The Muppet Movie and Pulp Fiction

Lately, I've been catching up on a genre of films my film lexicon is mighty shaky on. Just this week, I've seen Duck Soup and Some Like it Hot for the first time. For years I've loved Topper, The Thin Man, and other boozy comedies, but I've tended to avoid the real screwball comedies. The structure of vaudeville appeals to me in Chaplin's films because it makes his characters likeable - they just keep on trying. At the same time, I'd never really gotten into variety show structure as a favored means of putting on a show.

Seeing these films got me thinking.

People like to credit Quentin Tarantino with making high art out of exploitation films, a genre that grew out of certain production limitations and a certain cultural atmosphere. Rightly so! Pulp Fiction deserves its place of prominence in the history of film, and every one of his movies uses the conventions of the 70's to rattle our notions of what makes movies work.

So why doesn't Jim Henson get the same acclaim? In structure, The Muppet Movie uses the same conventions as the Marx Brothers, Chaplin, and Billy Wilder. Plus, like Tarantino, Henson really goes all-out! He's got musical numbers funnier than anything the Marx Brothers ever did, and more musically eloquent as well. He's got quips that are both hammier and funnier than perhaps anyone but Chaplin himself, and Henson goes way past Chaplin into Marx territory in terms of how hard he's willing to work for a laugh. Sometimes, the joke is actually just how far they're willing to go! It makes the quiet moments all the more potent.

Those quiet moments are what elevate Henson way past the vaudeville traditions he's clearly steeped in. Surely, Chaplin's work has a soul and a sadness that gives it dimension missing from his contemporaries, but he never went as far off the deep end as Henson. Like Tarantino, Henson pushed the boundaries of what screwball comedy is willing to do. Like Tarantino, he used his production methods as a gateway to new frontiers, intensity-wise. Some might say he pushed the boundaries of taste.

Why does he get away with it? Because simultaneous to doing so, he allows his characters to show a heightened sense of human beauty. During Duck Soup or Some Like it Hot, I never felt like crying. Coming and going, The Muppet Movie gets me every time. Who doesn't feel something when Kermit sings 'Rainbow Connection' on his lilypad, dreaming of greater things and a new life? Who doesn't feel something when he gets to make his movie, and share it with his friends? Henson hits emotional notes that feel more true than Chaplin, and he nails comic moments bigger than Harpo Marx dared to dream of. Sure, Henson has an innocence that Tarantino gleefully eschews, but maybe they're not so different.

Maybe it's time we formally recognize Jim Henson's contributions to film and television.