Jim Henson is a genius. A latter day Kafka who figured out as well as anyone how to speak clearly and loudly his personal subversion using the voice and medium of a dominant culture to do it. Think about Jim Henson’s actual childhood with the notion that most people’s adult creativity taps into “meaning and aesthetic” experiences they had between 6 and 12 years old. Henson was born in 1936. In *Greenville Mississippi*. Can you even imagine Greenville Mississippi in 1936? Think “O Brother Where Art Thou“. A completely different world.
In late childhood he moved to Maryland near DC (in the late 40′s) and, as a Christian Scientist, he didn’t have a TV until late into adolescence – a moment that he recalls as being the “biggest event of his adolescence”. This means that as a kid, he almost certainly got most of his “culture candy” from radio and live performances. Both of which meant a huge link back to vaudeville and the itinerant folk culture that predated mass media.
In the early 60′s as a young creative, he is almost certainly dealing with 50-something producers and directors who, themselves, were weaned on straight vaudeville (see Sullivan, Ed) and who couldn’t imagine early TV as anything other than a camera pointed at some form of live stage event. One thing he noticed that was attractive about puppets was that they could be used to greater effect with “slapstick violence” than human actors. You can imagine the belly laugh from a 50-ish producer when he saw early muppets acting out an old seltzer and two-by-four bit he remembered sneaking-into as a kid. “I like it Henson, you’re an odd kid, but damn those puppets are funny!”
Nietzsche hit the nail on the head when he said that most new powers proceed by masks. To be sure, Henson himself had to have been personally affected by the meaning and aesthetic of the radio programs and live shows he experienced as a kid in Mississippi, and that contributes a great deal to his future visions. At the same time, as he was a young man trying to figure out what ideas “worked” – that is, what ideas would be accepted by the guys making decisions at the TV shows – surely he discovered through trial and error if nothing else that the vaudeville sensibility (particularly when combined with the natural possibilities of muppets) were more successful than other efforts. And so he wore his masks. And, as a consequence, had his opportunity to “smuggle” his own ideas (both content and form) into the mass audience.
For kids growing up on the Muppets, none of this was evident. None of us were able to really link back to vaudeville or early TV (except as the subtle interpolation of its evolutionary impact on contemporary tv and as the vague hints of parents walking into see Captain Kangeroo and muttering something about Howdy Doody). Surely the abstract forms that “just work” on human beings – the basics of comedy – were always present and to the extent that they were being “carried” by vaudeville forms, fine. But while the much older crowd (our parents and grandparents) were able to see mostly only the reflections of their own childhood, we saw everything at an equal intensity and, therefore, absorbed Hensons own content at a relatively much higher rate. Its like the old lady – young lady picture. If you’ve been told that it is one image it is much harder to see the other, but if you’ve never seen it before *both* are equally visible. Encrypted in plain sight. For those with ears to hear.
Like everyone else, Henson was just looking for a way to have his spirit and ideals heard and (at best) affirmed by other people. Like everyone else, he had to do so through the voice, image and medium of a majority culture. But, like Kafka, Melville, and all the other heterogenous hijackers of majority culture on behalf of a “minor language” his spirit and ideals were something that couldn’t be said out loud “in public” (certainly during the 50′s and most of the 60′s). Just check out his The Cube. Intense and brilliant – but limited to a tiny audience in the middle of the night. So he had to figure out how to get as large an audience as possible with as much signal as possible. And he was great at it.
If you are like me and the Muppets taste of mountain dew and pop rocks, or riding your huffy (sans helmet to be sure) for some atari at your friends house, then Yo Gabba Gabba feels like a Mr. T t-shirt. Like everyone, the good folks at Yo Gabba Gabba can only take what they know (and largely that means what they experienced from 6 – 12) as their base and foundation. And they have found a way to take 70′s kid iconography and present them to 21st century kids and their parents in a fashion that remixes old and new and has captured the unconscious at a level of the Muppets. Unlike say Barney or Teletubbies, Yo Gabba Gabba smuggles in a lot of the values and spirit from that previous generation of saboteurs (including bringing guys like Paul Williams back into the fray – just to make sure that we get the message). It is clear, to me, that the Yo Gabba Gabba guys are conscious members of the “Rainbow Conspiracy” and that every episode should be viewed through that lens.
Why are there so many songs about rainbows
And what’s on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it
I know they’re wrong, wait and see.
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,
The lovers, the dreamers and me.
Who said that every wish would be heard and answered
when wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of that
and someone believed it,
and look what it’s done so far.
What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.
All of us under its spell,
we know that it’s probably magic….
Have you been half asleep
and have you heard voices?
I’ve heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same.
I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it.
It’s something that I’m supposed to be.
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.
If *all* that Henson did during his life was smuggle this song into the deep unconscious and meaning/value structures of an entire generation of children (listened to in the validating warm hearth of home with at least the passive and frequently active support of adults, and from the lips of beloved non-threatening yet authority-peer kermit, and then reinforced by all sorts of cultural notables (with particular affects to make sure we were getting the message)) then he did more than almost any culture warrior. Of course, he did much more than that.
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