(Well, so much for the peaceful, quiet relaxation.)
First it was a migraine, then it was personal/professional issues…maybe there are forces out there that don’t want me to say what I was originally going to say about the Fraggle Rock episode “Manny’s Land of Carpets.” Or maybe last week, or even yesterday, just wasn’t the acceptable time for me to be able to do it full justice. In any case, I think I’m ready now, and I feel compelled to revisit my original ideas about this episode:
GOBO: Why does the Wish-Granting Creature promise so many things in so many different voices? Something’s wrong here! […] I wish I knew which voice to believe. ECHO: Believe!…believe!…believe… […] GOBO: All of a sudden, I know which voice to listen to!
We live in a schizophrenic society. There are more voices now than ever before, all saying different things and all with different–and often sinister, or at least selfish–motivations. We live in a world in which foreign agitators promulgate fake news stories across social media platforms to influence our elections. We–well, I and at least some of you–live in a country in which those in authority try to undermine the credibility of those journalists who are actively TRYING to be truthful–or, at least, accurate–by disingenuously calling them “fake news.”
When I heard that Disney’s rationale for dismissing Steve Whitmire from the Muppet Studios was “unacceptable business conduct,” I laughed–loudly and derisively, without mirth.
Paging Mr. Kettle: Phone call from the Walt Disney Company regarding your color!
Disney’s shady business dealings are the stuff of legend. They could fill several books–and have. What follows is not intended to be a comprehensive account of Disney’s propensity for screwing people over. We’ve got a loooong journey ahead of us; this is just the first step.
Well, the best-laid plans of Fraggles and frogs often go awry, I suppose. I had a whole Fraggle Friday feature all planned out…and then I developed a migraine, with its attendant photosensitivity, which means I can’t turn on a light to see my notes, at least not without feeling as though a Doozer with an ice auger is standing on my head trying to bore its way into my skull.
So instead, let’s focus on the night when the lights went out in Fraggle Rock: episode 218, “The Day the Music Died,” aka The One With the Ditzies.
“Five minutes into the [Hollywood Bowl] show, and I forgot that he had a new performer – Kermit was just Kermit.” –Joe Hennes, “REPORT: The Muppets Take the Bowl,” ToughPigs.com, September 12, 2017
I’m genuinely happy for Joe that he enjoyed the show, and the same goes for anyone who attended and enjoyed it.
But this is exactly why I don’t want to watch clips from the Hollywood Bowl show; not because I think it won’t be good, but because I’m afraid it will be good.
The last two months have been terrible in so many ways, and yet they’ve brought to my life a sense of purpose that I haven’t felt in a long time.
Today, while doing research online, I found a quiz that was put together a week ago by Slate Magazine asking the reader to identify (by voice) the puppeteer performing Kermit in various audio clips.
Sarcastically, I thought, “Oh, that’s nice. Turn Steve’s professional tragedy into a party game.”
But I took the quiz anyway, hoping to prove the point that, as wonderful as Matt is, he doesn’t sound anywhere near as much like Jim as some people would like to believe he does.
Happy birthday to Steve Whitmire and Jim Henson! Steve, this year you get top billing; I don’t think Jim would mind. 🙂
I’m sure there are probably other examples of Jim and Steve singing together in harmony, but I can’t think of any of the top of my head, and it doesn’t matter because this one is probably the best anyway.
Although I am a child of the ’80s, Fraggle Rock was, regrettably, not a significant part of my childhood. I saw bits and pieces of it back in the day, but I never got to watch the series in its entirety until 2013–although I’ve been trying to make up for lost time ever since. In a way, though, I think I’m kind of lucky because I think that maybe I get more out of watching Fraggle Rock as an adult, bringing my education and life experience to it, than I would have as a kid–a relatively blank slate.
Be that as it may, I identify strongly with Mokey. Her abstract, fanciful, introspective approach to life, and her idealistic worldview, remind me a lot of myself. In particular, however, I relate to Mokey in this episode of Fraggle Rock, in which she attempts to discern her vocation. I’ve been trying to discern mine for 37 years, and I still haven’t quite figured it out.
CANTUS: Listening is the first step and the last step. MOKEY: Ohhh…then I’m on the LAST step! CANTUS: YOU…haven’t even begun. MOKEY: Well, I’m already there! I mean…what about the ping? CANTUS: The ping is the start, but then comes the beginning. –“Mokey and the Minstrels” Fraggle Rock, (Jocelyn Stevenson, screenwriter)
It’s been almost two months since I started this blog, and while I’ve created quite a bit of content that I can be proud of, in a way I still feel like I haven’t even really begun.
Not counting Kermit, who appeared on Sesame Street but wasn’t created specifically for it, Ernie is probably my favorite Sesame Street character of all time, although it is hard for me to choose between him and Bert (they’re always at their best when they’re together). If you were to ask former classmates of mine whether I was more like Ernie or Bert in school, most of them would probably say Bert. But in my own mind, I always identified with Ernie. Certainly, Ernie is everything that I would like to be: clever, funny, easygoing, with an infectious laugh and a perpetual smile on his face.
And yet, I said before that, of all of the Muppet (and non-Muppet) characters that Jim Henson created, Kermit the Frog is the most “real” to me. So when Sesame Workshop recast Ernie in 2014, my reaction was one of mild annoyance rather than panic.
It was the episode in which Bert learns to ride his bike without training wheels (clip). At first, I was happy to see a street story featuring Bert and Ernie because that hadn’t happened since who knows when. Then Ernie opened his mouth to speak and I said to myself, “Is Ernie going through puberty? Because his voice seems to have changed.”
Someone posted the following video in the Muppet Pundit comments. Steve has yet to talk about it, so I don’t know all of the backstory, but it appears that Steve returned to his old high school in 1988 with some of his characters (Muppet and otherwise) in tow to participate in a concert of some sort.
Take it, Wembley:
I have another confession to make: in all my years of studying literature, I’ve found that, a lot of times, I don’t think that an author’s–or, in a broader sense, an artist’s–most celebrated or well-known work is necessarily their best. I read The Red Badge of Courage in grad school and was underwhelmed by it; my favorite Stephen Crane work is called The Monster; you’ve probably never heard of it, but it’s utterly brilliant. Similarly, I love Madeleine L’Engle, and I love A Wrinkle in Time, but it was a early novel of hers, and I think her later works show a growth and a maturity that is missing in Wrinkle, as wonderful as it is and as much as I have always loved it.
My point is that “My Way” is so famous and so popular, and arguably so overexposed, that I’ve never been that impressed with it. In fact, I’m not sure if I ever really paid attention to the lyrics before. But watching Wembley sing this little duet, the lyrics suddenly smacked me in the face, particularly the last verse:
“For what is a man? What has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels And not the words of one who kneels.”
Those lyrics might have been written for and about Steve; that’s exactly what he’s doing on his blog, and he’s taken–and continues to take–the blows for it.
What follows is a clip from a 2014 benefit screening of Muppets Most Wanted at the White House for military families. Kermit speaks eloquently to the children of military personnel about the challenges they face:
You know, I’ve watched a lot of interviews with Kermit, and Steve as well, and one question that comes up a lot is who are their favorite celebrities that they’ve met and worked with. And, speaking strictly for myself, any or all of the Obamas would be near the top of the list. But I imagine that getting to do things to help kids–like this, or like the Labor Day telethon, or Make-A-Wish visits–would be the most rewarding part of being a Muppet performer. I imagine that that stuff would stick with you longer than the bits with the celebrities, although those bits would be fun too.
“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” –T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
I have a confession to make: Kermit the Frog is more “real” to me than any of the other Muppets. I remember when Jim Henson died, my first thought was not “What’s going to happen to the Muppets?” or “What’s going to happen with Sesame Street?” but “What’s going to happen to Kermit?”
So when news of the Schism broke, I was less concerned about Steve’s other characters than I was about Kermit. But as I processed the news, I started worrying about Beaker.
Since Beaker doesn’t really talk, I feared that Disney would feel that it didn’t matter who performed him. In fact, the opposite is true: a character who doesn’t talk needs a skilled, consistent performer who knows how to convey an idea nonverbally.
Three years ago, the Muppets were featured on “A Capitol Fourth,” the yearly Independence Day special that airs every July 4th on PBS. In order to promote the special, Kermit the Frog and host Tom Bergeron did a series of satellite interviews with local TV new programs. One of these was an affliate in Omaha, Nebraska, which is about 175 miles, or a 2-3/4 hour drive, south of where I live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota:
In the interview, Kermit mentioned the zoo in Omaha, and I freaked out: “OHMYGOSH! Kermit the Frog just mentioned the name of a place that is relatively close to where I live, and that I’ve actually visited!!!”
These are the scraps that you have to console yourself with when you’re a Muppet fan who lives in South Dakota. Although, there may be an obscure Muppet connection for those of us to live in Sioux Falls: Raven Industries is based here in town; their main thing is the manufacture of balloons and inflatables, including some of the big balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and that sort of thing. I’m not able to verify it now, but I think I remember hearing once that Raven Industries had made the Kermit the Frog balloon that appeared in the parade from 2002-2012. I haven’t been able to confirm it yet, but it’s certainly possible.
Anyway, getting back to Omaha: what really impressed me is not only that Kermit mentioned the Omaha zoo, but he actually called it by its proper name: the Henry Doorly Zoo. I think that was the first time I’d ever heard someone not associated with the zoo call it by its real name; most people just call it “the Omaha zoo,” as I have done all throughout this post.
I asked Steve Whitmire, in a comment on his blog, if he had ever actually been to the zoo in Omaha. He didn’t respond at the time, so I still don’t know, but I am not without hope that he will be able to address it someday.
But anyway, the other reason that I wanted to post this interview is because it’s really a beautiful example of the lovely, fluid, dynamic facial expressions that Steve gives Kermit when he performs him. It really makes Kermit alive and vibrant.
We don’t have footage of five consecutive minutes of Matt Vogel performing simula-Kerm yet, (at least, not through official channels) so I’m not yet able to make a fair comparison, but thus far simula-Kerm’s face seems very static.
I’m also a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and there’s a phrase related to that show that keeps running around in my head. When Bill Corbett took over performing Crow T. Robot from Trace Beaulieu at the beginning of Season 8, he had not done a lot of puppeteering before, and he apologized for the resulting mediocre performance by telling people, “Crow has had a stroke.”
And I’ll just say that, if I didn’t know what was going on with the Muppets and Disney and Steve and the whole thing, if I looked at those videos with Matt performing Kermit without knowing what was going on, I would have said, “What’s the matter with Kermit? It looks like he’s had a stroke.”
I apologize in advance because there are no good copies of the song I want to talk about on YouTube; at least, not that I can find. There are two versions that I can find, both recorded by someone pointing a camera a television set.
This one has better video, in that there are no reflections on the screen:
This one has better (or at least louder) audio:
This is not one of my favorite Fraggle Rock songs. Generally speaking, I don’t really like songs that consist of one four-word phrase repeated over and over. That’s no fun for me to listen to and/or sing along with. It makes me wonder if Dennis Lee was on vacation that week or what.
So usually, whenever I watch the episode of Fraggle Rock from which this song comes (“Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk“), I usually skip over this song and the reprise, which is basically the same thing but with the word “bad” changed to “glad”.
But last week I DID feel bad, so it felt appropriate to post a link to this song. Before I did so, I actually watched the whole song for perhaps the first time ever, and I realized that this song is really a tour de force musical performance by Wembley.
Which, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, necessarily makes it a tour de force musical performance by Steve Whitmire.
It seems to me that if you only have four lyrics at your disposal, you’ve really got to punch up your vocal performance and make each repeated phrase different from the last one. I imagine that you’d have to think about subtext and making each phrase slightly different.
The more I think about it, this may actually be one of the most challenging songs in the Fraggle Rock repertoire. You get off easy when it comes to memorizing lyrics, but everything else would be a lot harder.
Steve’s commitment to the performance is wonderful. Definitely worth a second look. I “feel so glad” that I finally decided to pay attention. 😉
Frog of La Mancha 