By Gregory Jacobs-Roseman (Composer-Lyricist)
Have you seen this? Several videos were posted to You Tube this past Saturday from a news conference in the UK with Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog in advance of the UK release of the Muppet movie (which I saw over Thanksgiving and LOVED). They’re all fantastic, but in one of them the famous puppet couple take on an attack from early December by Fox News:
Kermit was right. This is all over the internet right now. I don’t know why the fact that this comes from the one and only Miss Piggy makes it so fabulous, but I had to watch this over and over again.
If you’re unaware of the context, in the film the Muppets band together to save their old theater from an evil oil tycoon who plans to destroy it. According to Eric Bolling of the Fox Business Channel back in early December (note: that’s Fox News’ sister channel, though Bolling appears on Fox News often) this is “dangerous” and teaching kids “class warfare.”
Here’s the segment from his show. I include it here only for context and because it’s the primary source. Only watch it if you have a high threshold for bullshit and don’t mind wasting seven minutes of your life. You don't even have to go the whole seven minutes. By the time you get to the 2:30 mark, the end of the first half of the segment, you get the point.
For me, the "high point" of the discourse here is at the 4:47 mark when Andrea Tantaros insults the physical appearance of Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank. It's clear to me that none of these people actually saw the movie as they keep referring to the character of Tex Richman as a Muppet, when in fact he is played with awesome twisty-moustache-villain precision by the very human Chris Cooper. It's also clear that none of these people have ever taken a playwriting or screenwriting class, much less know the definition of the word "archetype." Save for maybe the token Democrat who can't get a word in edgewise. There are no words to describe this video. None. Except, perhaps, that the only brainwashing happening here is that of the viewers of Fox.
I’ve often imagined that being a right-wing political pundit must be like living life as a paranoid schizophrenic, constantly fabricating conspiracies out of thin air. Whenever you hear a right-wing pundit say the phrase: "what's actually going on here?" you know what's coming. This idea that everyone in Hollywood is a left-wing communist ready to brainwash your children is ludicrous. Nothing is that cut and dry. After all, it was the Hollywood studios that were fighting for the SOPA legislation to severely limit freedom on the internet, something most lefties such as myself were vehemently against.
But the right-wing media machine can’t see that. They’re too busy calling the Muppets communists or Avatar “anti-American,” all while searching for the next hidden liberal agenda in film. This is why Miss Piggy is dead-on: this is not news, it’s paranoia.
Why can’t the Muppets just be the Muppets? Why can’t good storytelling just be good storytelling? What if there’s nothing more to it than that?
Politics aside, let's talk about the arts and performance for a second. I got so much joy out of watching these news conference clips. The Muppet puppeteers are so damn good that you really do forget you're watching puppets. They field questions and tell jokes with such amazing skill and connection to character, all live without a script. I love watching the various physical tics and gestures that Kermit and Piggy make which really define and make them the three dimensional characters we've known and loved for decades. Here are some more clips which demonstrate that. You can watch them all at LeicesterSquareTV's YouTube Channel.
GREGORY JACOBS-ROSEMAN is a composer/lyricist and theatrical sound designer currently developing Save The Date: A New Musical Comedy. www.gregjr.com
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