Holidays Spent with the Muppets — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #164

For Pret­ty Much Pop’s annu­al hol­i­day episode, your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Al Bak­er talk all things Mup­pets, but in par­tic­u­lar the 1992 film The Mup­pet Christ­mas Car­ol, where­in Michael Caine gives us just as strong and seri­ous a Scrooge as you might find. What’s the appeal of this pup­pet act? Is the humor actu­al­ly sup­posed to be good, or post-fun­ny iron­ic? How do Mup­pets change the way we expe­ri­ence music?

Even though Jim Hen­son had died by the time of Christ­mas Car­ol, near­ly all the rest of the cre­ative team from The Mup­pet Movie (1979) was still in place, includ­ing scriptwriter Jer­ry Juhl and song­writer by Paul Williams. Should the prop­er­ty still exist now that a new gen­er­a­tion has large­ly tak­en over, and can it ever recap­ture that old mag­ic? We con­sid­er recent iter­a­tions includ­ing the cur­rent Mup­pet May­hem, the clas­sic movies and var­i­ous revivals, past Christ­mas spe­cials (John Den­ver! Emmet Otter!), pre-Mup­pet-Show iter­a­tions of Hen­son’s act, the Dark Crys­tal and Labyrinth films, the role of humans in Mup­pet media, the ide­ol­o­gy of Dick­ens’ sto­ry, and much more. Which Mup­pet per­son­al­i­ty type are you?

Fol­low us @law_writes, @sarahlynbruck, @ixisnox, @MarkLinsenmayer.

For some more Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life net­work hol­i­day antics, watch Mark and Bil­l’s video chit-chat for Phi­los­o­phy vs. Improv. The ghost of Pret­ty Much Pop Christ­mas past brings you episodes about Xmas songs and hol­i­day view­ing. We also men­tion our Peanuts episode.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop, includ­ing many recent episodes that you haven’t seen on this site. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work. Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.