The Muppets and Me
The author as Kermit (Halloween 2024)
Everyone is feeling a little bit awful right now, right? The Halloween pumpkins are rotting, while Christmas seems years away, here in the UK it’s pitch black by 4:30pm, and, looking at the rest of the world, well… It doesn’t exactly help with the apocalyptic feelings of gloom. What are we all turning towards to get through? Comfort food? Booze? Getting up early to do yoga in the only daylight, before doing a full skincare routine, and journalling mindfully about our emotions? (no, me neither). For me, it’s a holistic treatment of felt, ping pong balls, and comedy music. Yep, I’ve brought out the big guns. I’ve been binge watching the Muppets.
I have always loved the Muppets. Hopefully for your health and happiness, and my ease in writing this article, you know and love them too. If you don’t, a quick google at this point will make this much more comprehensible for you to read. The team of lovable puppet characters invented by Jim Henson date back to 1955, and have since kept us laughing, learning, and singing along with Sesame Street, the Muppet Show, and a variety of other tv and film appearances. As a child I had a Muppet Show Greatest Hits DVD that I watched so many times it would no longer play. Last year I went with friends to see The Muppets Christmas Carol at the cinema, and it was so beautiful that I cried. This year for Halloween I was dressed as Kermit the Frog.
It’s not just me either. Several people on the internet have become obsessed with the fact that Chappell Roan’s outfits almost always directly map onto outfits worn by Miss Piggy. On TikTok, I follow @kermitmafrog , an account which painstakingly recreates songs from Broadway musicals, performed by Kermit, Miss Piggy and occasionally Fozzie Bear. Last week Elmo was the guest on Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date. What makes them so iconically powerful to so many of us?
An undeniable element is nostalgia. As I said, I grew up watching the greatest hits of the muppets on a loop, and we watch Muppets Christmas Carol every single year on Christmas day. Many of you will have learnt to count or spell from Sesame Street, or had your earliest childhood toy be an Elmo or a Cookie Monster. Maybe like me you were eight years old when the 2012 Muppets Movie came out. Or you were eight in 1979 for the original Muppet Movie. Their ubiquity for so many years means the Muppets represent the ultimate nostalgia factor for at least three generations.
Not only this, but the Muppet-verse (go with me here) has always seemed to be an incredibly accepting and welcoming place. Every Muppet movie features themes of found family, of being able to overcome insurmountable odds if you work together, of embracing your own personal weirdness. Sesame Street has discussed adoption and addiction as well as addition and subtraction, all in an effort to help children understand the world they live in. As Kermit the frog sings ‘it’s not easy being green’, he’s teaching children about race, and about how important it is to love themselves, especially the things they cannot change. The world of the Muppets isa world I would like to live in.
Perhaps the fact the Muppets are both gentle and radical is why they feel so comforting right now. In the documentary ‘Jim Henson: Ideas Man’ about their creator (available on Disney+, a must-view if you want to bawl your eyes out watching Big Bird perform ‘Bein’ Green’ at Henson’s funeral), the Muppets are described as having a quality of ‘affectionate anarchy’. I couldn’t have said it better myself, hence my quotation. In the documentary there is so much incredible footage of the original Muppets team laughing and having fun and being silly. Equally, they are revolutionising educational television and technical puppetry, and making one of the best loved variety shows of all time. They advocate for a politics of kindness and care, while also just having a lovely time together. It is no wonder all of Henson’s children now work for or with the Muppets in some capacity. It feels like a family because it is.
What do I want you to take from this? I’d love it if you go away and watch a piece of Muppet media, whether that’s one of the original films, one of the new films, Sesame Street or The Muppet Show. If you’re getting into the spirit early, stick on Muppets Christmas Carol and crack out the mulled wine. Or discover the incredible Steve Martin cameo in the original Muppet Movie. Or John Cleese in the Great Muppet Caper. I could go on… I would love it even more if you could take on some of their message: that you can achieve massive change with a little kindness and a lot of humour, that love and friendship make everything a little better, and, if in doubt, just like Gonzo the great, you can always eat a tyre while Flight of the Bumblebee plays.
by Niamh Duncan