Being Green in the Big City

Jim Henson first developed the Muppet characters in the 1960's. For decades now the films and television shows his characters star in have been a part of American culture. The first feature film, The Muppet Movie, was released in 1979. Two years later followed The Great Muppet Caper. And finally in 1984 came the last of the classic Muppet films, The Muppets Take Manhattan. Though the cartoonish characters Henson creates are loved by the young, The Muppets Take Manhattan is not just a piece of entertainment for children. Henson's films were also very smart pieces of work, incorporating jokes and themes unable to be grasped by youthful audiences, and this work is no exception. Story writers Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses collaberated with long-time Henson partner Frank Oz to provide a screenplay that brings depth and insight to an entertaining tale. From the very beginning the viewer finds Kermit the Frog feeling that there is something missing in his play about big city life. Two themes woven into the body of story illustrate his quandary by portraying an unfulfilling world of established power structures and homogeneity. Only in the very end of the film does Kermit come to understand that these are the source of his sense of loss. The characterization of societal power structures in The Muppets Take Manhattan serves to underline the importance of equity and diversity.

The Variety Show Goes to Broadway

The film opens as the Muppet characters are just finishing their college variety show. They are graduating, and this is their last performance before an audience that clearly loves their work. The college crowd gives the performers a long standing ovation, and a member of the audience yells: ``Hey Kermit, next time we'll see you on Broadway!'' Afterward, talking among themselves, this previously un-entertained thought is on all their minds. They decide to pursue it, unready to choose the alternative and go their separate ways.

In no time at all this group of ``dogs and bears and chickens and stuff'' finds itself in Manhattan. The Muppets show up bright-eyed and fresh-faced, walking straight into the office of the first producer they can find. Again and again their pitch is rejected. No producer wants to talk to them or even to look at the script for their play. Broke and discouraged, Kermit's friends decide that they should quit being a burden on him and go elsewhere to find jobs. Kermit starts working at Pete's Luncheonette, and continues to shop the play around, attempting to use disguises and ruses to trick producers into thinking he is a part of their world.

All attempts to find a producer fail until one day Kermit receives a letter from Bernard Crawford, saying that he wishes to put the play on Broadway. Kermit quickly makes his way to the office, only to find that the letter was actually sent by Bernard Crawford's son, Ronnie, whose youth and optimism are a match for what Kermit's once were. Ronnie's father had promised him bankrolling for his first play, and this is the one he wants to produce. Kermit is overjoyed, and rushes off to get word to his friends.

Just after Kermit makes a call to tell Miss Piggy and Pete's daughter Jenny the news, disaster strikes. Crossing the street Kermit is hit by a taxi. He wakes up in the hospital, unable to remember anything, including his identity. As Jenny and Piggy sit at Pete's worried about where Kermit has gone, Ronnie shows up to say that the show has to open in two weeks. The three rush out to try and find the frog, leaving Pete to send telegrams to the rest of the gang. As the days pass everyone shows up - except Kermit. The green frog who cannot remember his name ends up taking work with an advertising agency. His simple slogans revolutionize the struggling office. Quickly he becomes an integral part of Mad Ave Advertising's team of frogs.

By chance Kermit and his co-workers end up dining at Pete's the day of the play's opening. His old friends recognize him and forcibly take him to the theatre, hoping that somewhere along the line his memory will return. At the last second it does, and Kermit has an epiphany about what his play has been missing all along. The curtains rise, and the audience is thrilled.

Just a Frog in the Big City: Portrayals of Cultural Power Structures

Kermit's experiences trying to find a producer for his play illustrate the problems of a social structure that only awards attention to those with power and success. The Muppets come to New York fresh out of an idealistic college environment. There they were roundly cheered and loved, despite the fact that they were different. Kermit tells the crowd that ``It's not often that a frog and a bear and a pig and a chicken and a whatever even get accepted into college.'' Yet there they were accepted and given a chance to show what they had inside themselves. Here academia plays its traditional role as an environment where the currency is thoughts and ideas, not power and importance. Results are rewarded, no matter who produces them.

The transition from academia to the real world does not go smoothly. The gang shows up in the big city sure that it will instantly love the play into which they have put so much work. Arriving in New York they choose to sleep for a night in the lockers of a bus station. Fozzie tells everyone that ``It's just for one day. We'll all be on Broadway tomorrow.'' The group has a sense of unbridled optimism that is soon shown to be out of step with the realities of life. The next morning they cheerfully walk straight into the office of the first producer they find and try to explain their play to him. He appears to love it, but is quickly revealed to be a fraud just looking for money. As the fake producer is led away by police, Fozzie turns to Kermit and takes stock of the situation. ``He never wanted our show,'' he sighs. ``He just wanted our money.'' This experience gives them pause, but does not dampen their enthusiasm.

The following scenes show door after door shut and a string of producers with heads nodding no. The group tries to keep their enthusiasm as the days pass. A montage shot is accompanied by the song ``You Can't Take No For An Answer.'' The lyrics call for holding on to optimism, but the Muppets are no longer able to hear the message. Their heads hang and their talk becomes downhearted. During their string of rejection not one producer is seen to even look at a copy of the script. Cold reality has worked to beset the youthful optimism they brought from academia.

After his companions have departed to try and find other jobs, Kermit gives in to the existing structures and tries to find his way inside them. ``If you can't beat 'em, join 'em,'' he tells Jenny. The fact that he is forced to try and fit himself into society's power structure speaks to the completeness of its control. Kermit has tried to sell himself and his ideas through their own worth, but society summarily rejected both out of hand, without even taking the time to make any sort of a merit-based judgement. Now he gives himself over to the structure and attempts to portray the qualities it demands.

First, Kermit attempts to sell his play through exuded confidence. He dresses as an agent - a pink suit, afro, sunglasses, flashy gold chains - and attempts to fast-talk his way in the door. He blows into the office, drops a copy of his script on the desk of a stunned producer, and then breezes right back out. After a shot of Kermit leaning heavily on the door, exhausted from his performance, the camera cuts back into the office to show his script being dropped into the wastebasket. Kermit's acting job exhibited some of the external qualities of the structure he was trying to subvert, but even it could not steal him attention. Were the structure one of style and flash, his ruse might just have worked; but instead it was one of power.

Kermit next tries to get others to believe he is someone famous. He walks into Sardi's restaurant dressed in a fancy gray overcoat, a svelte moustache, and a black hat. The restaurant walls feature caricatures of famous patrons, and Kermit covertly replaces a picture of Liza Minelli hanging above his table with one of himself. He conspicuously sits beneath it. Rat companions that have snuck in with Kermit place themselves beneath tables and start to whisper sayings such as: ``Say, isn't that that rich producer over there?'' and ``He's investing millions of dollars in Manhattan Melodies.'' The restaurant is quickly astir with hushed conversation focused on Kermit. The attention fades just as fast as it came, however, as the rats reveal themselves and the patrons begin to make a different kind of stir. Kermit's plot almost looked like it would be successful, but once the illusion vanished it was all for naught. Once again he had tried to make it appear that he was a part of the established structure, but was unable to make the impression stick. The structure of power worked to deny him access without even a thought to the value of his ideas. His failure was the result of his inability to conform to the process, not a condemnation of his creation's content.

Finally the chance for production comes when Ronnie, someone still youthful and innocent and yet connected into the power system, decides that Kermit's ideas are exactly what he has been looking for. Ronnie tells his father, ``I told you, I want to do something different!'' His father, an established part of the power structure, is not convinced. ``Well put some jello down your pants,'' he retorts. Though the father can see his son's excitement, he still finds the idea ``ridiculous.'' Even with a family connection, the structure of power is shown to be tough to overcome.

A Collective of Blank Minds: Homogeneity and a Loss of Vitality

After his encounter with the taxi, Kermit ends up wandering into an advertising agency staffed by three frogs. All are similar colors of gray, and wear white shirts with gray suits. Even their names are similar: Bill, Jill, and Gil. They escort Kermit into an office where they are trying to find a slogan for Ocean Breeze soap. All of the ideas they try on him are complicated, obtuse failures. Kermit, as a fresh voice to the group, brings reason to their group-think. He asks, ``Have you tried something simple, like, 'Ocean Breeze soap will get you clean?''' The professionals are stunned at the slogan's simplicity and offer Kermit a job on the spot. Sales of soap soar. Kermit, as a spot of difference in a homogeneous office, is able to offer a fresh perspective and a new understanding of the product. To them, Kermit's simple idea is revolutionary. ``You mean, just say what the product does?,'' they ask. ``No one's ever tried that.'' This example clearly shows the power that lies in the variety of voices. Though Bill, Jill, and Gil have all been working at the advertising market for years, in this case their voices were unable to look at the product in the correct light. They were over-thinking the problem and offering solutions that did not address the core message that they should have been conveying.

In constant contact with this group, Kermit's differences start to melt away. He starts to talk the same way that they do and pick up their mannerisms. He does not entirely assimilate; his suit is black and his green color stills stands apart. Even so, the similitude of their voices effects a change in his being. When faced with Miss Piggy he now finds it absurd that the two of them could be in love. ``In love with a pig?'' he laughs. ``Wait until I tell the guys in marketing. Maybe you expect me to go 'hog wild?' Perhaps you could bring home the bacon?'' Clearly an aspect of Kermit's previous self is no longer active in his changed state.

Kermit's Epiphany: The Value of Voices

Once his memory is restored Kermit finally has his epiphany about what it is the show has been lacking. Ever since their senior performance Kermit has felt his work to be incomplete. Now, faced with the imminent prospect of going on stage, he still finds himself hesitant. ``The script isn't ready,'' he tells everyone. ``There's still something missing.'' Then it hits him. Fozzie asks Kermit if their friends can watch the show from back-stage. Kermit hesitates, then replies.

Wait a minute. No. No, they can't watch the show from back-stage. That's it! That's what's been missing from the show! That's what we need: more frogs and dogs and bears and chickens and whatever! You're not going to watch the show, you're going to be in the show!

His sudden realization ties together the earlier themes. The power structure that Kermit encountered in New York was opposed to the earlier setting of academia because of its exclusivity. The advertising world he found his way into had lost its vitality through a lack of diversity. Now, in the show, it once again became clear to him that neither of these were the correct way to approach the world. The deficiencies of a culture that placed its value in these structures became evident when he was again faced with overwhelming diversity.

Kermit's earlier attempts to integrate himself into this culture whose values were different than his own provides an analogy to what political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville referred to as the tyranny of the majority. Here, however, the majority is not one of numbers, but of power and control. In chapter fifteen of his book Democracy in America, Tocqueville wrote that ``In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.'' ¹ Though diversity and freedom are celebrated ideals, de Tocqueville found the structure of public discourse designed to limit ideas to those the majority found palatable. Those who think otherwise are gradually brought to conform out of a desire to find their place in society. This is the behaviour that Kermit observed when he made his way into the big city. Though he fully believed in his work, the majority refused even to consider it. He entered the advertising agency a fresh voice but soon found himself conforming to their customs.

Perhaps these ideas were not actually in the author's minds when they sat down to pen the tale that made its way onto film. And yet it seems safe to say that the ideals Kermit is shown to espouse are in line with those of the writers and Henson himself. Through a classic tale of hope and optimism in the big city the viewer is given a message of diversity and value. The various species that make up the Muppet gang are all shown to have value to the play. This message stands in opposition to the structures portrayed as existing in the modern world, and serves to advocate a move toward understanding and equality.

Footnotes

... ¹: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Trans. Henry Reeve, 1839. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/toc_indx.html