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]

Hyperbole Tsunami in Weather Reporting: Jon Stewart's Satire on His Own Cynical Humor Is an Apt Media Literacy Lesson

As my seasonal allergies rage, I thought I'd revisit a Daily Show segment from late May that begins by satirizing the outrageously exaggerated descriptions in news coverage of pollen.

"Pollen Tsunami definitely sounds like a real scientific term... 

I don't even need to check it; I trust you, you're the news."

The clip (below) has all the elements of great critique and satire, using its own hyperbole to call out the news as well as historical perspective, evidence in multiple examples, appeals to authority, and all that good stuff we need to understand for our media literacy and rhetorical skills. But instead of Stewart ending with the usual media watchdog routine of chastising the news for subverting its own cause and exacerbating fear in an already legitimately fearful public, the clip turns on itself in a remarkable critique of its own cynical humor. Take a look, and I'll share some thoughts about the importance of this warning about the dangers of cynicism towards the media that we educators risk when we focus learning exclusively on demystifying messages through analysis. Without taking care to involve support for media production and civic action in our pedagogy, teaching media literacy through humorous media (the whole basis of this blog) may run the same risk of making media-smart-asses rather than media-smart-citizens.

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes,  More Daily Show Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

It seems that Stewart's joke on himself shows how a cynical view, making fun of the news for always sacrificing the truth to sensationalism, can be misleading, incorrect, and unproductive. The research of Paul Mihailidis has shown that media literacy courses focused on critical analysis risk fostering cynical attitudes towards news and civic engagement in students. While this clip above makes a fantastic illustration, and discussion piece, for exercising media literacy to demystify news constructions and distortions of reality, its final messages reinforce the dubious and cynical attitude that the big ironic twist calls attention to as dangerous in Stewart's own approach. Not only does the clip call attention to the difficulties in trusting representations of scientific evidence as reflecting reality, when a positive alternative solution finally emerges from the surprise guest spokesperson for the Athsma and Allergy Foundation of America, Stewart dismisses it with a shrug, hopelessly resigned to our future of being "drown" in "oceans of snot." Stewart's job is being funny while opening eyes to some truths, and he does his job here. Our job as media educators is to do a bit more, I think, to inspire learners to act and support the notion that taking action can lead to positive change. Healthy skepticism does not slide into toxic cynicism; the health in healthy skepticism of media comes when it leads to productive choices and when it inspires informed action. So, can this sort of humor inspire healthy skepticism? What would you do to balance the cynical side of satire supporting media literacy analysis?

[After the jump, against my better judgment, I have posted a vialogues link with ideas for leading a close analysis of the clip--see if you can use it for good!]

Artwork Comments on the Meat Market that is the Tinder App: A Visual Pun to Inspire Your Own Humorous Art

This short video below of an art installation is hilarious if you know what the Tinder App is, and most young folks (say, ages 10-30) that use mobile media do know about it. For those familiar with Tinder, the message about the app is pretty clear, and for media literacy educators it offers an opportunity beyond discussing dating apps to challenge and inspire learners to create their own artwork that expresses their feelings or views on a particular type of media device, app, or use.

If you don't know what Tinder is, the tweens, adolescents, young adults and skeevy over 35's in your life can tell you--though I wouldn't recommend introducing the topic with kids under high school age unless it's already a thing with them. It's a dating app for touch screen mobile phones where you swipe right if you approve of the photo and short bio of the person who appears, or left to see the next person. You may then choose to contact those you swipe right to meet in person or to chat by text or by phone.

I suppose analyzing the metaphor is the right way to start; however, remind learners that you're not doing it to kill the humor, but so that they might be inspired to create their own visual metaphors for some media use that they feel strongly about that we may use uncritically or take for granted. So, um... it's a piece of raw meat repeatedly swiping right on a touch screen phone loaded with the Tinder app--what could it possibly mean?!? You could let that discussion drift into safety and ethical questions around dating apps like Tinder (if you swipe right for that sort of thing), or you could focus on creating visual metaphors for other media uses by breaking learners into creative teams to: 1) choose an app, game, media use, or some such media related behavior they feel strongly about; 2) describe the media app/use/behavior and express their feelings in a sentence or two; 3) develop a visual metaphor to communicate their view of the media app/use/behavior; 4) realize the visual metaphor in their own artwork; 5) if everyone is into it, have a small show of your work for your greater learning community, or post to someplace online (and send us a link!).

The installation above was a video project created in the Netherlends by video game design student Marcello Gomez Maureira. Thanks to boingboing for sharing!

For more on Tinder try this or this... and lots more out there, too.

Phoned-In-Focus: Parental Assumptions of Kids' Attention Deficit Lampooned by Louie

We hear a lot of concern about how folks focus too much on their phones and not enough on the people and events right in front of them in real life, but we seldom balance that annoyance with recognition of how our everywhere access to digital media may enhance our real life experience.

"How do you appreciate a thing and google it at the same time? 
That's no way to live a life."

The clip below, from a recent episode of Louie, pokes fun at our kneejerk negativity, subverting common parental assumptions about their kids' mobile media use. As I'll discuss below, the clip makes a great bait and switch discussion piece for exploding assumptions and exploring the important media literacy questions: Does our cell phone use create attention deficit or enhancement? Do our mobile media disorder or enrich our experience?

[After the jump, ideas for leading discussion of the clip, and for writing a comic scene subverting generational expectations about media use]

ML4ML Joke of the Week: "C'mon, Shakespeare. You can make a better shark!"

My sister-in-law cracked me up inadvertently with this one-liner, which made me realize just how much knowledge of pop culture is at the ready in my head enabling me to laugh at the mixed up references in the joke. 

We were talking about summer blockbuster movies, and she expressed worry over the realism of special effects in Jurassic Park: "It's like c'mon, Shakespeare, you can make a better shark!" I burst out laughing, as did the others in the room. Turns out, she meant to say "Spielberg" (the director of the first Jurassic Park movie), instead of "Shakespeare" (the Elizabethan English writer with the frilly collar and the "To be or not to be" and whatnot), and she meant "dinosaur," the scary creatures from the distant past brought to life in Jurassic Park, instead of "shark" (the scary creature terrorizing swimmers in Jaws). The interesting part, for somebody who thinks about media literacy all the time (me), is that we all instantly knew what she meant to say through the context of our conversation (a new Jurassic Park movie is just coming out this summer) and recognized the errors as humorously related to her intentions. To get the joke, we had to know Spielberg directed Jurassic Park and Jaws. We had to know that each film starred scary, realistic creatures--dinosaurs and sharks respectively. And, we had to know Shakespeare as the emblem of high culture entertainment and art through wordcraft in plays, in contrast to our knowledge of Spielberg's fame for visual entertainment blockbuster flicks of fear and adventure. But we didn't just have to know it, we had to know it instantly, or as humor researchers say, we had to know it for "Just-in-Time" psychological processing (for more, see Hurley, Dennet, & Adams), so that we could recognize, and laugh at, the mix up. It boggles my mind how much pop culture knowledge we must carry around, ready for access at all times. It's an important thing to sensitize teachers and learners to when we begin to teach about popular culture and about how to think critically about its role in our lives. So, why not challenge your group of learners to notice how much pop culture knowledge they must activate "Just-in-time" to get a joke or to laugh at something funny. You could start by relating your own story, or this story--see if anyone laughs or gets what might be funny about it, and congratulate the others who don't have a clue for investing their precious brain power in other cultural resources! Make it a contest to see who can notice the funniest moment involving the most pop culture references (rate the former by vote, and the latter by number of things you have to know from pop culture). The exercise could lead from an appreciation of the extent of what we know, to an exploration of what we should do about and with it...

C'mon Shakespeare, you can make a better shark!

Dances with Xenophobes & Eating the Racist Banana: Laughter Trumps Hate in Civic Action on Viral Video

What do you do when you feel disrespected by the views of a protesting crowd making a spectacle of their intolerance? In the face of insults from southern California protestors demanding tougher illegal immigration enforcement, the guy in the first video discussed below decided to burst into a joyful dance and wave a Mexican flag to elicit enthusiastic responses from passersby. This video makes a great discussion piece about the power of joy and laughter to subvert angry media messages.


People in the U.S. exercise their rights to free speech and public assembly, which includes protests expressing intolerant, racist and xenophobic views. When we encounter such expressions that oppose the basic notions of tolerance and respect upon which we design education for participation in pluralistic democracy, what can we do? We can talk back, fighting fire with fire, showing the same passion and outrage in expressing our own beliefs. But is anger as good as laughter for combatting hate?

The video above had been uploaded by an angry protestor to make fun of the joyful dancer, but was picked up by news agencies and blogs that celebrated the dancer's action, making this a rich topic for exploring the potential for using humor to counter intolerant views in civic action and viral video--and it offers great connections for considering core media literacy concepts of author's purposes versus the different ways people may understand, and repurpose, messages. The notion of humor trumping hate in public performances caught on video reminded me of a favorite moment for comparison where, last year, angry soccer fans directed racist chants at Barcelona FC star Dani Alves, and then this happened:

Meu pai sempre me falava: filho come banana que evita cãibra rsrs, como adivinharam isso? hahaha 🙊🍌🍌🙊 #somosmaisqueisso#ficaadica

A video posted by DanialvesD2 My Twitter (@danid2ois) on Apr 27, 2014 at 3:26pm PDT

As shown in this second video, when someone throws a banana at Alves while he prepared to take a corner kick, instead of responding with anger or leaving the field as other stars have done, Alves picked up the fruit, peeled it and ate it, then kicked the ball to resume play. Here, instead of a user-generated video involving everyday folks picked up by mass media, we see competing messages of hate and humor from sports fans and a celebrity athlete broadcast in mass media, then excerpted for viral sharing by bloggers and digital media users. Last spring when this happened, Alves posted the video on Instagram, and he and his teammates and celebrity friends began to circulate their own viral tweets and Instagram posts with pictures of themselves and their families eating bananas with the hashtag #weareallmokeys and #SayNoToRacism. What a way to take the sting out of that insult!

[More after the jump with suggestions for leading analytic discussion and follow up production activities for young adults in any learning setting interested in understanding how to construct effective counter-messages in digital media and how to engage in civic action...]

Love or Loathe Loose Ties? Laugh and Learn about Social Media Norms with Garfunkel and Oates

If you connect ML4ML with all your facebook friends, we promise to always wish you a happy birthday with lots of exclamation points, clever punctuation, and emojis, when prompted by an alert message, unless we forget or have something else to do--which you will be totally okay with because we don't really know each other anyway, we just like some of the same things, maybe. Yeah, emerging online behavior norms and interpersonal ethics are pretty tricky. If we are going to have any hope of sorting out the emotional confusion between our close friends and myriad acquaintances that our social media apps refer to as our "friends," we need to activate our digital media literacies. With help from musical parody act, Garfunkel and Oates, let's see how laughing with their song "Happy Birthday to My Loose Acquaintance" can help us consider some key questions about emerging interpersonal ethics.

"We coexist in a mutually unstated /unattached cohesion that facebook created...
to keep our minor affinity with minimal maintenance"

This song has a couple of brilliant moments, like the lyrics in the caption above, that offer tight definitions of what Internet scholars call "loose ties," connections to people that only exist through shared interests or other mutual acquaintances, often supported or created by digital algorithms in social networking apps and maintained with minimal attention and effort. This post offers resources for using the Garfunkel & Oates song to explore the value of loose tie relationships in social media, and how they affect our behavior, beliefs and attitudes towards friendship. First, enjoy a hot minute of crack-up from G&O:

Above is my Vialogues post with the embedded video featuring my annotated discussion questions and comments, and here is a link to a pdf of those notes. I have also uploaded the lyrics text, and my annotated questions/comments to Genius (embedded below), the awesome annotation app that I highly recommend (there is a way to get a free educator account to restrict the annotation/ discussion to your group's work, but my post is public). So, you can 1) focus on the lyrics conversation through Genius if that works best for your group, 2) start a group Vialogue of your own (or add to mine); or 3) do the group analysis analog, without tech, using the annotated printout pdf to support discussion for a group viewing or listening session. I also did a Vialogue post of just the lyrics, and here is a link to a pdf of the lyrics.

Read “Happy Birthday to My Loose Acquaintence” by Garfunkel & Oates on Genius

Once you've had a good discussion of this song, it can make for a nice model of how parody can be constructive (and instructive). Making funny songs is actually really hard (I'll reflect on my own experience in a musical comedy writing workshop in an upcoming post), but young media makers often strive to make their peers laugh through mocking familiar behaviors in the style of pop culture media they enjoy. It's hard to fine good models of doing parody to spark constructive discussion--so, this sort of video/song and discussion provide an opportunity to link analysis to learner's own production interests. Look for a post soon about some strategies for making musical comedy.

Often the best question to ask is the simplest; so, I recommend asking: Why is it funny? Ask for any given joke, like the line "Happy birthday dear person who I sort of know." The typical response is that it’s funny cuz it’s true. But that’s pretty weak. Push for better articulation. For this song, I think it’s more accurate to say that it’s funny because it seems like a contradiction ["dear person” instead of friend, who I “sort of know”] that many of us use without thinking about it. This makes us conscious of our error, and the inconsistency is funny (partly because it’s safe too, since so many people do it, we’re not feeling like the outcast or feeling like we’re cruelly singling others out). It’s nice to know we are wired to get pleasure from finding out our own mistakes and foibles.

Modern Farce, a Symphony of Screens: Modern Family Plays on the "New Normal"

Is your screen time out of control? It's tough to judge how our own digital media use is affecting us, but it's easy to judge characters on sitcoms--that's what they're there for! As far as I know, last week's episode of ABC's Modern Family (Season 6, Episode 16, "Connection Lost") was the first major network sitcom broadcast to set its comedy completely within the ubiquitous screens its characters use to communicate with each other.

Last week's Modern Family episode unfolds entirely on Claire's laptop screen, shot on Apple devices, portrayed in "real time"--ripe for media literacy inquiry.

This fantastic farce of misapprehension, misplaced assumptions, and dubious online ethics offers an opportunity for us to reflect on how digital environments have become a new norm as a setting for our daily dramas.

The gags call our attention to the limitations of the media we use to communicate and problem-solve, and to how they may complicate our attempts to understand and represent ourselves and each other. There's a central theme around parental surveillance, or as Haley says to her mom, "It's called privacy--Google it!" The production choices--sliding between frames, opening and closing windows, using natural sound from other media--all heighten the hilarity (IMHO), and it's in real time; so, I think we can look at this as innovative from an artistic perspective. It can also be seen as a relentless informercial for Apple products, which were used to shoot entire the episode and provide the context for show's dramatic action--the ultimate target for some analysis of native advertising techniques (but wait, Apple says they did not pay a penny!...). This is a mess for media literacy inquiry if there ever was one!

I think this whole episode is worth a group viewing, and can be used to connect with a wide range of media literacy issues for high school, college and adult learners in English or media studies classes. It's a great way to start an exploration of new literacies, multimodality, new media literacies, or critical media literacy in teacher education classes. Youth media groups and media arts classes can also benefit from studying the production techniques used in this episode to represent online experience in a televisual medium (in this regard, it's also great for comparison to this Portlandia clip discussed in a prior post). My (bad) instinct is to try to do it all, to milk a text with such rich possibilities for all its worth, and to offer multiple paths for diverse interests that we jigsaw together. So, after the jump, I'll set up a series of interest groups with particular things to look for and discuss in this episode, and you pick and choose to focus on what will work for you and yours. Deal? Deal.

"Historical Context, It's Why Old People are Sad" (and why ML4ML is Back!)

Where have you been? Well, as you can see from yesterday's new post, ML4ML is back! Our beloved blog has been on hiatus while I finished my dissertation contributing to the history of media literacy--here's a clip of my defense:
Whoops! That was just an approximation of the process brought to you by the funny folks at BYUtv's Studio C, but dissertation defenses do get a bit medieval, and literally reach back to medieval times. My advisor literally told me to "Bring a sword," and that she loves "the ritual," which many describe in terms of brutality and torture. Speaking of which, I won't get it into what my historical research is about here--it's not funny enough, yet. But I will offer the following clip from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to emphasize the importance of context, and in particular historical context.

Obama: I'm a single mom, and at the end of the month, 

              it's really hard for me to pay the bills.

Stewart: That's not why you lost. Actually, that joke was brought to you by Context.

              Context, look at how silly the world would be without Context. 

In this post (after the jump), I recommend using the Daily Show clip below to remind us how much knowledge it takes for jokes about current events in the news to make sense (this clip is from just last November, the day after the GOP won back the U.S. Congress in overwhelming fashion in the midterm elections), and how accurate representation is not just about showing real images and quoting accurately.

Wilmore asks, "Doth we protest too much?": Media Literacy and the State of the Black Protest OR "Trying not to get shot on our way to work"

With the Department of Justice report on the Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department released this week, media literacy educators everywhere should be supporting learners in analyzing how news producers and audiences are responding and representing the findings in relation to media representation of race and social justice. Beyond analysis, it is vitally important for students to see how their work and participation matters.

On the Harry Potter Alliance's successful protest of Warner Bros. to ensure all chocolate with Harry Potter's likeness was fair trade, Wilmore quipped:
"After Ferguson and Garner, it bugs me a little bit that in 2014 this is the only chocolate that got justice... But my point is, they succeeded. Okay, so they can work. There is hope."

Without a connection to civic engagement, media literacy analysis can lead students to feel cynical about their own power to make change. But often, learners are already cynical about politics and have little awareness of how their own participation, online and off, can and does have an impact. In this post, we'll look closely at some comedy about anti-racism protests to start discussion of our own feelings about civic engagement. On his debut show on MLK day, Nightly host Larry Wilmore posed questions about the "State of the Black protest." Just as Wilmore used his jokes about protests to set up the topic for his panel, the segment offers media literacy educators a compelling way to engage learners in media analysis of Wilmore's comedy to launch subsequent discussion of how students feel about protests, which are media events themselves, and about other forms of engagement for emerging digital citizens.

Wilmore's humor considers both cynicism and hope for effective civic action while provocatively connecting to issues of social justice and race representation in media. Through analyzing the following segment (posted with suggestions after the jump), your group will be primed to discuss a range of questions linking their media literacy with civic engagement: What issues are worth public protest? What can/do/should protests achieve (expression of outrage, articulation of demands, public awareness, tangible change, an outlet to diffuse violent uprising)? What methods should protests take (including in the digital sphere)? What level of disruption of daily life do protests merit? How/when should news media cover public protests (and when should you spread the word or participate)? Can protests today address race issues effectively? What other sorts of civic action can make change in response to public issues, particularly issues involving Black men and law enforcement? How does your digital participation matter when you represent yourself and your views, and when you pay attention, comment, share or otherwise engage with these issues? Suggestions and examples for connecting media analysis of the clip to these larger questions about civic action, social justice, race and media representation--all appear after the jump below the embedded clip.