“Study the past if you would define the future.”

“Hi again, Steve!  The Muppet Show made it’s debut on Disney+ and people seem to have their backs up about there being a disclaimer placed in front of a few of the episodes, one example being Johnny Cash for the Confederate flag hanging in the background of one of his songs. What is your opinion on the racial stereotypes portrayed in the show? Should it be ignored because it’s a product of it’s time? Or should it be recognised for what it is and used as a learning tool for the future?  Would love to know your answer.” – Marni Hill

This is SUCH a hard topic to answer because the questions are so much bigger than the Muppets, especially in writing where it’s so easy for misinterpretation to happen. I can only say what is in my own heart and hope that the reader is willing to take intentions into account.

I tend to be someone who seeks to take responsibility for what I feel in a sort of “Gestalt” way, I suppose.  My feelings may be triggered by something or someone, but they are still my feelings.  They generated from within me.  I am aware that I felt them, and believe there is a reason as to why I felt them. 

Emotional feelings often manifest as ‘knee-jerk’ reactions, and I think that sometimes there is a tendency for what we feel to go unexamined, or blamed on others chalked up as they ‘made me feel’ a certain way.  But, I want to know why I felt the way I did, not that it is right or wrong (that’s a different issue), but as an exercise in knowing myself in a deeper way.  

I try to look at other people and their emotional reactions through the same general lens, not to judge them solely based on what they feel, but in the hope that in a spirit of reconciliation they will judge for themselves.  I like the idea of continuing to ask “why?” until one has reached the end of their ultimate capacity to answer.

It seems to me that if the feelings that cause us discomfort, anger, or pain, remain ‘knee-jerk’ reactions and we never look at why we were effected in the way we were, the reaction is more likely to control us.  I think that we are not able to be free of that control until we objectify a feeling or emotion, until we look at it as though it is outside of us, a separate ‘thing’ to be examined impartially.  We see it, rather than just feel it.

That is very often much easier to say than it is to do, and we often remain likely to just ‘react’.  But when we objectify a feeling I think that rather than it being who we are, it becomes a part of us we can step back and look at, and we can begin to see feelings as conscious choices.  I believe that can include being offended.

For me, ‘being offended’ is also a self-generated feeling tied to an emotional reaction to something.  As with any feelings – love, joy, happiness, sadness, depression – whatever – that emotion is the culmination of who I am and all that brought me to this moment, every experience that has contributed to why I feel the way I feel about what I see before me.

Because of that, I find that, theoretically at least, the connotation of symbolic things doesn’t have to inflame me (though like anyone else I have buttons that can get pushed, too!).  But again, theoretically, a flag or other symbol doesn’t have to continue to solely represent something negative and can then be used (as you put it) as a ‘learning tool’.  

Broadly, I fear that to purge the world of cultural symbols leaves a sterile view of what by present-day standards are some really horrible historical events and could actually rid the future of the evidence that can support change and allow growth.  And, it may also throw the ‘baby out with the bathwater’ to presume that everything a symbol represents is bad and unacceptable, and therefore should be banished from awareness for all time. 

In terms of “The Muppet Show”, I can assure everyone that Jim Henson was one of the most accepting, tolerant, integral thinkers who every graced our world.  He was a true progressive in the most positive of ways for his era and didn’t consciously have a racially or culturally biased bone in his body.  That goes for the team at that time, as well, including myself.  If there was ever a broad target in Muppet humor, it was perhaps “the establishment”, but even there differences were treated with humor to show the contrasts between perspectives.

To a degree, the Muppets have always been about creating abstract parodies from broad stereotypical archetypes.  In other words, we would sometimes interpret what we saw and heard of languages we did not speak from cultures with which we were less than familiar, and turn them into silly characters in the same way we did with our own American culture.  Sam Eagle, The Swedish Chef, and more recently, Pepe the Prawn, all come from what might be termed as ‘broad stereotypes’.  Even Oscar the Grouch is based on a cab driver who drove Caroll to the studio, but Caroll had no bias against New Yorkers or taxi drivers.

Miss Piggy is a female character portrayed by a man.   Mustn’t there a bias there?  Could someone make the case that this female character should be portrayed by a woman?  Sure.
But not only would that have netted a very different character, it didn’t seem to be an issue for Gloria Steinhem at the Sackler Center for Feminist Art when she awarded Miss Piggy for being an ‘extraordinary woman who is amongst the first in her field’.  We could even make the case that in the interest of not being speciesist Miss Piggy should only be a real pig and not portrayed by a human being…It’s possible to get angry about anything.

Ultimately, it’s ‘character development’, what every actor does if they are to create characters that we, as an audience, will connect with.  It is a part of the ‘irreverence’ that made the Muppets unique and beloved the world over.  And it is one of the things that is missing from them now to a large degree leaving them to have become rather benign stereotypes of their former selves.

Based upon what we might have called ‘foreign’ in 1976, and might embrace differently now, I think that if the ability to use real people and cultures as examples of what can be parodied is eliminated from the Muppet repertoire (and from the humor of our times, in general) it further adds to the homogenization of every one of the characters.

Ironically, caricaturing different cultures just as one does it to their own could be viewed as ‘inclusive’ in its own way. ‘We love you, too, you are a part of our world and thoughts, so as we celebrate you we poke fun at you, as well as ourselves’.  I also find it ironic that, if anything, using different cultures as archetypes for caricature might seem to point out the ignorance and limited understanding of those doing the parody rather than ridiculing the culture being featured.

We all come into this world at square one, and throughout our lives we remain at different stages of growth and development within ourselves.  I hope we, as a world community, are able to embrace our past without erasing it, allowing it to become the basis for evolutionary growth.  It seems counterproductive to rid the world of the reminders of how we have progressed if that cultural purge robs those who are still transcending an opportunity to grow.

At the end of the day, this seems to be about a corporation trying to continue to exploit their property and not piss people off.  I say that partially because I am not aware of anyone who experienced “The Muppet Show” throughout the years condemning it as racist humor.  

If the humor that gave the Muppets their connection to the world is deemed malignant, however unintentional, there is even less hope for their survival than previously thought.  As our world continues its long quest for social justice, I hope we don’t lose our since of empathy for why the past was the way it was as we realize that our own sense of forward thinking right now will not only become obsolete in fifty years, it is built upon all that came before.  We would not be in this present place of understanding without our less-than perfect past.

The short answer to your question is that we were amongst artists of the time who were expressing themselves through their work doing the best we could, with malcontent for the marginalized, and no malintent for any race, color, sexual orientation, culture, or creed.  I don’t think the content of “The Muppet Show” should be either ignored or censored regardless, but, for me, to recognize it as appropriate for its time so long as the positive and the negative are acknowledged seems reasonable.

There is no simple definitive answer to these issues.  For me, basic moral intuitions are best served with an integral approach.  Children today can be taught that a thing was ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, just as they can be taught that it was timely, and my gut says that if you sit them down in front of “The Muppet Show” without those directions, they are more likely to smile than to frown. 

RE: Comment below from Saba M. Khan: