The Muppets

Did anybody else see this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl6ekkvWnOE ?  In case you are too disinterested to watch it, which, frankly, you probably should be, here is a long story made short: the "newsman" from Fox Business Channel makes the following claim about The Muppets film which is out in theatres now, "Liberal Hollywood [is] using class warfare to brainwash our kids... where are we, communist China?"  In truth, it was hearing this claim, and seeing this movie, that really convinced me to start blogging.  I get so overwhelmingly disturbed when people spout nonsense under the guise of 'news' (even if it is something like an 'editorial').

In case you haven't seen it, which you really should, here is the general plot of The Muppets:  It has been many years since the muppets last performed together at the famed Muppets Studios.  The intervening years have not been entirely kind to all of the Muppets (although several of them have found themselves with big, well-paying jobs).  A Texas oil man (to be fair, I think the antagonist of every movie should be a Texan) named Tex Richman is trying to buy the Muppets Studios in order to tear it down and drill for oil (although he claims to be buying it in order to build a museum).  When the muppets learn of his nefarious intentions they must come together in order to make the money needed to buy the studios before Tex Richman can turn the whole place into an oil field.  The Muppets- in a nutshell.

So, Foxy Newsman ( I'll give him a clever pseudonym rather than slander his character because my mom is very bothered by name-calling) believes that this movie is promoting 'class warfare' because it shows a rich person to be 'the bad guy'.  As a Christian theologian it seems very silly to call this 'class warfare'.  Is it not the biblical record that Jesus said something like, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God?"  And of course in the book of Timothy we hear it said that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."  This is to say nothing about Jesus' admonition to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and to care for the widow, the orphan, and the (illegal?) alien in your midst.  The biblical story is bursting with illustrations of precisely why the Christian life is called to be one of responsibility to the other, as much (if not at times more) than responsibility to oneself.  The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas claims that the face of The Other makes a demand on the self, a demand which the self cannot ultimately confirm or deny, but simply must live with (and perhaps live into).  The demand is always already present when two or more are face-to-face.  Perhaps in Christian circles we would speak not of the face, per se, but of the imago Dei- the image of God, as that which places a demand on our lives.  Of course, the image of God is left indelibly on all of creation, not merely in its 'political' form evidenced through the 'rationality' of humanity, and, thus, the demand on our lives is not only to live well with The (human) Other, but is a call to a very specific way of being-in-the-world.

This, of course, is merely a very basic description of the biblical narrative, a narrative which, to my knowledge, Foxy Newsman holds no public allegiance to.  Thus, it would behoove us to move beyond the 'merely' Christian, and look at his claims at another level.  There is a very real history of class warfare evidenced in the history of China's transformation to communism, but the Chinese cultural revolution was drastically different villainizing a villain.  You see, the problem with Tex Richman is not that he is rich, successful, or even ambitious.  The problem with Tex Richman, as The Muppets wants to demonstrate, is that he considers fiscal success to be the highest good.  In a capitalist society it is easy to follow a person like Ayn Rand (who, incidentally, was a fabulous writer) in claiming that the best action is always to act in one's own self interest (an ethical theory known as egoism). Rand detested the idea of altruism as destructive and vile.  It is no surprise that with the rise of various political 'tea parties' came a (rather poorly made) film version of Rand's classic novel, Atlas Shrugged.

Individualism is hot these days.  Yet, The Muppets constructs for us, not a collectivist, much less Communist, alternative in which the immediate good of any given individual is not always the highest good.  The Muppets demonstrates the simple fact that great wealth is often created upon the (potentially) oppressed backs of the less wealthy.  Tex Richman's great 'sin' is not being a capitalist, but simply being uncaring.  Regardless of one's political leanings (if indeed they are leanings and not full-on falls) it is hard to argue that the cost of indefinite wealth creation is sometimes simply too high.  The United States has never had a purely capitalist economy because even staunch 'conservatives' throughout history have realized that the nation (as a people, not as a disembodied hypothetical entity) has a responsibility to care one for another (to a certain extent of course).  There are very real forces of oppression at work in the world, and these forces are often stronger than the individuals upon which they are predicated.  The Muppets is not making a Communist, nor a Socialist, claim that would, in some way, do away wholly with the notion of the individual.  What The Muppets is arguing is simply that value is not merely an economic/monetary construct.  Value, however that term is understood, is always already present in the arts, in friendship, in the appreciation of history, in love, in finding oneself inexplicably but inextricably connected to an other.  Ethics, according to The Muppets, is, then, a comparative study of values.  In the movie several of the muppets have become independently wealthy through various business endeavours, yet they still realize that life is not entirely contained in those endeavours.  Even from his gated mansion Kermit the Frog wants relationship more than anything else.  This is not Communism (although I really wouldn't expect Foxy Newsman to be able to adequately describe Communism anyway), it isn't even communalism, it is simply the way of things.  Life cannot be lived alone, it is absurd to pretend otherwise.

I originally saw The Muppets nearly a week ago.  Because of travel and various other reasons I hadn't gotten around to fulling compiling my thoughts here until now.  In the week since I saw the film I have been unable to mentally escape the famous muppet song, "The Rainbow Connection," which is sung in the film (here is a version from the 70s era The Muppet Movie:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSFLZ-MzIhM).  Anybody who knows me well knows that I am far from an optimist, yet, I find something magical about this song.  This song, which in many ways sums up the message of The Muppets, simply wants us to see the value in living life.  The song's final verse says:

Have you been 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...

This seems, to me, to be a pretty impressive example of imaginary eschatology.  When you get behind the fluff and the fun, maybe the muppets are right: it is the lovers and the dreamers who most transform the world in positive ways.  I may not be a dreamer, but I have, nevertheless, been somehow moved by a silly movie.  For that, I am grateful.