Review: The Evolution of Jim Henson's Puppetry - From Analog Craft to Digital Franchise

**Fig. 1 - The Evolution of Jim Henson's Puppetry - From Analog Craft to Digital Franchise** **– A Two-Day Research Symposium.**

Was Jim Henson a puppet master or a Muppet pastor? This pun question, posed by writer and Muppet enthusiast Aimee Knight, has stayed with me since the two-day symposium on the legacy of Henson’s work was held at the University of Bristol – and online – on September 16th and 17th 2022 (Fig. 1). In a way, Knight’s comment engages many of the discussions that permeated the panels, which had at their heart the joyous exploration of the silly and the serious in Henson’s opus. In particular, there was an emphasis on the ground-breaking cultural and historical influence of this kind of puppetry in animation and beyond; debates surrounding technology; the constructed and layered identity of the Muppet as anarchic, liminal and subversive; the position of Henson’s works in both popular culture and the screen fairy-tale tradition opposed to – and now part of – the Disney canon. The symposium was organized by Professor Rayna Denison, from the University of Bristol, and Dr. Cristina Formenti, from the University of Udine, with the support of the Society for Animation Studies, and was divided into panels, keynotes, readings, and even a Crafting a Muppet workshop – directed by animator Helena Houghton – which I, unfortunately, had to miss.

The first day kicked off with an initial conversation about Jim Henson’s legacy, the importance of his puppets for children and adults, the turbulent relationship of the Muppets with the Walt Disney Company, their transmedial storytelling, and their position as celebrities Aimee Knight presented a reading of her work in progress, part media criticism/part personal essay, which explored Henson’s ecology and symbiosis of the sacred and the silly. Knight suggested that Henson was influenced by his biographical experience with the Christian Science Church, exploring these religious roots that are often in connection with pagan notions and his commitment to climate change awareness throughout Henson’s works, like the Muppet movies, Fraggle Rock (Jim Henson, 1983-1987) and The Dark Crystal (Frank Oz, 1982). The first panel titled Technology and Fantasy began with a paper from Dr. Nea Ehrlich (Ben-Gurion University of Negev), entitled ‘From the Storyteller’s Dog to Jennie, the Assistive Robot Dog: Jim Henson’s Legacy and Contemporary Robotics.’ Through a comparison between the intrinsically othered and fantastic Storyteller’s dog and the realistic Jennie, Ehrlich interrogated the issues of contemporary robotics and animatronics which are closely tied with transhumanism, posthumanism, and post-anthropocentrism. At its core, the paper used the legacy of the Muppet – and Henson’s creations in general – as different species that are able to foster art and an ecosystem where otherness is critically explored. The presentation worked as a nice lead-in for Dr. Aneta Postek’s (Bournemouth University) ‘Jim Henson’s Legacy. From Yoda to Grogu,’ in which she traced the contemporary impact of Henson’s work on VFX and animatronics like those used in the character design of Yoda in the original Star Wars trilogy (George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand, 1977, 1980, 1983) and most recently in Grogu – known widely across the internet as Baby Yoda – and other creatures in the Disney+ series The Mandalorian (2019 – present). Postek’s paper raised one of the questions that pervaded the whole event,: are muppets/puppets/animatronics more effective than their CGI counterparts? And what facets of the artistry and performance of Henson’s work – and legacy – have an impact on the aesthetics and value of media, compared to typically more reality-driven CGI? The discussion was continued by independent Scholar Dr. Maitane Junguitu (Fig. 2), who delved deeper into the fantastic elements of Henson’s work with ‘Humans and Puppets: Building Sarah’s Fantasy and Reality in Labyrinth (1986).’ While Postek’s focused on the production side, Jinguitu’s paper performed an analysis of the narrative structure of the film and the relevance of the presence – or absence - of puppets in each of the three acts as drivers of fantasy. Henson’s puppets represent the uncertainty, confrontation and/or transformation of Sarah’s reality. Here, as some online attendees pointed out, the puppet’s liminality works to the great benefit of the film and the ambiguities that its conclusion poses: is the Labyrinth Sarah’s edifying illusion that helps her grow, or is it real?

**Fig. 2 - Dr. Maitane Junguitu (Independent Scholar).**

**Fig. 3 – Dr. Andrea Wright (Edge Hill University).**

The last presentation of this panel ‘Another World, Another Time, in an Age of Wonder: Jim Henson and Fairy Tales’ was carried out by Dr. Andrea Wright (Edge Hill University) (Fig. 3) who positioned Henson as a developer of the screen fairy tale from his unaired 1962 pilot of Tales of Tinkerdee. As it was noted throughout the symposium, the contrast between Henson’s interpretations and the Disney fairy tale is important,as the former’s approach has had nearly the same substantial cultural impact but holds a very different ethos – one that has chaos, absurdity, and subversion at its core. In this way, Henson’s fairy tales fill an artistic and signification gap, with The Storyteller (1988) pushing boundaries beyond well-known stories.

The second panel, ‘Muppets and Identity’ started with Dr. Sarah E.S. Sinwell’s (University of Utah) (Fig. 4) paper titled ‘Queering the Muppets’ that focused particularly on Gonzo. Sinwell argued that queerness is always an identity under construction. As such, the Muppets perform counter-cultural work through their anarchic and silly features, which along with the liminality of the characters that was charted throughout the whole event, points out to their innate queering potential. Despite multiple Muppet examples Sinwell chose Gonzo for the many iterations in which his ambiguous gender identity is explored. Most recently, the sincere appearance of ‘Gonzo-rella’ in the new Muppet Babies (2018- present) is an expression of positive role models for children and a reimagining of LGBTIQQ representation in pop culture.

**Fig. 4 - Dr. Sarah E. Sinwell (University of Utah) .**

Next up, independent scholar and author of Kermit Culture, Jennifer Garlen, traced the queering identity of Uncle Deadly, from John Carradine-inspired B-movie monster to Piggy’s implied gay best friend and wardrobe supervisor in the Muppets Show (2015-2016). For Garlen, Deadly’s beginnings as Phantom of the Opera-esque creature and his ties to campy horror are significant since their aesthetics and performance hold a queering potential that is fully realized in paratexts such as Deadly’s Twitter account (@unclebydeadly). As Alexander Doty argues in Making Things Perfectly Queer, “Queer readings (…) result from the recognition and articulation of the complex range of queerness that has been in popular culture texts and their audiences all along” (1993, 16). Rather than a transformation of Uncle Deadly identity from fiend to fashionista, this identity was always present and now articulated and emphasized. The final speaker of the panel was Dr. Cristina Formenti (Fig. 5), who delved into the Muppets’ Twitter presence with her paper ‘Forging Muppet’s Identities in the Digital Age: The Social Media Mock-Autobiographies of Miss Piggy, Kermit, and Henson’s Other Star Puppets.’ Formenti explored the constructed celebrity personae of Henson’s creations, and the implications of the negotiation of the character's identity which is offered through media such as candid photos, tweets, and autobiographies. The expansion of the muppets beyond film and television raised questions about their self-reflexivity, their position as ‘real’, and the sincerity of these texts that are often recycled or used as promotional content.

**Fig. 5 – Dr. Cristina Formenti (University of Udine).**

**Fig. 6 – Cheryl Henson (The Jim Henson Foundation).**

Day 1 closed with a very special keynote titled ‘Celebrating Jim Henson and the Art of Puppetry’ from Cheryl Henson (Fig. 6), daughter of Jim Henson and president of The Jim Henson Foundation. Henson expressed her journey through her father’s work from a personal standpoint, as well as showcasing his posthumous legacy, especially in terms of the work the foundation carries out with theatre and puppetry.

Day 2 began with a panel dedicated to the ‘Cultures and/of the Jim Henson Company.’ Catherine Munroe Hotes (Keio University) (Fig. 7) started out the discussion with her paper ‘A Riposte from America: Monsterpiece Theatre as Satire of America’s Love-Hate Relationship with Highbrow Culture.’ Munroe examined the parodic dynamics of Monsterpiece Theatre while interrogating the politics – or lack thereof – of the original PBS programme Masterpiece Theatre (1971-). She argued that Masterpiece works as an ambivalent yet safe expression of what is considered highbrow in American culture of the 1970s, with journalist Alistair Cooke (born Alfred Cooke) its head figure. This ambivalence is humorously emphasized in the Sesame Street recurring sketch Monsterpiece Theatre, hosted by Cookie Monster, the ‘everymonster’, as Munroe called him, and ingeniously developed in such a way that it works as a parody for adults and children alike.

Dr. Rayna Denison followed with ‘Making the Muppets: Documentaries about the Social Phenomena around Henson’s Creations,’ resuming the debates regarding the expansion of the Muppets beyond the film and television screen and adding the position of Jim Henson as a star. Denison argued that Henson was a visibly invisible creator, as remarks and jokes would be made during episodes or talk shows in which his muppeteer persona would come to the forefront. The culmination of this reflexive feature would be his bittersweet memorial special – a tear-jerker for anyone who hasn’t seen it – in which a lot of metamuppetry elements are emphasized, such as several muppets asking where Henson is, or pointing out to the existence of their puppeteers. Cyril Lepot’s (Université Paris 1) ‘Is Jim Henson’s Art the Missing Link Between Stop Motion Animation and Live Action Filming’ turned to more technical matters. Lepot situated Jim Henson’s cinema – in particular The Dark Crystal (Frank Oz, 1982) – firmly within the medium of puppetry and its proximity to stop-motion, reflecting on the conditions that connect them from their aesthetics the possibilities for photo-realism to their relationship with the filmic apparatus. Lepot concluded that not only does Henson’s art constitute a missing link between mediums, but it actually underlines how the process of sublimating materials can be at the base of simulating otherworldly creatures and environments. Next was Dr. Michael Samuel (University of Bristol) (Fig. 8), who interrogated the paratexts surrounding Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019), as well as its pitfalls. Samuel traced the main two themes of the programme’s promotional material: production and memory. His presentation also stressed questions posed by Aneta Postek the day before concerning comparisons between analogue puppetry and CGI. As Samuel argued, these texts demonstrate tensions between a strong sense of nostalgia for the production of tactile, physical animation, and the challenges of incorporating Henson’s legacy in digital production. Indeed, the programmes were promoted with behind-the-scenes teasers, smartphone games, and a website which also doubled as a production archive. In these peripheral pieces of media, production often becomes the main concern, with actors and other members of the team emphasizing the artistry of puppetry while promoting a fully new experience.

The final panel, ‘Muppets from Reiniger to Disney+’ began with writer and animation historian Whitney Grace and her paper titled ‘Henson, Reiniger, and Muppet Shadows of Innovation,’ in which she delineated the connections between Lotte Reiniger’s early 20th- century, innovative shadow puppets and Jim Henson’s puppetry, as well as their influence on Walt Disney’s animated work. Grace argued that despite the very different historical conditions in which their work was developed –particularly Reiniger’s status as a female animator and residence in Germany during World War II – these artists never sacrificed story for technique and remained pioneers of animation and puppetry. Timothy Jones (Robert Morris University) (Fig. 9) followed with ‘Muppet Babies: From Imagination to Assimilation,’ again comparing the digital and the analogue while interrogating the features of the different iterations of the Muppet Babies, from their first appearance in The Muppets Take Manhattan (Frank Oz, 1984) to their latest digital Disney+ programme (2018- present) and other multimedia appearances. He argued that the Muppet babies offered a significant case of fluid movement between brands and texts, through inconsistent representation. In these diverse iterations, the Muppets embody multiple bodies (for instance, Jones showed a few examples in which Kermit is either left-handed or right-handed) and in this way viewers become trained readers of intertextuality.

Tim Butler Garrett (Union Internationale de la Marionette) (Fig. 10) tied some of the events' main debates together with ‘The Popular and the Subversive in Henson’s Legacy,’ delving into the anti-corporate and anarchical features of the Muppets and their uncomfortable transition into the Walt Disney Company (the channel Defunctland did a thorough video about it) He argued that since puppets are in nature liminal and subversive, as shown in theatre expressions throughout history such as cabarets, their residence within the usually sanitizing and conservative Disney canon is awkward. Consequently, Butler suggested, Disney does not know how to accommodate its traditional values into new Muppet material. With the change of ownership and the expansion of their franchise, the Muppets’ potential has been diffused, blurring their audience, and preventing the creation of culture-defining work – or at least not as culture-defining as it was pre-Disney.

The symposium then closed with a keynote by Craig Shemin, former Jim Henson Company staff writer and current president of The Jim Henson Legacy – an organization dedicated to preserving and fostering the legacy of Henson’s work in the field of puppetry, television, and special effects. Shemin titled his presentation ‘Sam and Friends: The Story of Jim Henson’s First Television Show,’ in which he charted Henson’s – and Kermit’s – televisual beginnings on the 1955 WRC-TV programme.

It was clear that nearly seven decades of Jim Henson’s work and its many transformations, iterations, parodies, and cultural influence, could not be contained in a two-day event. Nonetheless, each speaker articulated the puppet master's (or muppet pastor's?) richness, while concretely probing current questions and overlapping themes. It’s clear that the Muppets have retained a celebrity status that goes beyond the constraints of film and television. But questions remain concerning what the future of the Muppets franchise will be within Disney, and more generally what position can Henson’s analogue puppetry hold in a media landscape increasingly dominated by CGI. Most of all, during both days of the event each speaker and the many in attendance rightfully honoured Henson and his legacy, working through issues that appropriately matched Henson’s own propensity for exploring both the serious and the silly.

**Article published: October 14, 2022**

References

Doty, Alexander. 1993. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Biography

Juliana Varela completed her MA in Film Studies at King’s College London. Juliana is interested in the relationship between new viewing practices and animation, as well as the cultural and political potential of adult animation.