In a series called Mondo Bullshittio, let’s talk about some of the most glaring hypocrisies and faux pas in pop culture… and all that it affects.
The Muppet Show, a series that hit its “offbeat” stride in the late 70s and early 80s (when, soon after, other kitsch fare like Punky Brewster and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse were “normalizing weird”) via syndication, was never something one thought possible for Disney to distort. That is, in terms of slapping it with a trigger warning. For all intents and purposes, The Muppets is Jim Henson’s way of communicating certain truths to adults through a childlike medium. If the kid happened to “get it,” all the better.
The genius of the show was manifested by the Rabelaisian characters, including Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen, Beaker and Rizzo the Rat. Their humanness was all the more pronounced precisely because their personalities were emanating from the inside of a puppet. But no, Disney does not trust today’s youth to understand, to be “okay” with “negative depictions” and, as they refer to it, “mistreatment of people and cultures.” It doesn’t stop there; Disney also wants to be personally lashed by anyone who watches the show and thinks about how horrendous it was that such “filth” could ever be allowed to air, which is why they add, for further dramatic panache, “These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.” Thus, the Muppets have been branded as “offensive content.” Which is honestly one of the more laughable things of 2021 so far (apart from Biden getting on the bombing train).
And what negative depictions are we really talking about? The Swedish Chef? Pepe the King Prawn? Ironically, Henson’s point in including a wider array of ethnicities on the show was to acclimate young viewers to the notion that, hey, there’s other people out there besides white folk even though that’s all the television shows you. There was no malicious intent on the part of the puppeteer. Believe it or not, there was actually a time when the show was praised for the greater pains it took to convey a multitude of ethnicities living in harmony.
Alas, it appears as though, in the present, if you depict any “person of color” (as we’ve been trained to say is the most politically correct term of the moment, despite not really sounding like it), it is automatically offensive. Especially if you depict people of color without (gasp!) making direct reference to their color. That somehow correlates immediately to the presently loathed philosophy of: “I don’t see color.” So it must be made mention of, and it must be done so per the Thought Police’s exact specifications.
In any case, this isn’t Disney’s first time censoring the Muppets. In 2017, they gave Steve Whitmire–the longtime voice of Kermit–the boot in large part because they felt his recent “portrayal” of the character was too downbeat and self-loathing. In any event, Henson was a man who would rather waive his performance fee in exchange for keeping the rights to his characters when they appeared on Sesame Street (yes, worlds colliding indeed). So one wonders how he would feel about this form of compromisation, this immediate taint presented at the beginning of his show now.
Of course, it isn’t just the stereotypical depictions of certain ethnicities in the Muppets themselves that have landed The Muppet Show in “hot water.” It’s Johnny Cash appearing next to a Confederate flag, it’s Peter Sellers dressed as a gypsy, it’s Spike Milligan in costumes that more than border on caricature during a performance of “It’s A Small World After All.” So to sum up, it’s a time before it became only acceptable to keep lampooning Italians on the “cultural joke” front. Because hey, they’re white, but the more “uncouth” kind of white so no one cares.
Regardless of Disney hiring a team of outsiders to appraise their catalogue and advise on what needs to be marked with a disclaimer, the past happened and no one can change it. Not even with a “sensitivity notice.” Still, they claim, “Rather than removing this content, we see an opportunity to spark conversation and open dialogue on history that affects us all.” The only dialogue the warning will start is about how terrible it all used to be before the present batch of woke folk came along to inform people of what they should be offended by.
In short, everyone has gone stark raving mad with their trigger-happy placement of trigger warnings everywhere. If the censors could, they would slap you with a trigger warning the second you walk out the door of your house. And honestly, if the 1984 path keeps going the way it is, that won’t be too far out of the realm of possibility. Because The Corporation must stave off any potential lawsuit or blame at ever turn.
