In the summer of 1999, when I was 10, I watched The Muppets Take Manhattan about seven-hundred thousand times a day. I’d diligently rewind the tape, hitting play just as the phrase “Jim Henson presents” appeared again, and a jaunty whistle started to court the New York skyline.
I spent those school holidays dangerously dehydrated, not because of the 40°C days, but because I bawled every time the Muppet gang (temporarily) parted ways. Their defiant weirdness gave this social outcast unparalleled comfort. Their cinematic canon – not to be confused with Gonzo the Great’s very real bit of artillery – made space for laughter, love, loss, belonging, and the taste of occasional chaos.
That year, I fell in love with their bad puns (see above) and bygone songbook; their vibrant visual style and their off-screen mechanics; their complex personalities and the humans who honed them. In other words: the alchemical elements of Henson’s practical magic.
Despite him having died in 1990, on the other side of the world, before he could rescue me from a precarious home-life and whisk me off to live in New York City, I always felt like Jim was the father I never had.
Of course, that kind of schmaltz could get a girl blown up in the Muppet Theatre
After 20 years doing the late-night TV circuit, and earning their keep with commercials, the Muppets struck prime-time gold in 1976 with The Muppet Show. Starring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, et al, it was produced in London at the dawn of the punk era, where it turned dusty vaudevillian nostalgia into essential viewing for all ages.
Packed with irreverent sketch comedy and overtly earnest musical numbers, The Muppet Show blended silliness and sincerity. This juggling act was perfected by kindred writers, directors, designers, builders, floor managers, guest stars and, above all, Muppeteers.
Every performer’s contribution was vital, but few had the palpable bond of Henson and Frank Oz. I get misty-eyed just thinking about how invigorating it must have been to share, or even witness, such a joyful, prolific partnership.
I look at a photo of Oz rehearsing Animal – a character he says has five drives: sleep, food, drums, sex and pain. (If Jim is “dad”, then Frank is “daddy”, and I’m not talking about their sense of humour.) Cross-legged and pensive, Oz watches himself in a mirror. The image captures everything I love about the Muppets: their tactile, anthropomorphic design; their uncanny synthesis of human impulses; the seamless transition from Muppet to man.
I don’t mean to erase the work of female Muppeteers such as Louise Gold, Kathy Mullen and Karen Prell – not to mention Jim’s very first teammate, his wife Jane. Despite my SJW instincts (which, honestly, I think Jim would appreciate), I love that The Muppet Show fostered soft, playful, subversive forms of masculinity. This still feels rare and precious in TV and film today.
The Muppets’ small-screen success heralded bigger cinematic outings. The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) had Henson’s motley crew of felt and glue staging elaborate production numbers and increasingly intricate stunts. Henson pioneered practical effects that hold up today – unlike the questionable CGI of, say, the Star Wars Special Editions (1997) or the mo-cap madness of The Polar Express (2004).
Even now, nothing sparks more joy than seeing Kermit ride a bike
Henson died suddenly in 1990. Folks with more serotonin than me might watch his public memorial on YouTube. Life Magazine called it an “almost unbearably moving event”. It’s certainly an exercise in communal grief, confusion, acceptance and celebration – tenets core to the Muppets’ treatise from day one.
Today the Jim Henson Company is managed by Jim’s heirs, while the Muppets work (or don’t) under the watchful eye of Uncle Walt. To date, Disney is yet to ignite a full-blown Muppet resurgence. With rumours of a new TV series circling, I hope the contemporary Muppeteers get the conditions they need to kickstart another Muppet heyday and payday.
It’s 2019. A good friend has become, let’s say, the “temporary custodian” of a projector that definitely does not belong to a private school, closed over the holidays. For reasons unrelated, my partner has MacGyvered a big screen out of dowel rods, cable ties and a queen bedsheet from Savers. By coincidence, a ragtag group of my closest mates has dragged camping chairs and picnic blankets into our backyard.
The scent of citronella blends with barbecued onion, making a sweet-and-stinky mismatch that isn’t appetising, but is apt. The sun dips, a breeze picks up, and we collectively descend down through clouds not to Manhattan, but toward a lush swampland where a familiar banjo twangs. It can’t drown out the rattling railyard down the road, but it’s a tender backing track for the lovers and dreamers here who dig the same old, weird, silly thing as me.
As Kermit says, that’s “the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with,” and that sort of make us like a family.
• Aimee Knight is the small screens editor at The Big Issue and the incoming pop culture columnist at The Lifted Brow
