Today is Jim Henson’s birthday. I just wrote a big thing that was a timeline of his life, about how he went from rural Mississippi to DC to New York to London and became a big star and all his characters are great and blah blah blah…I wrote a lot. And I deleted it.
Jim Henson is my hero. He’s been my hero for as long as I’ve known his name. I’d see his name in the credits for “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show.” I would sometimes ask my parents who different people were in the credits for shows, because I was starting to figure out that Luke Skywalker was actually a fictional character, performed by Mark Hamill. With Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog it was different, because you couldn’t see Jim at the same time you’d see Kermit on tv. I knew the Jim was the performer. But not seeing him–it gave it a sense of magic that I didn’t see with other live action performances. The magic went beyond just Kermit, and Jim Henson was one of the few people I consider a true genius.
He’s had a profound impact on my life. I’m a teacher, and a big part of my teaching philosophy is that teaching can be, and should be, fun. Jim was only one of the many people involved in making “Sesame Street” what it was in the early 1970s when I was immersed in it, but the message was clear. The combination of humor and music and kind adults and obsessive compulsive monsters that ate your cookies — it’s how education could be. It wasn’t reading a textbook and answering the questions at the end of the chapter. It wasn’t a standardized test. It was personal, and weird, and fun. Jim Henson and his creations influenced the way I teach more than any class I took at a university, more than any book I read, more than any teacher I had in school myself.
I was 17 when Jim Henson died. He died unexpectedly, he died young. That single event scarred me more than almost anything had up until that point in my life. Something broke inside me. I really should have therapized it out, but I never did. Instead of healing properly, it turned into an obsession with the Muppets and a love of the characters that took me from the normal kid of the 70s-80s who “loved” the Muppets into someone who was always drawing them, thinking about them, practicing voices.
That sudden loss made a lot of us realize what we had taken for granted — that Jim Henson, and his characters, would be around forever. Considering the tragedy that shook them, the Muppets actually picked things up pretty quickly. Things like “A Muppet Christmas Carol,” “Muppet Treasure Island,” and “Muppets Tonight” were all made within ten years of Jim’s passing — but each may have been a little too…reverent. Trying too hard to do exactly What Jim Would Have Done. Without Jim being there. I think too much of Jim’s legacy connects back to his tragic death. Muppet fans look at 1990 as this defining line like everything done before 1990 was pure genius distilled from the dews of heaven, and everything since has been crap. When really, there was a lot of trial and error in Jim Henson’s career. Some things are beautiful from a technical standpoint, but didn’t tell the best story. And yet, dude puts a sock on his hand, and magic happens. There are these ineffable qualities that real creators find, and for Jim, as much as he wanted to put the Muppets behind him, they were a part of him.
There was a lot of trial and error in Jim’s career
With the premiere of “The Muppets” on ABC this week, I’ve had at least a dozen conversations with people in person, and double that online with friends and colleagues who know I would watch it, and know I’d have an opinion on it. Here’s the quick version:
They’re going for funny instead of sentimental, which is going to alienate a lot of viewers. They’re going for a “30 Rock”/”The Office”/”Parks and Rec” thing, which I like. There are some tonal things like ‘we’re on later, we can say “hell” and “god”‘ …which the Muppets have said before, certainly, but stacked up several times in the first two episodes, it comes across as crass. But
1. I do think it’s funny. We watched it as a family, and each of us were laughing at different things. I love that there were jokes that Melissa and I got that my boys didn’t.
2. Issues that One Million Moms have with it are ridiculous. They’re the same people that got mad at Mister Rogers for stripping at the beginning and end of each episode.
3. If you’re younger than me, you’re comparing it more to “Sesame Street” and “Muppet Babies” and post-Jim movies (squeaky clean Disneyfied adaptations and worlds) than “The Muppet Show” (which got freaky sometimes with Alice Cooper, and murder, and ) and the Jim movies (which had drinking and swearing in them and Janice talking about how she can walk around on the beach naked if she wants to). Basically you think that this is the first time Muppets have been adults. And it’s not.
4. I love having an entire cast of characters back, with Scooter and Janice and Rowlf and Dr. Teeth and Muppet Newsman everyone I love, instead of just the Big Four.
5. I really don’t know if this will find its audience. I hope so. If it doesn’t, I’m pretty sure Disney will box up the Muppets forever. So I’m scared.
“Would Jim like it?”
The other conversation I keep having is “would Jim like it?” Truthfully, I think he’d be excited. Excited for something new. If Jim Henson’s career has any through-line, it’s that he was always trying something new and different. Puppets were a big part of that career from 1955-1990, but he was constantly trying to do new things with technology, with different kinds of puppet, with different formats. He would not want to do “The Muppet Show: 2015” as a 1970’s variety show with a single guest star and the whole vaudeville thing. If his characters lived on, had a life of their own, I can see him putting them in a workplace comedy. The Muppets in our real world, just like they were in the three Muppet films he was involved with. Not on a cartoony set, not playing other characters. Being themselves, sometimes awkwardly, always weird, but with a connection to each other that won’t ever be lost.
I may go back and delete all that too. It’s not exactly what I want to say. It’s too wordy. My feelings about him are complicated, and as I grow as a dad and teacher and creator myself…they just get more complicated. It comes down to this. Jim Henson is my hero. I love him. It’s his birthday. Happy Birthday, Jim. I…uh…I made this for you.
