By Etienne Kishibe
An era is over. Last month, the Jim Henson Company sold the rights to The Muppets to Disney. This month, it sold the rights to Sesame Street to HIT Entertainment, of “Barney” the purple dinosaur and “Thomas & Friends” fame.
The company says both deals were made to secure better distribution for Henson properties, and contends that this move will be good for the company. However, the new ownership will hurt more than it helps.
Jennifer Brayton, a sociology professor at Ryerson University, says Disney will fundamentally change how The Muppets are portrayed.
“The Muppets actually do deal with issues and show children how to deal with complexity,” she says. “Disney perpetuates dominant ideologies and mainstream values.”
The Muppets have a huge following. Three generations of children have now grown up with Sesame Street, which debuted in 1969, and many 20- to 30-year-olds immediately recognize many Muppet characters.
Muppet characters have been seen around the world, including a version briefly shown in Jerusalem featuring Israeli and Palestinian puppets together (it has been cancelled, because in the prevailing state of violence it wasn’t helping the situation).
The Muppets and Sesame Street are a unique phenomenon. While puppeteering technologies and techniques have changed over the years, the two shows have been successful for nearly half a century using essentially the same cast of puppets.
This is because they depend on fully developed characters much more than on visuals. “They are a very diverse cast, and never stereotyped,” says Brayton. “There’s an alien, Animal the crazy drummer, the frog in love with a pig – which is a sort of interracial relationship.”
Now celebrating its 35th anniversary, Sesame Street has kept the same well-developed characters, both human and Muppet, over their entire lifespan. The intimacy this creates has allowed audiences to be exposed to difficult issues, such as the death of a cast member.
Sara Bir of the North Bay, California Bohemian writes that the developed nature and relative sophistication of Sesame Street characters — who tend toward a “wry, vaudevillian sense of humour” — make them entertaining for audiences of any age.
While the Jim Henson Company is supposed to retain creative control after the acquisitions, Brayton still sees it as a creative takeover. “Disney is such a massive entity, controlling all aspects of media and entertainment complexes, it overwhelms its subsidiaries,” she says. A prime example of this is computer graphics animator Pixar Studios.
“There was such a change in the way Pixar’s films portrayed reality after it was bought by Disney. I was a huge fan of the Pixar shorts, like the old man playing chess with himself.”
And the film featuring a large and a small lamp highlighted playfulness in the parent-child relationship. “After Disney took it over, Pixar became mainstream,” says Brayton. “Finding Nemo perpetuates the idea of a dangerous world, with a victimized child that the parent must look after and protect — as opposed to playfulness.”
According to Miren Gutierrez, the editor of the Inter Press Service, “the marriage of media content (news, films, TV shows) with media distribution (TV or radio networks, internet services and the like) further increases the control of media barons over the audience, as they use their sales power to batter their way into living rooms.”
Distributors don’t like diversity, and therefore riskiness, in what they’re distributing. And they have all the power.
Disney itself is facing unfriendly takeover bids. Floyd Norris wrote in the New York Times, “many investors hope that cable companies will be able to win not only the Internet wars but also capture a growing share of telephone business.
By that theory, those who provide content will have to take what the cable companies are willing to pay for their product.”
This doesn’t bode well for the future of The Muppets. In recent years, and particularly since the departure of Pixar Studios, Disney has been suffering from a lack of creative imagination. The animation studios have been moribund, and its ownership of ESPN is the only thing keeping Disney from drowning.
Disney’s been in the market for new content to fill its distribution and marketing networks, and The Muppets could be it. Disney tends to flood the market with its products using massive campaigns across a variety of media to advertise and sell. For Disney, overwhelming force is the rule of the game.
“We’re going to see The Muppets become more of a consumer product,” says Brayton. “Muppets merchandise will be everywhere.”
This presents the danger of significant overexposure. The Jim Henson Company has always been careful with The Muppets’ image, and their appearances have been selective.
The company trades on an impression of intimacy and, to a certain extent, quaintness. Brian and Lisa Henson are still the Jim Henson Company’s co-Chairs and CEOs. This identity just doesn’t mix well with Disney.
The beginnings haven’t been promising.
The first post-Disney projects for The Muppets so far have been a Superbowl commercial with pop-singer-turned-reality-TV-star Jessica Simpson, spots on a coming Jessica Simpson variety show, and a Muppet version of The Wizard of Oz.
No word yet on whether Jessica Simpson will portray Dorothy.