How the Muppets Made Me Media Literate (& Why I am Psyched for their Return to TV this Fall)

The Muppet Show is back this fall in primetime on network TV and poised to call our attention to all the media production techniques our current popular sitcoms use to make us laugh and reinforce our notions of personal and cultural identity:

The original Muppet Show was appointment TV every week for my family in the late 70s, but it wasn't until this particular moment (below) in The Muppet Movie that I realized how those fuzzy puppets had been teaching me all along about the construction of media and representation of culture and identity. Use this post to prompt the following questions:

• How did you become media literate? 
• What popular media supported your media literacy development?
• How does parody call attention to media techniques and representations? 

In anticipation of the return of The Muppets to primetime network TV this fall, I reflect on this pivotal personal moment of critical distance, and discuss why parody in puppetry can be effective for media literacy development, as the new version of the show plans to lampoon confessional-style sitcoms like The Office and Modern Family while using the format of TV production sitcoms like 30 Rock that call attention to the making of a late night comedy show.

But first, let's set the scene. A darkened movie theater in Baltimore, 1979, I was six years old, and completely enthralled in the journey of Kermit the Frog (and his "weirdo" friends) to Hollywood with their goal of "making millions of people happy" and the love story between Kermit & Ms. Piggy that had unfolded over the past 45 minutes, which was falling apart before my eyes on the screen. And then...

Aha! This is all a movie, and a movie made by the characters on screen, no less! My young mind was blown! At that moment, I had a flood of awareness about all the ways that the movies and shows I watched were made to tell stories to audiences. I noticed the people around me in the theater watching, just like the muppets on screen watched the movie they had made in the story on screen. For the first time, I wanted to make a movie myself--at that moment, one where Piggy and Kermit would just be friends and go play with the other muppets (because the romance was making me a little uncomfortable!).

Parody Pulls Back the Curtain

This moment was the key for me that unlocked the constructed-ness of many other shows and movies, starting with the original Muppet Show, which was a parody of the most popular TV format of the 1970s, the variety show, but it offered backstage scenes of the producer (Kermit) and cast with audience commentary (remember the two old guys, Statler and Waldorf, wisecracking in the balcony, and the call and response moment in the opening theme song with the audience singing, "Why don't you get things started"). I began to see how the muppets were always making fun of how entertainment was made, always showing the seams in the otherwise seamless media representations in which TV and movies immersed me. Whether by singing slightly off key or subverting my expectations (like Gonzo's failed trumpet blast to start every show), the muppets always called my attention to my own expectations about how stories should unfold and I started to realize that those parodied TV shows and movies created those expectations, and that you could play with them and do things differently. I started to see how everything that the muppets did was making fun of popular culture, which I often encountered for the first time through their comedy. I think this had the effect of making me see everything as made by someone for some purpose, and that the purpose could be subverted or changed--and that subversion is fun!

[After the jump, more on pop culture parody as provocateur of critical autonomy, how the muppets made me question notions of race and gender, and ideas for making puppet parodies for ML]

The Carcinogen of Real Americans: Colbert analyzes Cain's Smoking Ad

On October 25, 2011, Stephen Colbert offered an excellent model of media literacy practice as he analyzed a political ad for republican frontrunner for presidential candidacy, Herman Cain, and then offered his own parody versions of the same ad. Notice the thoroughness of the interpretation, the use of textual detail in the deconstruction, and then the balance of analysis with production through the parody responses. This is a version of what media literacy teachers strive to create opportunities for their students to do...

Stephen Colbert closely analyzes the use of smoking in Cain's campaign ad.

After the opening jokes introducing the context of who Herman Cain is and what he's been up to in the news, Colbert shows the entire ad--a rarity on news and news parody shows alike. Then he interprets messages from the visuals, the music, and the spoken parts of the ad, linking these meanings to the values and lifestyles represented in the message. He touches on how different people might think differently about the message through the clip of the Fox News anchor interviewing Cain's campaign manager. He plays with the ideas of representation and reality as he coughs his way through his commentary while smoking two cigarettes and disrupting the message of "cool" that he claims the images of smoking construct in the ad. The parodies satirize the message of the original ad by choosing obviously dangerous and derelict activities to insert in the place of the cigarette--the huffer, the revolver, and the Listerine. Finally, Colbert makes fun of Cain's "8 second smile" at the end of the ad by upstaging him with his own, slower smile. Again, the joke reveals the technique through exaggeration.