disney has been treating Steve. Suddenly, the true horror of this situation finally hit me; it’s not just that Disney has mistreated Steve, it’s that they’ve mistreated Kermit.

The puppeteer is the soul of the character; I knew that before, but I hadn’t fully realized all the implications of it. You can’t just take away someone’s soul. You can’t fire someone’s soul; you can’t replace someone’s soul; you can’t audition for a new soul. What Disney has done to Kermit–to Kermit–is an act of violation, comparable to the Dementor’s Kiss; or, to use an example from within the Jim Henson universe, analogous with the splitting of the urSkeks in The Dark Crystal.

When viewed in that light, how could anyone greet the recasting news with indifference or unconcern, with cautious optimism–or even, as some are doing, with enthusiastic anticipation? How could anyone be resigned to this unspeakable act of violence against our beloved frog? Steve has gotten a lot of flak for speaking out about it on his blog. I’ve felt that that was unfair all along, but having had this epiphany, I don’t see how any reasonable person could expect him to stay silent; how can anyone who claims to love the Muppets stand silently by and watch as our lifelong friend, Kermit the Frog, is being eviscerated?

Of course, Disney owns the rights to the characters, so they are at liberty to cast whomever they want in whatever role. And I imagine that their rationale was that, since Muppet characters have been recast before, it wouldn’t make much difference. There’s no denying that characters have been successfully recast before; it is inevitable in a “franchise” (how I hate that word!) that’s over 60 years old, and if the characters are to survive in perpetuity, all of them will eventually have to be recast.

Nevertheless, there’s a difference: in the past, the recasts happened in an organic way. It happened out of necessity, and the main performers were allowed to have a say in who would be their replacement.

This is completely different. It’s arbitrary, cynical, and self-serving. But most of all, it’s unnecessarily cruel.

Change versus growth; or being “real”

August 2, 2017August 15, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: disney, intertextuality, interviews, jim henson, kermit, muppet movie(s), steve whitmire, the schism Leave a comment

Yesterday I posted an edited version of an essay I wrote in 2012 about what Jim Henson means to me. It was interesting, and a little poignant, to revisit a piece of writing like that, five years after the fact. I revised it before publishing it again: some things were no longer relevant, some of the points seemed extraneous, and some of the writing seemed inelegant.

But I cut out the part about the immediate aftermath of Jim Henson’s death, when Kermit’s–and all the Muppets’–fate hung in the balance, and how it all turned out all right because Steve Whitmire was there to step up and perform Kermit. While I wanted to keep that praise of Steve in there, ultimately I left the whole paragraph out because, in the aftermath of the Schism, it was just too painful to revisit. It was still a raw wound.

Or so I decided last night. I woke up at 5:00 this morning with the sudden realization that one of my stated purposes in starting this blog was to show my support for Steve, but by cutting out that paragraph wherein I praised him, I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. If Disney were paying attention, they could probably twist that so that it would cast a doubtful light on my sincerity.

Sometimes, in order to diagnose and treat an injury, you have to poke at the tender spots. In order to show my support for Steve, I need to be willing to examine those raw emotions. So here goes.

Here’s the paragraph in question from my original essay, unedited. This is exactly what I wrote in 2012:

“At the time, I wasn’t sure which was the worst-case scenario: a world without Kermit, or a Kermit who wasn’t “really” Kermit. I remember that, more than anything, two questions dominated my thoughts as I tried to comprehend this tragedy: would someone else take over performing Kermit? And if so, would it be the same Kermit I knew and loved? I sometimes wish that there was a way that I could go back in time and reassure my nearly-ten-year-old self that the answer to both questions was “yes,” thanks to the superlative Steve Whitmire, for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect.”

“Superlative” is the highest compliment that I can give. The word “superlative” can be used not only be used to modify nouns, it also modifies other adjectives, denoting “the highest degree of comparison.” When I say that someone or something is “superlative,” it means that I’ve weighed many other adjectives and found them all insufficient to express my enthusiasm or highest regard.

I’ve always had the utmost respect for Steve Whitmire. Even when things were a little rough with him performing Kermit at the beginning, I appreciated that he was doing his best to keep Kermit alive. Later on, I found out from interviews how difficult it was for him to take up the responsibility and what it took for him to get to that point, and it increased my appreciation and gratitude exponentially.

At the time that Jim Henson died, when I was somewhere between the ages of nine and ten, I was preoccupied with figuring out what was “real,” and I had very rigid views about what was “real” and what was not when it came to books and movies and stuff. Take, for example, The Little Mermaid: prior to the animated movie, I was familiar with the original story by Hans Christian Andersen. And I hated it because it was so sad. The animated version provided the happy ending that I so desired. So, which was the “real” version? Was the original story “real” because it came first, or was the animated movie “real” because it had a more satisfying ending? I spent a lot of time contemplating questions like that. It seemed vitally important to me to firmly establish which version was “real” and which was not.

(Ironically enough, now that I’m an adult, Hans Christian Andersen’s original version of The Little Mermaid has a lot more resonance for me. But that’s a whole other story.)

Eventually, of course, I grew up; I matured, I went to college, I started studying literature, and I developed a much more fluid notion of what was “real,” and I began to be able to accept the notion that multiple versions of a given thing could be “real.” As another example, take Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The first version of A Christmas Carol that I ever saw was–I’m sorry to have to say–the Disney version, entitled “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.” For better or worse, it informed my concept of what A Christmas Carol was supposed to be. While it’s reasonably faithful to the original story, it doesn’t lift the original text straight out of the story. It takes a much lighter approach than most versions, and there are elements of parody and humor. When I was older and saw other, different productions of the same story, I was shocked and disturbed by how dark and scary and humorless they were.

When The Muppet Christmas Carol came out, I expected it–alas–to be closer to “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” in tone. Actually, what I was really expecting was the “Monsterpiece Theater” version of A Christmas Carol, heavy on parody and silliness. But while it did have a somewhat lighter touch than some versions, ultimately Muppet Christmas Carol is more or less a straight adaptation of the original story. This is not a criticism, I hasten to add; merely an observation. It’s not that I don’t like Muppet Christmas Carol or think that it is bad; it’s just to say that it is different from what I expected.

But my point is that, unavoidably, I’ve seen so many versions of A Christmas Carol that I gave up trying to decide which is the “real” version. I can appreciate now that, so long as the story is recognizable, and the characters are consistent, there can be multiple “real” versions, and I can appreciate each of them for the good that they have to offer.

But I’m realizing more and more–not only in regard to the Muppets, but any time you’re trying to tell a story–that consistency of character is key. An audience will forgive a lot of faults if the characters are acting in a way that is believable and consistent, but if not, it doesn’t matter if all the other story elements are in place and firing on all cylinders; if the characters aren’t consistent, the audience generally isn’t going to buy it. That’s why the “Han shot first” issue is so hotly debated in the Star Wars fandom. That’s the moment that tells us who Han Solo is: that he’s pragmatic, morally ambiguous, and not afraid to use violent means in the cause of self-preservation. And yes, he grows beyond that over the course of the series, but that’s the foundation on which he is built. Take away the foundation, and the whole structure collapes.

My point is that, when Steve took over from Jim, Kermit wasn’t immediately polished and perfect, but he was still real. He was still consistent with what we knew him to be, so we were able to forgive a lot and be patient and trust that Kermit was going to come back into his own and continue to grow and evolve and build up from the foundation that was laid by Jim.

Kermit himself actually addressed the issue very beautifully in an interview in 2011. When asked how he “gauged success,” Kermit answered, “I just try to be myself and stay myself and […] grow and evolve with the times, but stay based on who I am […] Not change, just grow.”

(I invite you to watch the whole interview, below. It is both candid and charming; a beautiful example of what I said elsewhere about Jim Henson giving the whole world license to make believe through his creations.)

The Impossible Dream

July 31, 2017November 9, 2017Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: disney, henson family, intertextuality, jim henson, muppet heresy, music, steve whitmire, the schism Leave a comment

Frog Quixote

Welcome to my quixotic Muppet blog! Why don’t I get things started by answering some questions that you, the reader, may or may not be wondering:

Who am I?
My name is Mary Arlene, sometimes spelled Arline–it’s a long story (see below). For more information about me, please click here.

What is my quest?
Okay, at this point I’m not sure if that’s a serious question or if you–hypothetical reader–are just quoting Monty Python at me. But it doesn’t matter, because my answer is the same either way.

My quest–specifically as a Muppet blogger, but also generally as a human being–can best be expressed by the lyrics to the song “The Impossible Dream” from the musical Man of La Mancha. I’d like to pull out a few lines that I find particularly pertinent to what I’m trying to accomplish here:

“To dream the impossible dream / to fight the unbeatable foe / to bear with unbearable sorrow … to right the unrightable wrong … to fight for the right without question or pause / to be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause.”

Why a Muppet blog?
I used to write about Muppets a lot on my other blog. Eventually, one of my friends–perhaps growing tired of my preoccupation–suggested that I start a dedicated Muppet blog. It sounded like a fun idea. Because of my background, I believed then–as I believe now–that I have a unique fan perspective on the Muppets that would provide an interesting counterpoint to the other Muppet fan sites that are out there. (See also “Why do I call myself a ‘Muppet Heretic'” below.) But what with one thing and another, I never got around to it.

However, with recent schism (hereafter to be known as “the Schism”) between the Disney-owned Muppet Studios and longtime puppeteer Steve Whitmire, and the subsequent smear campaign waged in the press against Steve Whitmire, I felt the need to do my part to show my support for Steve and try to counteract all the negativity being directed toward him, both in the press and among the fan community.

Why do I call myself a “Muppet Heretic”?
Partly because it fits in with my Don Quixote/Man of La Mancha theme, but it’s an idea that dates all the way back to when I first considered starting a Muppet blog in 2013.

To truly understand why I call myself a “Muppet Heretic,” you have to understand something about my background.

I was born in 1980, at the peak of Muppet mania. I’ve been a Muppet fan all my life, but during my formative years, I had limited access to them. When The Muppet Movie was released in theaters, I was not yet born. When The Muppet Show was wrapping up, I was still an infant. And although I was just the right age for Fraggle Rock when it premiered in 1983, my family could not afford cable, so as a kid, I knew the Fraggle characters mostly from the Weekly Reader series of picture books to which we somehow obtained a subscription–which I enjoyed very much but, to paraphrase Billy Joel, you can’t get the sound from a story in a picture book, aimed at your average kid. My first exposure to the Muppets was from Sesame Street, because it was available for free over the air; therefore, it was Sesame Street that really shaped my concept of what the Muppets were.

My secondary exposure to the Muppets was from the movies, but they weren’t readily available to me at first, either. We did go see The Muppets Take Manhattan in the theater when I was four years old, but in retrospect, I think I was too young for it. I got bored halfway through and turned around in my seat to watch the light from the projector–which is just as well, because if I had been paying attention when Kermit gets hit by a car, I don’t think I would have ever recovered. Eventually, I had access to the Muppet movies through home video, but I think it was 1986 before we could afford to buy a VCR. (And the first video we ever rented was Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird.)

So my experience with the Muppets was different from that of the typical Muppet fan my age. For example, I knew all the words to “The Rainbow Connection” before I even knew that there WAS a Muppet Movie, because my older siblings knew it and used to sing it to me all the time, long before I ever got a chance to see the film. As another example, I was 33 years old before I ever got to see Fraggle Rock in its entirety, although I had seen one episode at a friend’s house when I was six or seven.

While I’ve been a Muppet fan all my life, I only became involved in the online Muppet fan community around 2011 or so. And on becoming involved, I came to the uncomfortable realization that my Muppet fan opinions seem to be out of step with the mainstream Muppet fandom. For example, I think Sesame Street is funnier than The Muppet Show. I like Muppet Treasure Island more than I like The Muppet Christmas Carol (which is not to say that I think Treasure Island is better, per se; just that I find it more enjoyable). I like Muppets from Space more than I like The Muppets Take Manhattan (which has as much to do with the happy memories I have of watching Muppets from Space with friends in college than anything having to do with the movie itself). I like The Dark Crystal more than Labyrinth. I don’t have a single problem with A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie that I don’t also have with the original, non-Muppet It’s a Wonderful Life. And I tend to be less critical and more forgiving of post-Jim Henson Muppet projects than ones in which Jim was actually involved.

These are relatively minor Muppet heresies. I committed to a more major one in the summer of 2017. For 27 years prior to that, I believed–as most people probably did, and do–that Jim Henson’s children were the best qualified to represent his posthumous wishes. I no longer believe that.

I first began to have doubts when the Muppets were sold to Disney in 2004. This seemed like a terrible idea to me, but on the other hand, I know that Jim was in the process of selling his company to Disney when he died, so I was willing to give the Henson children the benefit of the doubt that they honestly believed they were going along with what Jim would have wanted.

But the final straw came in July 2017 when the Henson children sided with Disney and against Steve Whitmire in the Schism. Whether this was a coordinated effort between Disney and the Hensons, or Disney was just exploiting the Hensons for its own gain, I don’t know–but it certainly had the effect desired by Disney of discrediting Steve. After a bit of soul-searching, wherein I tried to look at the matter from every angle and think about not just what was said but how it was said, I lost all faith in the Hensons’ good intentions.

What can you expect to find on this blog?
My primary purpose in this blog is to provide analysis and commentary on Muppet and Henson-related projects, both past and present. I have some ideas for regular article series that I would like to feature. For example, in 2013 I had a project on my other blog that I called “Year of Bert & Ernie,” wherein I posted a Bert & Ernie sketch every weekday. Since that time, the official Sesame Street website has been overhauled and most of my links are now dead, and I’d like to rebuild that archive if at all possible. I’d like to implement “Fraggle Fridays” wherein I give my impressions on Fraggle Rock from the perspective of someone who only got to see it as an adult. I’d like to analyze salient themes within Jim Henson’s body of work, and I’d like to explore my Muppet heresies in more detail.

My secondary purpose in this blog is to analyze the Schism objectively, to explore my feelings about it subjectively, to expand upon ideas that were too long and detailed to express as comments in Steve’s blog, to hold Disney and the Hensons accountable for their words and actions, and–as noted above–to show my unequivocal support for Steve Whitmire and do my small part to try to counteract all the negativity against him.

What can you NOT expect to see on this blog?

You cannot expect to see interviews with Muppets/Muppet performers. Given my unabashedly critical stance with regard to both Disney and JHC, it is extremely unlikely that they will allow me to speak directly or indirectly with any of the Muppet characters or performers. ToughPigs and The Muppet Mindset have some good interviews; if that’s what you’re looking for, I recommend you check those out.
You cannot contact Steve Whitmire or gain contact information for him from this blog. I’m just a fan of Steve’s; I’m not affiliated with him, have never met him, and only know him through his blog and his work with the Muppets. I don’t have his contact information, and I wouldn’t give it out even if I did.
You will not see undue criticism of, or personal attacks against, Matt Vogel and/or the other Muppet performers. Matt Vogel is a talented puppeteer. I have tremendous respect for him. What’s happening now with the Muppet Studios is not his fault. The same goes for the other Muppet performers. They have enough to worry about without me, or anyone else, sitting on the sidelines telling them how to do their jobs. I will treat them with nothing less than the respect they deserve, and I will hold all readers/commenters to the same standard.
Don’t expect to see spamming, flaming, trolling, or bullying of any kind. Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Commenting on my blog, or anyone else’s, is a privilege–NOT a right. If this privilege is abused on my blog, it will be suspended with or without advance notice and with or without explanation. Respectful disagreement will be tolerated; rude, inappropriate, or hateful comments will not. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

Is my name spelled “Arlene” or “Arline”?
At this point, either spelling is acceptable.

“Arlene” is actually my middle name; per my birth certificate, it is spelled A-R-L-E-N-E. I was named for my grandmother, whose middle name was “Arline”–pronounced the same, but spelled differently. My parents changed the spelling of my name to give me my own sense of identity.

When I started getting serious about blogging about ten years ago, I wanted a screen name that sounded professional and felt like it belonged to me. I hit upon the idea of using my middle name as though it were my last name. In honor of my grandmother, I decided to use her spelling of “Arline.”

When Steve Whitmire started his blog, and I started commenting on it, I decided to go back to spelling my name “Arlene” for the purpose. After all the joy he’s given me over the years as a Muppet performer, I wanted to make a gift of my true name to him. ~~Unfortunately, I didn’t take into consideration that I would also be making a gift of my true name to everyone else who reads it. Oops.~~ Ultimately, I’m glad that I made Steve a gift of my true name, because it made it all the more special when he quoted a comment of mine in one of his blog posts. 😀

When I decided to start this blog, I decided–in the interest of consistency with my comments on Steve’s blog–to tie my true name to it instead of using my grandmother’s spelling, as I have done elsewhere on the Web. Alas, when I was choosing a user name, I found that “maryarlene” was already taken, so I was forced to use “maryarline”. *sigh*

Why a Muppet blog NOW?
With all the terrible things going on in the world, am I really worried about the integrity of a bunch of puppets?

Frankly, yes. Let me explain:

In the first place, I think what’s happening in the Muppet world right now is a sort of microcosm of what’s happening in the nation and the world at large. I think the same forces that led to Steve Whitmire’s dismissal from the Muppets–corporate greed, lack of accountability, and victim-blaming propaganda–are the same forces have caused a lot of the problems going on in the larger world at the moment.

In the second place, what happens to the Muppets matters…because the Muppets are a force for good in the world, and I’m sure we can all agree the world needs all the forces for good that it can get. Jim Henson once identified one of his business objectives as “work for [the] common good of all mankind.” Even Fraggle Rock, that cute little TV show for kids, that delightfully silly, lighthearted, whimsical, colorful, musical romp, was created for the express purpose of bringing about world peace. Jim Henson never did anything without a larger and more meaningful purpose behind it, and that purpose is still meaningful today–arguably more so than ever.

In the third place, none of us can vanquish all the evils in this world singlehandedly; if we try, we just tire ourselves out. We each have to pick our battles. We each need to go where we can do the most good. We each need to invest our talents where they will be the most useful and produce the best return.

In Steve Whitmire, I see a good man who has been the victim of a grave injustice. While he should be praised and honored for taking a principled stance and speaking out against a corrupt corporation, he has instead been bullied, harassed, and unjustly persecuted. When I look at the Muppet community as a whole, I see an alarming number of his so-called “fans” turning against him while people who really ought to know better turn a blind eye and a deaf ear.

I can’t cure all the ills of this world singlehandedly, but I can make my stand alongside someone whom I respect and admire, and raise my voice in the cause of justice and integrity. And by standing up for justice and integrity in this one specific circumstance, I will help to advance the cause of justice and integrity globally.

And if all that fails, at least I can share some fun Muppet videos, and we can all have a good laugh.

Frog of La Mancha

Probosculations of a Muppet Heretic

intertextuality