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Oct 22-26, 2001
This week, I'm going to watch five Halloween-themed Muppet shows, to find out which ones are tricks and which ones are treats. I'm getting scared already.
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Monday, Oct 22: Let the scariness begin!
Today, I'll be watching the Vincent Price episode of The Muppet Show. It's my first Muppet Show for a My Week column, and it feels like I ought to be doing something special for it. I sit up a little straighter. Kermit introduces the guest star, and tells us to "be prepared for the strange, the weird, and the scary." Then Fozzie puts a pie in Kermit's face. "Let the scariness begin!" The first sketch is a huge orange monster eating a little pink one, and singing "I've got you under my skin." The little monster -- let's call him Dinner -- protests and tries to escape, but the big monster keeps swallowing him. This is bringing back memories of watching The Muppet Show when I was a kid. I was 5 years old when this episode was first on, and I actually do remember being scared by this sketch. I think the thing that's scary about it is not so much the eating. I can handle the eating. The scary thing is the monster trying to convince his dinner to give in to being eaten. The big monster sings: "Why should you try to resist... Don't you know, little fool, you never can win? Use your mentality! Wake up to reality!" Now, that's creepy to me. Muppets eating other Muppets is pretty standard, but actually trying to talk your dinner into accepting death... Huh. This is a little more intense scare-wise than I'd expected. The scare is cushioned a bit by the sight of the Dinner shivering backstage -- obviously alive, if not well. This shot feels to me like a little reassurance for the kid viewers, the pie in the face during the scary parts that lets us know that everything's okay. I appreciate that. I can use all the reassurance I can get. Hey, but here's another scary part. Kermit hosts a panel discussion on Gourmet Dining with Vincent Price, Pierre ("one of the world's great chefs") and Gorgon Heap ("one of the world's great eaters"). During the course of the discussion, Gorgon Heap eats the water jug, then a tray, and then Pierre. Then the monster turns to Kermit: "Hey! YOU look delicious!" Kermit appeals to Vincent for help: "Vincent! Can you stop him, please?" But Vincent just licks his lips: "Froggy, you have to admit that you DO look TASTY!" Gorgon Heap swallows the frog. Yikes! Once again, the swallowing is not really as scary as the fact that Kermit's appeal for help was answered in that callous, creepy way. There's a little cushion here too -- in the very next scene, Kermit is seen in Statler and Waldorf's theater box. It looks like, at least so far, the show's policy is always to provide some kind of reassurance that the characters are okay. We don't see Pierre the chef, though, so I guess he's just eaten. Oh well. Later on in the episode, there's another little moment that I just find chilling. Kermit is backstage looking at some papers on his desk, and a little prop hand moves on its own across the table. Kermit looks at it and reacts a little, then another monster enters and they have a scene. I like that. It doesn't mean anything, it's not connected to anything -- it's just a little violation of the rules about what can move and what can't. I think that's the thing that I'm actually finding scary about this episode. The ghosts and monsters and bats aren't really scary at all. In fact, most of them are kind of cute. They shout "Boo!" every once in a while, but that's not very scary -- it's surprising, maybe, but there's nothing particularly scary about it. The real scary stuff is the casual violation of the rules -- that a prop will just move on its own, or a guest star will devour you with a smile on his face. And then there's the Furniture Monsters sketch, which scared me so much as a kid that I'm not even sure I can talk about it. It starts out like a normal Newsman sketch -- the Newsman announces that there are reports all over the country of furniture turning into monsters. Then the camera pulls back, and we see the Newsman on a TV in a little apartment. There's a Muppet guy sitting on a chair watching the TV. As far as I know, this is the one and only time on The Muppet Show that they actually showed us someone watching the show on television. It's always presented as a "real" stage show; the only audience members that we see are actually present in the theater. To suddenly pull out to show a viewer is startling on its own. Then the Muppet's chair and dresser turn into monsters and attack. He beats them off with a rolled-up newspaper, then gets devoured by his television set. Cut back to the Newsman, who complains about how ridiculous that story was -- and then his desk comes to life and devours him. And that's it. No cushion, no reassurance. Your television will come to life and eat you. Have a nice evening, kids. I think the stuff that I find actually chilling in this episode is the stuff about losing control. The monster talks his dinner into being eaten. Vincent does the same with Kermit. The hand prop moves on its own, and Kermit hardly notices. For the first time, we see the television audience -- ourselves, represented on screen -- and we are instantly devoured and killed. My goodness. This is going to be a scarier week than I thought.
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Tuesday, Oct 23: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And so on.
For my second Halloween episode, I'm watching the Fraggle Rock third season episode "Scared Silly." I've seen it a bunch of times, and it's one of my favorite episodes -- a nice simple farce plot, with a huge funny Wembley breakdown at the end. But watching it for this Halloween week, the thing that I noticed most was the lighting. It starts out with Boober jumping out from a pile of laundry to scare Wembley. He's testing everyone's bilubius, the furry tuft on the end of Fraggles' tails that flare out when they're scared. Wembley gets mad, and goes to the Trash Heap for help scaring Boober. The Trash Heap gets all Yoda on him, saying that he should just forget about it: "If you try to scare your friend back, that is REVENGE. And if you seek revenge, you take the consequences." But the Trash Heap's rats, Philo and Gunge, encourage Wembley to scare the daylights out of Boober. And here's where the cool lighting effects happen. Wembley and the rats sing a song about how great it would be to scare Boober, and the lights start to get dimmer. Wembley leaves the rats and goes into the Fraggle caves, and his second chorus is backed up by a huge pack of monsters. Here the lights get really dark, and Wembley is illuminated from underneath. It's an amazing, subtle effect that shows that Wembley is giving himself over to darkness and revenge. Wembley's scaring efforts fail, and he just gets more and more frustrated. Later on, when Wembley is hiding around a corner planning to jump out at Boober, he's lit with a red glow. And when Wembley plants spiders and scary masks all over Boober's room, his spunky song is counterpointed by the darkness in the room. There's a whole bunch of plot that happens after this, with Wembley becoming convinced that he made Boober so scared that he blew up -- but I'm just fascinated by the lights. The mood of every scene -- from frustrated to furious to the bright happy ending -- is highlighted by a very subtle lighting effect. The fake spiders and popping snakes aren't scary here; Boober certainly isn't scared by any of Wembley's tricks. The scary thing is the idea that Wembley could be taken over with feelings of revenge and anger. The Trash Heap warns Wembley of terrible consequences. Wembley thinks that means that Boober's blown up -- but the real danger here is Wembley losing his soul, and losing his friends, because he's so focused on revenge. When he realizes that his friends are more important than his anger, things get a lot brighter.
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Wednesday, Oct 24: The Halloweenisation of Evil
So here's Alice Cooper, rising out of a coffin with his stringy black hair and big black smudges around his eyes, wearing a blood-red lined Dracula cape. A monster band is playing "Welcome to My Nightmare," there's some bats and skeletons, and Alice is sort of flouncing around swishing his cape. And I'm thinking, So what exactly about this is supposed to scare me? See, the problem is that this is The Muppet Show, circa 1978, and the song is about getting people hooked on drugs. It goes like this: Welcome to my nightmare. I think you're gonna like it. I think you're gonna feel like you belong... Welcome to my breakdown. I hope I didn't scare you. That's just the way we are when we come down. So, drugs then. But this is The Muppet Show, and we can't just give him a shabby hotel room and a big ol' hypo of heroin -- so, instead, we give him a haunted house set and a Dracula cape and tell him to have at it. It makes for a weird half hour of television. The whole episode keeps messing around with the idea of what Evil is supposed to look like. Is there real Evil in the world that involves drug pushers, sexual exploitation and anti-social destruction? Or can you be Evil just by wearing too much eyeliner? Backstage, Alice offers Kermit a contract to make him rich and famous. Kermit thinks it's creepy and won't touch it, but Gonzo is immediately interested. He'd do anything for recognition, even sell his soul. Am I wrong in thinking that this storyline would have been a hard sell in the 90's? Postmodern end-of-history ironic detachment aside, there's no way a current kids' TV show would even mention a contract with the Devil these days. Apparently 1978 was way more interesting than I remember it. But if you really want to talk weird, then we've gotta discuss the Piggy seduction scene. We come in on Alice, who's spread out a lot of rugs and pillows on his dressing room floor, and he's lying on this makeshift love bed with a hideous bird monster. They sing a romantic song and cuddle, stroking each other. Then Scooter comes in, turns on the lights, and calls for Miss Piggy to get ready for Pigs in Space. The bird monster looks up and responds to Scooter in Piggy's voice. Then she sees herself in the mirror, and screams in panic. She turns to Alice: "The deal is OFF! Make with the magic." Alice shrugs, waves his hands, and turns the monster back into Miss Piggy. "Tell your man I wouldn't sell my soul if you PAID me!" she screams, and slams the door on her way out. Alice gets on his demonic ham-radio set, saying, "No, boss, I didn't make a sale... tell me, do I make any commission on hourly rentals?" Okay. Where to begin. In the first place, since when do Muppet Show guest stars lay rugs down to make a bed in their dressing room? Since when do Muppet Show guest stars entice Miss Piggy with promises of fame and seduce her into what is at the very least some serious horizontal snuggling? Very deeply weird. And maybe I'm just a cynical adult, but how are we supposed to interpret Miss Piggy seeing herself in the mirror as a monster, except as a metaphor for post-coital regret? I'll leave you with that one, because it's just too strange. So here's Sam the Eagle's take on the whole thing. He enters Alice's dressing room, looks him straight in the eye, and says: "You, sir, are a demented, sick, degenerate, barbaric, naughty... FREAKO!" Alice just smiles: "THANK you!" Sam is despondent. "Freakos: 1, Civilization: 0." So this is my question: What in the sam hill is going ON here? There are some hints of real actual depravity with Alice -- one song about drug use, another about blowing up school and killing the teachers. He seduces Gonzo into darkness with promises of fame. He seduces Piggy and apparently sexually exploits her in some way. And when Sam, the self-elected voice of mainstream morality, tries to take Alice to task for these crimes, Alice's response is a good-natured shrug. There's a kind of cheerful teenage nihilistic savagery behind Alice's act -- like he's taking all the fears of mainstream 1970's America and saying, yup, we're gonna destroy everything you hold dear. We'll seduce your daughters and blow up your schools, we'll sell drugs and wear ugly clothes and we don't care what you think about it, because we're beyond your bourgeois rules and laws. And The Muppet Show's way of depicting this is just to Halloweenise the whole thing, to drape bats and skeletons and goblins over it and pretend that it's all just a big joke, a costume we can put on for the day and then forget all about it. And I honestly can't quite figure out how I feel about that. Maybe the Halloweenisation of Evil is helpful, taking the sting out of it by depicting it as a figure of fun rather than a real threat. Or maybe the ghosts and skeletons are just distracting people from actually paying attention to the smug, destructive amorality at the core of Alice's persona. I can't decide what I think about it, and I think the show can't figure it out either. Alice seems to be playing along in a jolly way, but there's a weird uncomfortable edge to his laughter, like he's not exactly on the same page as everyone around him. They don't resolve the Contract-with-Satan story -- Gonzo appears with a scary-looking document at the end, but it turns out to be a bill for special effects. It's a funny gag, but they never make it clear whether Alice was really an agent for Satan, or just playing a joke on everyone. It feels to me like they thought bringing Alice Cooper onto The Muppet Show would be a hoot, and they didn't realize how deeply weird it was going to be until it was too late to back out. So they just Halloweenised as best they could and moved on. Looking at it from the distance of a couple decades, it just looks confused, a weird historical document from a period when we were grappling with some big scary changes in American society. Oh, and also: Robin sings "Over the Rainbow," which is really really cute.
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Thursday, Oct 25: The Evil of Halloweenisation
You want scary? I'll show ya scary. All week on the Tough Pigs message board, I've been arguing about Elmo. I've represented the well-established body of evidence that holds that Elmo's World is da bomb. Others have represented the well-meaning but deeply flawed view that Elmo is idiotic and annoying. And then I have to go and watch Elmo Says Boo, Sony Wonder's idiotic and annoying direct-to-video Halloween special from 1997. And all of a sudden I kind of get what the other folks have been trying to say. The video opens with Elmo arriving at the Count's spooky castle, shivering and looking up at the thunderclouds despite the fact that the set is so brightly lit that it might as well be high noon on a sunny spring day. Elmo's come over to tell the Count some funny, spooky jokes, not that he knows any. He knocks on the door. Knock, knock. Who's there, says the Count? Bat, says Elmo. Bat who, says the Count? Bat-ter open the door, Mr. Count, says Elmo. The muffled thud you just heard was that joke landing squarely on the carpet. There's more of those. A lot more. Elmo enters the castle, which is full of cobwebs and ironwork and assorted bric-a-brac. The Count tells a joke: What is a ghost's favorite dessert? Boo-berry pie. Oh, my sides. A skeleton hanging around by the wall laughs and shakes its arms around. Elmo acts scared of the skeleton, so he must be worried that the huge fishing wires attached to the skeleton's arms might knock something over as they flail around. This skeleton effect is possibly the single least competent thing I've ever seen on a commercially available video. They linger on it for quite a while. Then we see Rosita with a little girl. "Tan-tan!" Rosita chirps. The little girl is confused: "What?" Rosita apologizes: "I'm speaking in Spanish. Tan-tan is the Spanish for knock-knock. Let me start ALLLL over again." Rosita is adorable, spontaneous and full of beautiful energy. But then this is the joke she tells: Knock-knock! Who's there? Boo. And I think you can take it from there. The little girl forces out a polite laugh, but to tell the truth, she just looks bored. It's tragic. There are a bunch of these little scenes with Muppets telling jokes to kids. Most of the kids look tired and irritated, like they're waiting for a bus. Sand-witch. Acro-bat. Whipped screams. Peek-a-booooo. And the laughs just keep on coming. Elmo, you know I got your back. You're my guy. But you're letting the team down, my man. No more of these. Boo indeed.
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Friday, Oct 26: How Halloween got its groove back
"Oh, hello, meow meow meow!" says Bear. Bear has answered the door holding a little cardboard cat mask. "It's so good to see you! Can you guess who I am, meow meow meow?" Um. Yeah. You're Bear, and you're holding a little cardboard cat mask. I don't know, maybe it's me. I usually love Halloween. But this week has just worn me down. Does this happen every week in these columns? I hate to keep doing this, but the barrage of fakey spookiness on the Alice Cooper Muppet Show and Elmo Says Boo has just drained my Halloween spirits. I don't have a lot of patience for cardboard cat masks at the moment. Meow meow yourself. Bear has decorated his house with lights and balloons and black cat throw pillows. But he's still getting ready for Halloween -- they have to carve the pumpkin, get their costumes ready, and then they're all going trick or treating. Then two little bushes walk up to Bear, whispering and rustling. "Rustle rustle rustle!" they giggle. "Sssshhhh! Quiet, quiet. Rustle rustle." Bear notices the two bushes, and asks if we can guess who they are. It's Pip and Pop, dressed as bushes! Pop has a ball stuck in his branches, and Bear says that's very creative: "That's the great part of dressing up for Halloween! You get to discover what it's like to be someone or something else!" Pop suggests they go outside and see which one can stand still like a bush the longest, so they rustle rustle away. And hey, y'know what? That is a cool thing about Halloween. Dressing up in costumes and pretending to be something else really is fun. It occurs to me that none of the shows I've seen this week said anything about costumes. Then Bear goes into the kitchen and finds Tutter excavating a pumpkin, wearing a little miner's helmet. Tutter scoops out the pumpkin, and says they're ready for the carving. Bear says: "That's right, Tutter. My, you're quite the pumpkin expert, aren't you?" Tutter shrugs: "Well, yeah, you know. I dabble." It's cute, and funny. This is also the first pumpkin carving I've seen this week. Pumpkin carving is great. How come the Muppets did drug abuse and devil worship instead of pumpkin carving? Meanwhile, on the costume front, Ojo and Treelo are dressing as bats. Pip and Pop are bushes. Tutter makes himself a pumpkin costume. But Bear still needs a costume, so they get out the costume box. They can't decide which to use, so Ojo and Treelo put a curly blonde wig on Bear's head and announce that he'll be "Goldilocks, the Bear!" Treelo flutters his eyes: "You're very pretty, Bear!" On a lesser show, this would so be the moment for some gay-baiting anti-drag humor. But Bear is so out of control perfect that he actually says: "Why, thank you, Treelo!" And then he swishes his hand through his hair. "Hey, I could get used to this. Thanks, guys -- this is the best Halloween costume ever! Even if it is a bit... unusual." And then he wears the Goldilocks wig for the whole rest of the episode. WOW! That is possibly the most amazing pro-drag thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Halloween is like the gay national holiday -- there are huge Halloween parades in New York and San Francisco where people put on all kinds of amazing, wild costumes. I really think that there's some level of subtexting going on here -- that Bear's drag costume is a conscious wink at the queer folks, in the audience and on the production staff. Take that, Elmo! Then there's a big trick or treating scene, with the gang going from house to house in the forest and loading up on candied clams and birdseed treats. They all head back to the Big Blue House to stuff their faces and have a festive Halloween party. It really is remarkable that this show has managed to tap in to everything that's actually fun about Halloween. The ghosts and ghouls on The Muppet Show aren't that scary, and the Boo-berry jokes on Elmo Says Boo are just lame. But Bear sincerely invokes the fun side of Halloween -- making costumes, carving pumpkins, pigging out on candied clams. Bear's not pretending to be "spooky," rattling some chains around and eating main characters. Armed with a pumpkin and a blonde wig, he reminds us that Halloween is a world of friends and surprises and public cross-dressing. It's not scary. But this week, I think I've learned that scary isn't all it's cracked up to be.
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