Gauging Jason Segel’s Knowledge of Children’s Literature

The news that actor Jason Segel has published a children’s book made me wonder if he had produced good, or even adequate, literature or if this was yet another celebrity publication.

True, Segel wrote the script for The Muppets and other movies, and he’s not really a household name. But did the level of recognition he’s gained in Hollywood mean he received less editing and more resources than an average first-time children’s author? And why did this book need a coauthor, Kirsten Miller?

This afternoon I heard Segel interviewed about the book on Radio Boston. In response to the host’s mention of the scary bits of the Wizard of Oz movie, Segel immediately asked, “Have you seen Return to Oz?” He described that movie’s use of electroshock but also noted that other scary parts come “from the books.” So I’m ready to grant that Segel knows children’s literature.

One striking pattern in the interview is how Segel cited all sorts of children’s media together: Roald Dahl and The Goonies, the Oz books and the Oz movies, Coraline and The Muppet Show. Is that how young readers/viewers think of their stories in this world of quick and close cinematic adaptation?

A Charming Tik-Tok

This figurine is based on Tik-Tok in Return to Oz.

It was crafted by Alessio or Ale Buz, an Italian artist who works in polymer clay sculpture. It’s part of a small set of Oz figurines.

Alessio has molded similar figures of many other fantasy figures. His style seems to work particularly well with characters from Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.

Miss Piggy Goes Shopping for Shoes

From the Smithsonian magazine’s blog:

To welcome Miss Piggy [to the national collection], Smithsonian magazine’s editors treated her to a photo shoot featuring two of the Institution’s most valued treasures—Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers and the Hope Diamond. Pairing the Muppet with the diamond required a secret, predawn escort to the Natural History Museum and an armed guard at the museum's Gems Hall. After staging and art direction by Erickson, she was photographed wearing a necklace bearing the 45.52-carat stone by the award-winning fashion photographer Cade Martin.

And then there was this shot.

Among the other Muppet manifestations now at the Smithsonian is the original Grover, who had dark green fur. If I were a young museum visitor I’d find that very confusing. In fact, I’m a little weirded out by him now.

She’s a Guitarist, Fer Sure!

A while back, I wrote about how Janice, the guitar player in Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, had been turned into a tambourine player in the comics magazine inspired by The Muppet Show.

I’m pleased to add that in the Muppet comics adaptation of Peter Pan, Janice not only gets to play guitar, but it’s a significant element in the plot. She “plays” the major role of Wendy in this free-wheeling adaptation. The scripter for this volume is Grace Randolph, and the artist is Amy Mebberson; the female-led creative team might have been a little more sensitive to Janice’s established musical role.

Being a Muppet, Janice as Wendy gets a left-handed guitar, which she plays right-handed. Puppetry is subtle that way. The volume also has excellent work from Sam the Eagle.

She’s a Guitarist, Fer Sure

Over the years the Muppets have been rightly criticized for not creating enough prominent female characters. The troupe and its writers have tried, sometimes explicitly. Meanwhile, a few female Muppets with strong personalities, such as Miss Piggy and Prairie Dawn, pulled themselves out of the background.

One long-time female character is Janice, lead guitarist in the Muppet Show house band. I read in the Muppet Wiki that the first sketch of this character was actually male (those are Mick Jagger’s lips), and that her Valley Girl speech pattern arrived when a male puppeteer, the late Richard Hunt, performed her in the second year of The Muppet Show.

That said, Janice is an all-too-rare distinctive female in the Muppets gang: a feminine equal within the otherwise male group of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

All the pictures I’ve found of Janice performing show her with her guitar. Sometimes that guitar is upside-down or reversed; most Muppet guitarists play left-handed because their operators are busy using their right hands to talk.

So I was a little dismayed to see that The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson, a collection of Muppet Show comics from Roger Langridge and BOOM! Studios, introduces Janice as the band’s tambourine player.

I’m not saying Janice isn’t capable of playing the tambourine. Heck, I’m capable of playing the tambourine. In fact, the Muppet Wiki records that different productions have shown Janice playing seven different instruments, and a tambourine was one of the accessories that came with her action figure. But she’s not Tracy Partridge or Betty Cooper or Davy Jones. She’s a lead guitarist.

In the latest Muppet Show comics collection, parodying Peter Pan, Janice has the role of Wendy. It’s good to read that she’s gaining more visibility. On the other hand, that casting shows the troupe’s shallow female personality pool; once Miss Piggy has seized the role of Tinkerbell, there aren’t many other candidates for the story’s female lead. (Muppets created for Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock come under different licenses.)

Incidentally, Langridge’s Muppet Show comics are a hoot, neatly repackaging the old variety show humor. If only they came with musical numbers. And a guitarist.

“It’s Really About Language.”

Last week I read a short news item in a great metropolitan daily that puzzled me so much I went to the original report in the Salem (Massachusetts) News for more detail.

I found it, but the story only deepened the mystery:

Danvers High parents recently got an automated call from the principal warning them that if students say or display the word “meep” at school, they could face suspension. . . .

Murray did not elaborate on how the students were acting out. But he did say the phone call home was an attempt to head off a disruption being planned on the social networking Web site Facebook.

The disruption never happened, and Murray credited students for heeding his warning.

Murray said the school must react when online activity crosses paths with the school day. To that end, some students — Murray did not say how many — were suspended, but there were additional factors involved in their suspension unrelated to simply saying “meep.” . . .

Murray said students were not using the term to harass another student or a teacher.

“It’s really about language and conduct,” Murray said. “For me, it boils down to respectful conduct.”

It’s unclear what meaning “meep” has, other than it is a popular thing for kids to say when they are at a loss for something to say, according to various Web sites.

A group on Facebook called Meep has 370 members, for instance, and lists three Danvers High students as members. . . . Entries for the word “meep” in the online Urban Dictionary include “ouch,” “uh-oh,” a substitution for a swear word, a greeting, an exclamation or ”a random expression of happiness used to fill gaps in conversation.”

Some Danvers High students said yesterday they were not sure what “meep” means. . . . One student said nearly all the students think the whole thing is ridiculous.

Murray said the matter should be a wake-up call to parents about how kids are using social networking sites.

That’s so much clearer, isn’t it? And obviously we should blame Facebook because…it’s new relatively technology that we don’t understand so well.

This must have been a curious article for reporter Ethan Forman to write. He obviously asked the principal what the trouble was (“Were kids using this word to tease someone?”), and got no useful answer. He talked to high school students, and none of them could offer much. He looked up the word online, and found nothing. You know a journalism job isn’t going well when you’re reduced to scrounging in Urban Dictionary.

The principal declined to talk to National Public Radio later in the week, but the network was able to track down a student in the thick of things who explained the meaning (none) and derivation (videogames) of “meep.” Meanwhile, that Facebook group grew to over 1,000 members by Saturday.

“Trashy” is High Praise!

Today’s newspaper brought word of a silly controversy that’s just too embarrassing for the American right wing not to highlight.

Two years ago, as documented here, Sesame Street aired a parody of cable news channels featuring CNN host Anderson Cooper. Oscar the Grouch brought him on to report for the Grouch News Network (GNN), with a slime-covered logo and grumpy, bickering commentators. (I’m not sure how that last part is parody.)

Near the end of the skit an irate grouch called in to complain that GNN wasn’t disgusting enough for her, and threatened to switch to “Pox News—now there’s a trashy news show.” Thus, the skit parodied both the best-known cable news networks.

The episode was rerun a couple of times since 2007, most recently on 29 October. And these days any mention of Fox News appears to be enough to prick the delicate and humorless sensitivity of some of its viewers. They posted complaints like this one on blogs, and a handful of people wrote to the PBS ombudsman.

I think that ombudsman fumbled the ball at first, featuring the Fox fans’ complaints without either seeking a comment from Sesame Street or exercising a sense of humor. Five days later the ombudsman got around to providing actual information and balance.

An executive with the Sesame Street Workshop had to point out the obvious:

“Children who watch Sesame Street (and adults who remember what it felt like to be a kid watching Sesame Street) know that Oscar the Grouch is a contrarian. He lives in a trash can and loves everything ‘yucky,’ and ‘disgustin.’ For a Grouch, ‘Trashy’ is high praise!”

Oscar’s song “I Love Trash” was the A-side of the first and perhaps last 45rpm record I ever owned. (The B-side was “Going for a Ride.”) For nearly forty years American children have known and enjoyed the irony of the fact that Oscar and other grouches “love trash.”

I can only assume that the people who complained about Pox News being called “trashy” aren’t part of that American mainstream that’s learned about Oscar. Perhaps those political conservatives didn’t let themselves become familiar with Sesame Street since it’s on public television and presents other things they have at various times argued vehemently against, such as an integrated neighborhood and bilingual education. Or perhaps watching Fox News has simply inured them to seeing that living in a trash can and lobbing insults at people isn’t really normal.

The most devastating recent parody of Fox News wasn’t Sesame Street’s brief mention. It wasn’t even Jon Stewart’s imitation of Glenn Beck. It was the Sean Hannity program’s forced admission that it had used file footage from one Washington rally to make another one look bigger than it really was. Now that’s comedy.

Can the Frog Tapdance?

The October 2008 issue of The Journal of Popular Culture offers the article “The Performance of Noncomformity [sic] on The Muppet Show--or, How Kermit Made Me Queer” by Jordan Schildcrout.

But isn't Kermit supposed to be the relatively normal center of the chaos? (Along with Rowlf, of course.)

As far as I can tell from John Chapman's summary and VULGAR Marxism's response, the queerness Schildcrout highlights actually arises from:

• Male puppeteers operating exaggerated female characters.
• Muppets being all different colors and shapes.
• The Great Gonzo. Who, of course, shows more attachment to Camilla the chicken than Kermit or Fozzie or most other male Muppets to any females.

Overall, this article seems to be proving the point that analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. It doesn't do the frog any good.

Better off watching "Happy Feet" again. [ADDENDUM: Video removed for copyright reasons.]

New Muppet to fill an old hole?

Today's New York Times Arts section reports on the creation and deployment of Abby Cadabby, a new little girl Muppet for the upcoming season of Sesame Street. She'll appear on The Today Show later this week. If that sounds like a marketing campaign, it is. Sesame Workshop announced Abby's coming in this June press release, and the Times article makes clear that writers didn't just set out to create a character--they wanted to create a star.

Abby's pink color, big eyes, pompom hair, and status as a fairy in training were all givens. Unlike some previous female Muppets, she wasn't designed to counteract feminine stereotypes; she embodies them. "On the set the joke was about the new toy on the block," the Times reports, "...a dig at the obvious marketability of the new pretty-in-pink creature."

The Muppet and Sesame Street writers have long been criticized for not coming up with enough strong female characters. This trend was especially obvious on the prime-time series Muppets Tonight, whose only major new female character was Spamela Hamderson, a one-note parody that would have been at home in Playboy magazine, circa 1970. But the Sesame Workshop writers have a point that depicting exaggerated traits in males carries less danger of echoing gender stereotypes; a girl monster as trepidatious as Telly could seem sexist, while a boy monster as tough and strong as Herry raises no complaints (and can be used to show boys' soft sides).

The irony here is that there have always been strong but feminine little girls among the Sesame Street Muppets. First was the character of "Betty Lou." She evolved into Prairie Dawn, who retained the original's interest in directing pageants but is also eager to be a news reporter. You do not want to get in these little girls' way. Yet they never gained the merchandising power of Big Bird, Elmo, or Grover. Were they too much like ordinary girls, with no wings or magical powers? Or were they too competent to win sympathy?

It is your old pal Grover

Fuse #8 alerted me to librarian Adrienne Furness's essay on The Monster at the End of this Book, featuring Grover as the furry narrator. (And he is cute, too!)

For the record, the author is the late Jon Stone, the artist Michael Smollin, but as a TV spin-off the book is clearly the culmination of many people's creative efforts. (But Stone had special monster insight; he'd married Beverly Owen of The Munsters.)

I loved The Monster at the End of this Book when I was in early elementary school. So have millions of other American kids. As I recall, Publishers Weekly once reported that it was the biggest seller Golden Books ever issued, and thus one of the biggest sellers of any American children's book. In 2000, the title's thirtieth year on the market, the magazine tallied 91,730 copies sold; in 2003, 83,701. That, my friends, is backlist publishing.

Furness [an appropriate name for writing about Grover, but she must hear that all the time] calls The Monster at the End of this Book an "early postmodern picture book gem." I didn't have those terms in 1971, but I definitely enjoyed the fact that Monster was a book about being a book. Its plotline was based on how a book works: turning one page after another, journeying unstoppably from one cover to the other. Monster probably helped prepare me for a publishing career. The only picture book that's come close since is The Stinky Cheese Man.

I also identified with Grover's fear and confusion about monsters. When I was little, before second grade (when my family bought our first TV), I knew the monsters on Sesame Street only from glimpses at friends' and relatives' houses. And they frightened me. Why? Because they were monsters. I knew that "monsters" was a term for scary creatures. So I was scared. No matter that Grover, Cookie, and Herry (the big blue three back then) never did anything scary that I could see. Adults called them "monsters." Obviously, they were going to be scary real, real soon!

For the same reason, I also hid from Margaret Hamilton in the MGM Wizard of Oz the first time I saw it, not because she did such a good job acting horrible (which she did), but because that's what I thought you should do with witches. It was expected.

The last time I saw my preschool-age godson in London, he was even more worried by Sesame Street puppets than I'd been. Not the monsters, who now jump around saying, "Wubba wubba wubba," and eschewing pronouns. (Grover doesn't use contractions, and Cookie uses "me" in place of "I," but Elmo talks about Elmo in Elmo's own peculiarly irksome way.) No, my godson made a point of leaving the room whenever the Big Bad Wolf came on screen. He calmly and quietly went to his bedroom--up two tall flights of stairs in about five seconds.

So what did I, being a good godfather, do? I wrote him a whole story about the Big Bad Wolf. Maybe in thirty-five more years he'll enjoy reading it.