Of Muppets and Men - The Muppets by Grant Hiskes
Image from Verybadnow.com
After discussing the poor quality of television programming their children were watching with Robert F. Kennedy, Newton Minow found himself as the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the administration of John F. Kennedy. In a passionate address to government officials, Minow made his famous “vast wasteland” speech in which he criticized modern television programming for creating content that did not enrich the minds of the American public to the fullest extent. Minow believed television programs underestimated the mental capacity of Americans. Minow’s work resulted in local non-profit educational television stations across the country. The first big program of these TV stations was Sesame Street. Sesame Street was created as an educational program for urban youth. Felt puppets, “Muppets”, like Elmo and Kermit the Frog soon found themselves on the show, and 40+ years later, Kermit and his Muppet crew found themselves carrying out the same objective in the 2011 film musical The Muppets. The ambiguity of the Muppets’ racial and sexual identities allows The Muppets to uproot harmful conventions of representation of racial and sexual minorities that are often seen in film musicals and tell a story that inspires its audience to come together to create a happy world for all.
One look at The Muppets and you will see that the Muppets are not your traditional musical characters. The Muppets have a skin tone that is not black or white but just about every other color of the rainbow. Their colored felt “skin” along with their cartoonish faces give viewers a sense that these characters are not human, although they think, speak, and behave like humans. The Muppets cannot be identified as one racial group, yet their thoughts and feelings give the audience something to empathize with. As Muppets creator Jim Henson once said, “the only kids who can identify along racial lines with the Muppets have to be green or orange” (Greene 2019). Because the Muppets cannot be confined to one racial group, they can convey emotions that minorities as a whole can relate to. In the film, the Muppets are the washed-up outcasts of modern society. The Muppets are viewed as the underdogs as they strive to get the band back together again to raise $10 Million through a telethon to save the iconic Muppets’ studio from being sold to villain Tex Richman who wants the studio for the oil.
Along the Muppets’ journey to overcome adversity to restore happy times for all, we see problematic conventions of racial and sexual representations uprooted. One way this is done is through the subtle incorporation of celebrity cameos across a wide range of demographics. As Roger Ebert mentioned in his review of the film, “famous bit parts are a tested element of the Muppet formula”. We see black representation in cameos from Donald Glover and Whoopi Goldberg, Latin representation from Selena Gomez and Rico Rodriguez, and gay representation from Jim Parsons and Neil Patrick Harris. The various backgrounds give nods to a wide array of minority groups in the audience, but these cameos also make it clear that the Muppets, not the celebrities, are the star of the show. The lack of hype afforded to the celebrities makes the Muppets larger than life and brings their issues, which are intended to represent that of a normal human, to the forefront of the plot. Even the show’s lead human cast members Jason Segel and Amy Adams take a backseat to Walter, the childhood Muppet best friend of Gary (Jason Segel) and the rest of the Muppet crew. This subordination of human cast members allows the Muppets to control the narrative and convey the most important emotions and ideas of the film of coming together to make the world happier.
The ambiguous identities of the Muppets can be seen in the film’s protagonist, Walter. Walter is the longtime childhood Muppet friend of Gary and has a fairly human-like complexion. What is ambiguous about Walter is his sexuality. Contrary to the typical protagonist, Walter does not express any romantic interest or desire. We only see Walter deal with internal conflict, specifically in his musical number “Man or Muppet”. The chorus reveals this conflict as Walter asks, “Am I a man or am I a muppet”? Walter’s first verse opens with “I look into these eyes, and I don’t recognize the one I see inside. It’s time for me to decide. Am I a man, or am I a muppet”? Then, looking into a mirror, Walter sees his reflection as the homosexual actor Jim Parsons and proceeds to affirm to himself, “If I’m a muppet, then I’m a very manly muppet”. Walter’s inner battle continues as he then flips his verse and says “If I’m a man, that makes me a muppet of a man”. This back and forth signifies Walter’s struggle with his own identity. Walter does not explicitly come out as gay. However, the idea that he sees himself in the openly gay Jim Parsons, and the musical number resolves with him donning matching white suits with Parsons, looking into his eyes, and singing “now I know who I am” certainly creates ambiguity. This would not be the first time the Muppets have left characters to be sexually ambiguous as many believe Sesame Street staples Bert and Ernie may be homosexuals although it is never directly addressed.
Although Walter’s sexuality is not transparent, his intended purpose in the film is. Josh Grossberg discusses Walter’s inspiring journey of self-discovery as a muppet stuck in a world full of humans. The film’s producer Todd Lieberman also reveals in the article that “The emotional core of the movie is Walter. The idea is that he’s not comfortable where he is now but he ends up finding a place where he’s comfortable” (Grossberg 2011). Importantly, Walter finding a place where he’s comfortable at serves for the greater good of the Muppets, who are depicted throughout the film as forgotten and fighting to take back their role in society and the world so humans and muppets can live happily alongside each other as they once did.
Brooks Barnes discusses another interesting interpretation of Walter’s character. Barnes describes Walter as a more human-like, yet very innocent Muppet character that serves as an easy entrance point for a younger, more unfamiliar audience to empathize with in the film. Barnes also argues that Walter’s status as an avid Muppets fan also immediately thrusts the audience into the position where they are rooting for the Muppets to beat the odds and save their studio. The Muppets’ underdog position also seems to be quite deliberate. One of the film’s writers Nicholas Stoller said in the same New York Times piece, “We wanted him to be out of place in the human world, so we knew he needed to be small” (Barnes 2011). Walter’s diminutive size is not meant to subjugate the Muppets but paint them as an empowered underdog minority.
This empowerment starts with the uprooting of harmful conventions of representation that many progressive scholars observe within the musical genre. The film scholar Stacy Wolf asserts “many musicals convey the ideological message that proper maturity is becoming feminized/masculinized and that is inseparable from heterosexual awakening” (Wolf 2011, 3). Similar thoughts are shared by scholars Ford and Macrossan, “In many Hollywood movies, music videos, magazines, television, and other forms of popular culture aimed at women, romantic coupling is a sign of success and something to be eagerly pursued” (Ford and Macrossan 2019, 60). The Muppets breaks away from this convention through the use of Walter. As alluded to earlier in the comments made by producer Todd Lieberman, the film’s plot revolves around Walter’s journey of self-discovery. Nothing about Walter’s character arc in the film centers around his heterosexual awakening. His masculinization, which also happens to be the plot’s climax, comes as he finally builds up the confidence in himself to whistle in front of the crowd and try and push the telethon fundraising over the $10 Million threshold. Walter did not need to disclose his sexual orientation or “get the girl” at the end of the film to mature, all he had to do was believe in himself.
Wolf also discusses how musicals like Rent and Spring Awakening use gay characters to bolster heteronormativity. This is harmful because it conveys the idea that homosexuality only exists to support or validate heterosexual relationships, which positions homosexuality as inferior to heterosexuality (Wolf 2011, 7). Although it is unclear if Walter is gay, his role does not serve to bolster the heteronormative relationship between Gary and Mary. Walter’s role does bolster the collective well-being of humans and Muppets alike a splinter from the harmful convention discussed by Wolf. Walter’s character carries powerful representation. His sexuality does not need to be acted upon for happiness, he just needs to be brave and face his fears in a non-sexual context. This conveys to the audience that it is alright to be conflicted about your sexuality, and there are sources of happiness and hope that come from outside of that sexual acknowledgment.
Not only does The Muppets work against the harmful conventions of homosexual representation discussed by Stacy Wolf, but the film also works around the restricting conventions of female representation discussed by Wolf. The arcs of female characters in the film are not confined to achieving maturity through feminization that is inseparable from heterosexual awakening. This point is made with the iconic character of Missy Piggy. Along Walter and The Muppets’ journey to get the Muppets back together, one sees all of the male characters are working less-than-desirable jobs without the Muppets’. Fozzie Bear is in a scruffy Muppets’ cover band, Gonzo runs a trash management business, and Animal is a patient in an anger management group. The only Muppet that seems to be doing better off without the Muppets happens to be the only female Muppet, Miss Piggy. Miss Piggy is a bigshot editor at Vogue in Paris. Talking with Kermit, Miss Piggy makes clear her motives for coming back. She tells Kermit, “I’m not here for you, I’m here for them (The Muppets)”. This line is not only a symbol of female independence, but it also aligns with the message consistent with the rest of the film of facing one’s fears to help create a better world for others.
The highlight of female empowerment in the musical comes through the “Me Party” number featuring Miss Piggy and Mary (Amy Adams). The context of the number stems from rifts in the vocalists’ respective relationships, but the number celebrates the power of female independence. At the number’s first crescendo, Amy Adams belts “I’m having a me party, I don’t need nobody else”. The crescendo of Miss Piggy's verse celebrates independence as well, “it’s a solo Mardi Gras!”. The upbeat, in-your-face tone of the number makes the past romantic rifts a tool for empowerment as opposed to heartbreak as the females take pride in being alone and do not need the validation of male accompaniment.
This number also blurs traditional conventions of typecast vocal ranges based on gender. Stacy Wolf discusses how female characters in musicals are restricted by vocal range (Wolf 2011, 1). This limitation hinders females from being able to take on a larger range of roles and communicate thoughts and feelings with certain emotions. The Muppet Miss Piggy breaks the barrier on this limitation though. Because Miss Piggy is not human, her character can transcend these vocal barriers. The voice behind Miss Piggy has always been a male, Eric Jacobson in this film, results in an increased vocal range that liberates definitions of female identities, allowing more viewers to feel represented and heard through the text. This definition “troubling” closely resembles what John Cameron Mitchell was trying to accomplish with Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Matthew Henry writes that Mitchell wanted to conceive the musical’s lead Hedwig as “a means of commenting on and challenging the norms of sex, gender, and sexuality rather than as a way of advancing transgender politics' (Henry 2016, 7)'. Elements of Hedwig’s character are shared with Miss Piggy. As with Mitchell’s objective, Miss Piggy’s character is not intended to advance these transgender politics but to eliminate the binaries of male and female or gay and straight. Critic Ramin Seetodeh discusses ideas that Miss Piggy may even be a drag queen herself (Seetodeh 2011). He calls attention to a paper written by theatre Jordan Schildcrout who asserts “Miss Piggy’s performance of diva femininity mixed with her aggression and physical prowess might put the viewer in mind not so much of a 1970s feminist but of an old fashioned drag queen” (Schildcrout 2008, 823-835. Seetodeh also writes that the Muppets are just puppets and cannot be gay or straight. This allows the muppets to push the boundaries of these traditional definitions. Testing the bounds of female identity is empowering because it enables more women to feel represented and uplifted by the messages conveyed by the Muppets.
We see another instance of female empowerment with the character of Veronica (Rashida Jones), the CDE network executive to whom the Muppets pitch their telethon program idea. Veronica’s role is empowering as a woman of color commands respect in the corporate sphere and holds gatekeeping power. Ford and Phoebe Macrossan discuss a concept developed by Sarah Banet-Weiser known as “popular feminism”. This term is used to describe the “visible capitalist-focused feminisms promoted by celebrities and popular culture texts” that are used in media texts to embolden women to have confidence in the workplace and tell women they are beautiful regardless of social norms. Banet-Weiser is critical of these conventions because she believes they “ensure the reproduction of a specific iteration of a feminist” (Ford and Macrossan 2019, 59). This concern does not apply to Jones’ character in the film though because she never has to prove anything in the film. From the moment she is introduced in the film, she is already in a position of power. Veronica does not struggle with any internal conflict throughout the film, she is simply a woman of color in power and the film does not find it necessary to make any further commentary on the matter. This is a prevalent theme throughout the film.
The ambiguity of the various racial and sexual identities is what allows the film to effectively convey its message of the power of coming together to create a happier world for everyone. The intentional ambiguity created around race, regarding the various celebrity cameos or the Muppets’ felt color, and sexuality, through Walter and Miss Piggy, allows more viewers to feel represented by the personas depicted on screen. Because the film does not feel the need to clarify any questions of race or sexuality, The Muppets avoids falling into the harmful conventions of representation. Instead, by utilizing characters that maximize representation, the musical can more effectively promote its message of coming together, regardless of race and sex, to make the world a better and happier place for all.
The message of coming together to create a happy place for all identities is evident in “Life’s a Happy Song”, the film’s opening and final musical number. More somber opening lyrics, “When you’re alone, life can be a little low. It makes you feel like you’re 3 foot tall” turn happy with later lyrics “Life’s a happy song when there’s someone by my side to sing along”. “Sing” in this instance has resonance with the expression of sad feelings as every original number in the musical occurs when emotions have the characters down. Having other people to “sing” with though is what is painted as the resolution of happiness as seen with other lyrics of the number like “life’s an easy road when there’s someone with you to share the load”. The number shows that possibilities are endless when we are all in it together, “there’s nothing I can’t be without you right here next to me”. “You” is used as a general term as a whole ensemble joins in the number at this point.
The incorporation of “We Built This City” as the Muppets get ready for the telethon to save the studio also illustrates the idea of coming together as it serves as a rallying cry for the Muppets to come together to save their old studio. The Muppets are not just saving the studio but restoring their relativity and significance. This is powerful considering the various racial and sexual identities they have come to represent and encompass. Coming together is also the source of the plot’s resolution. The Muppets host a telethon to raise the money to save their studio, a symbol of the Muppets’ legacy, from being bought and can only be accomplished with people across the world coming together to raise the money.
The Muppets’ message resonates because it stays true to the humor and style of the Muppets. Desirée Garcia writes about how musicals function as their own archive by drawing on relics to convey messages about today (Garcia 2021, 8). The Muppets do this in Muppets fashion drawing on historical storylines, character dynamics, and references to tell a story relevant to modern times while maintaining their light-hearted, unabashed style. Henry Barnes stresses the importance of this style in his review. Barnes writes, “It’s never cloying or too knowing. Cynicism and wariness are real world concerns that have no place among the foam and felt”. This is what allows The Muppets message to be heard (Barnes 2011). The film tells an important message within the context of humor and style that their fans remember. Old Muppets fans will bring their families to watch the film, and they will get a wholesome message with the same authenticity of the Muppets they remember from their past.
The perfect parallel to conclude this essay is a scene where Kermit pays homage to Newton Minow’s “vast wasteland” speech. In a pitch to Veronica at CDE Network, Kermit pleads, “I think kids are smarter than all of this junk” all for the talented, black Donald Glover to open the door on him.
