A childhood memory

So, this article on 1980's "The Muppet Movie was making the rounds on my Twitter this morning.

I have a similar experience to the writer - that sort of inchoate feeling about the movie, especially the opening song.

I rewatched (after many, many years - I'm not even sure I've ever seen the movie shown on tv) the opening song, "The Rainbow Connection"



You know how Proust was famously triggered by a madeline and a cup of tea (Was it a tisane? somehow lime sticks in my mind, or linden. Did they even make tisanes out of linden leaves) to have a potent memory of his childhood.

Well, that opening shot, as it swoops in to an (unnamed) swamp (and it's best not to wonder too hard about geography in the film, I think), suddenly brought me back to being 10 again and seeing it in the theater with my family. I didn't really understand the song then (maybe I don't now, even), but it seemed to be about wanting something...and not fame or fortune (as the writer points out) but...a sense of wonder, a sense of optimism.

(I really do think, as terrible as they sometimes were, the 1970s/early 80s were a less-cynical and more optimistic time than what we live in now).

I LOVED "The Muppet Movie." I was already a big fan of "The Muppet Show*" and so I was really excited to see the movie. We bought the soundtrack album (a big vinyl record; most music was on vinyl in those days - there were eight-tracks, I guess, and cassettes, but most people still favored vinyl). I think my parents still have the record in their box of albums.

I played that album like crazy. I sort of played the clarinet in those days but I was terrible at playing by ear so I never tried to figure out any of the melodies on it. (I'm still terrible at playing by ear and I admit I mostly don't try on the piano. It's strange, because I have a good auditory memory and I recognize tunes well....I just can't find the right keys to hit. I can do a little better if I'm given a hint as to the original key of the song)

But I loved the movie. If I could have I would have seen it multiple times but I had very little pocket money and we lived far away from a movie theater, so I had to depend on my parents to get out to the movies.

(*And, unpopular opinion, maybe, but: I think most Muppet things since perhaps Muppet Treasure Island have been kind of a pale imitation of the original. Maybe it's more cynical times we live in, maybe it's because I'm a jaded adult, I don't know. But I look at the original movie now, and wow, it seems so different...)

And another, less-happy childhood memory: in the fall, starting fifth grade, the teacher asked us to go around the class and say what recent movie we liked best. I was pretty clueless then (I wised up later on) and while the other kids were saying things like "The Jerk" and (I think?) "Caddyshack" (both of which 10 year olds probably should not have been seeing), I said "The Muppet Movie" and roundly got laughed at because that movie was "for babies."

And I realize now: I wonder if that was one of the differences between a lot of kids in my school and me, that the sort of proto-cynicial, sarcastic humor had already developed in them, while I just liked a silly story with gags like "look out for a fork in the road" and in the next shot, there is a literal giant fork stuck in the road.

I never liked the "too cool to care" attitude that some of the kids in my school took. I never quite got the idea of "it's only okay to enjoy things ironically."

But yeah. I loved "The Muppet Movie." I realize now as an adult that it was a lot of things: yes, a silly comedy with a lot of dumb gags of the exact kind that make me laugh more than any kind of cynical life-observation does, but also a road movie in the tradition of Hope and Crosby, and a Bildungsroman of sorts, and most of all, a wish-fulfillment movie.

Kermit wants something....not fame, maybe, but to make his mark on the world (Really, isn't the movie a fairy tale brought into the modern world? Kermit isn't the youngest son of a miller or anything like that, and he doesn't meet a literal wizard on the way, but....there is that sense of "I am going into the world to make my fortune" there).

Along the way, he makes friends (First Fozzie, then he meets Miss Piggy, and Gonzo and Camilla, and eventually the band....) And they all kind of join forces, because they realize they have similar wants in life, and Kermit kind of sells the rest of them on his dream. And they go for it. And they keep going despite setbacks.

(And yes, all the cameos of famous people - Steve Martin, and Orson Welles, and Madeline Kahn, and Mel Brooks....lots of comedians from that era)

And they succeed! I think that's why I liked the movie as a kid: they had a dream, they kept going despite setbacks, and they succeeded, though maybe a little differently than they originally thought:



And at the end there....even though the whole set collapses, and a hole is blown in the roof, well, there's still that feeling of success.

I admit, in musicals, I've always loved that trope in a song, where the protagonist starts out, like Kermit here:

"Life's like a movie/ Write your own ending"

and then the other characters join in, as the music swells:

"Keep believing, / Keep pretending"

(Aw man. I cried as I watched that just now. I know I didn't cry as a kid, but I had been knocked about a LOT less by life then,* and I still had that sort of "whatever your dreams are, they can come true!" sense that lucky kids have....as an adult I realize it's a LOT more complicated than "caring a lot and hoping a lot and maybe having a little luck and some friends along the way")


(*Even despite the mean kids. At the age of 10 I was just barely entering the period of the worst bullying)

But I guess....given that critical reception was actually pretty good at the time, and that a lot of people of my generation and a bit younger look back lovingly at the movie (and really, the bits I rewatched just now on YouTube - yes, that optimism. We need that), maybe the snarky kids who laughed at me for liking a movie that was "for babies"* were wrong after all, and it was actually a pretty good movie.

And anyway, like I said: in a lot of ways it was a non-cynical movie, and one of the things that wears me out the most about the times in which we live is that so many people seem to have to project a "cooler than thou" image, where caring about anything or being earnest about anything or even, really, liking anything "unironically" is a sign of a rube and a square.  I'm sure it's related to vulnerability and wanting to avoid it: if you care too much about something you stand the chance of being laughed at for it, or if you're too earnest about helping, you may get taken advantage of.

If most people are vulnerable and earnest, things often work out okay, because they find each other and support each other and can withstand the cynics. But if very few people are vulnerable and earnest, well, you've kinda got yourself a Hell on Earth going on there, because the vulnerable people get taken advantage of and the cynics never get to have any innocent fun....


(*And I don't discount the possibility that maybe some of the other kids secretly liked the movie, but were more savvy than I was, and realized that lying a little to look cool was preferable to earnestness. I think I wrote before here about how in seventh grade, when we were asked to go around the class and state our favorite TV show, and everyone was saying "M*A*S*H" and I just said "M*A*S*H" too, despite not really watching it or even liking it all that well, because I was desperate to fit in)