User talk:Hrodulf

Another update on the research
I have been very busy and havn't been able to do much yet, but will do as soon as I can. I've brought a few books on Jim Henson and should be able to come up with some useful information. An interesting idea occurred to me, however, that Jim Henson was probably benefitted by being "in the right place at the right time," as it were, when television was just leaving its infancy, and arriving at its. . . adolesence? Bad metaphor. But you get my point.

If Jim Henson was getting started today, in 2006, which his Sam and Friends puppets, would he have been able to "break in" to television? I'd like to think yes, but I bet it's a lot harder now than it was 40+ years ago. . . and it was probably hard back then, too.

--Hrodulf 18:56, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Update on the research
I went to the library, but they were closed (it was too early). I then went to a bookstore, and it wasn't in stock, but I was able to order what looked like a very good book about Henson that includes his earlier work, which is what I'm interested in, particularly The Floating Face. I'll try the library again also, so I don't have to wait to get started on it.

I also read something online that turned out to be critical of sesame street, but explained, interestingly, that the idea of the "sponsored by the letter W and the number 3" thing was meant to co-opt, rather than criticize, the concept and trappings of advertising. The research indicated that children liked advertisements, so the concept was to make the show an advertisement for learning. That would be interesting to look into also, in terms of the concepts behind what the plan for the show was, and how those concepts were implemented.

Not being a parent (yet) I don't know if the criticism in the article is valid or not; I think it depends on how you approach the show. If you expect it to be a cure-all and total substitute for all outside learning, I don't think it's meant to be that, or that it would be possible for any show to be that, and I think the criticism is based upon what the show isn't as much as what it is. I certainly don't think any television show can ever be a substitute for a parent trying to expose their children to learning and literacy; it's just a tool, and I think the people behind sesame street would be among the first to agree that sesame street is not and cannot be a substitute for good parenting and educational stewardship of children. I also don't think sesame street can teach children much if their parents don't also take responsibility for their childrens' education.

As for the complaint that the show glamorizes pop culture, that seems to be ignoring the reality that Sesame Street itself is pop culture, for better or for worse, and for people who don't like that aspect of the show, there are other choices for their childrens' edu-tainment (see, I combined the words education and entertainment. Wow).

Or, in other words, if you don't like oranges, then don't buy oranges. There are plenty of other things you may like instead, but don't criticize the orange for being an orange just because you don't like oranges, or expect the orange to be enough to provide for all your nutritional needs, and criticize it when it doesn't. Like the orange cannot really be more than an orange, sesame street cannot be more than a television show. It can't do anything except show what options are out there, and then the parents and children have to take the next step and learn on their own, which the only way anybody really learns much of anything, at least in my experience.

This talk post has been brought to you by the letter Mu and the number Googolplex.

--Hrodulf 17:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't have time to comment much now, so this is a quick note: On this wiki, when there's a new heading, we put it at the top of the page, so people can see the new stuff as soon as they come to the page. Just an FYI. -- Danny (talk ) 17:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, thanks for the tip.
 * --Hrodulf 17:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I was able to get one book from the library, but havn't read it yet. --Hrodulf 19:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I skimmed the book I do have and it seems to be more about technique than biographical; I'll report what I find anyway, probably some useful information in there. --Hrodulf 15:36, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Welcome!
Hi, welcome to Muppet Wiki! My name's Danny, I'm one of the admins here. If you let us know your name, we'll put you on the Community portal.

I'm glad to read that you're interested in the connections between Henson's work and the larger culture. I think that would be a very interesting line of thought to pursue, and it's not something that we have a lot of yet.

One tip to help you get started -- to sign your talk page posts, add ~ at the end. That automatically adds a signature and date stamp.

There's more tips on the Muppet Wiki FAQ page. Let me know if there's anything I can help you with! -- Danny (talk ) 17:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm mostly active on uncyclopedia, but I'm into the muppets also, so I'm glad I finally got around to registering here. When you look at Jim Henson's unbelievably creative body of work, I think if you look at the context of the times he was working in, what was going on in the culture, you can get a special kind of insight into what he was thinking when he made certain decisions, perhaps see the work more through his eyes, to the extent possible, of course.  It would be best to use direct sources rather than speculation, naturally.


 * I think an important insight was provided by Carroll Spinney's book "The Wisdom of Big Bird" in that Jim Henson, according to Spinney, was not sentimental about his creations, and saw them mainly as tools to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish. So the question becomes what exactly was he trying to communicate to us, and was he responding to anything in particular?  These questions could lead to a deeper understanding of exactly what this remarkably creative person was doing.


 * --Hrodulf 02:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * For example, it suddenly occurs to me there's a strong anti-corporate message behind the Muppet Movie, since the villain is a fast food maven. While the movie is obviously intended as entertainment, there could be some political/social message there as well; the question is was there a specific reason the choice was made to communicate that message at that particular time?  Interesting idea for research.


 * And who came up with the whole custom of having sesame street be 'sponsored' by numbers and letters? That could possibly be a bit of an anti-corporation dig as well . . . --Hrodulf 02:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi, Rudolf! Well, as for the letters, Gerald S. Lesser's book Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street, and from most accounts, the letter sponsorship thing was not an anti-corporate dig per se, but was due to the fact that the animated letter and number segments were intended to be flashy, catchy, and convey a message through repetition (in the early days, sometimes twice in the same show) much like advertisements, and the in-house term for them was "commercials." As for the other issue, though we generally avoid undue personal interpretation in articles like The Muppet Movie, we occasionally have fun in conceptual pieces, so see Communism and Capitalism for some thoughts in that vein. -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 02:29, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Discerning the intent of the artist is usually a difficult task in most situations, some people, like Stanley Kubrick, for example, were deliberately obscure about their message and motivations, preferring to let the viewer decide for themselves what the meaning was. Obviously going off on a tangent and analyzing things a certain way that might not be supported by any clear sources wouldn't be that useful.  I think it is fascinating to consider what it was about the way in which Jim Henson used his creations that made them so intriguing and interesting; even if not everything can be explained from the sources, it's likely to be an informative study, as long as I can avoid over-doing things on the analysis (such as a 200 page treatise on why Cookie Monster is funny, and the socio-political ramifications . . . which itself actually is a pretty funny idea, but I'm pretty sure would get me banned :D).


 * --Hrodulf 13:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, you won't be able to add this stuff if it's just speculation, but if you can find sources for some of these ideas, then absolutely, please add them in.


 * I can think of a couple books that you might be interesting for you to read, to get some of this information -- for example, who came up with the sponsorship idea.


 * G is for Growing is a collection of articles written by the research team behind Sesame Street, and it includes a lot of the behind-the-scenes info. Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television is a similar research book. Both of these are currently available on Amazon.


 * The Fraggle Rock: Complete First Season DVD set includes a facsimile copy of Henson's notebook where he wrote down his original ideas for "The Woozle World" -- it's a very interesting insight into his creative process.


 * You can also check out Muppets Magic from the Ed Sullivan Show, a DVD collection of Henson's early variety show sketches. Many of them have explicit anti-corporate/anti-greed messages that I think you'd enjoy a lot.


 * So those are some places you could start for your research. I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with! -- Danny (talk ) 02:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the great encouragement; I've written a computer program I call EPiC that enables the user to take notes in various categories of information and organize them under categories, and create categories within other categories, and it occurs to me that I might be able to use the program to digest some of the books you mentioned (I already use the program for my job, and it's been very useful), and I'd  like to give it a crack at this, since I'd theorized it could be used to analyze the  contents of a book, but never attempted this before.


 * I'll stop off at the library and see if I can pick up something that's on topic for this.


 * I also happened to notice that the article on The Muppet Movie said the 'The film was an analogy for Jim Henson's rise to fame.'  If the movie was loosely  auto-biographical (very loosely obviously), it may be possible to relate the movie to broader ideas or thoughts of Jim Henson or his associates.


 * --Hrodulf 13:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)