I know I've been gone a bit too long, but that's just the way of the typical Long Winter Blues. I sort of expected it, though I hoped different. A lot of people around here have had health issues and the snowplow is not cleaning the roads properly. So it hasn't been all fun and games for early 2023. Welcome to late winter, I suppose! Here's hoping things start looking up as we move through the second month of the year.
Regardless of all that nonsense, this weekend I wanted to share this documentary series on Jim Henson I found from Defunctland with you. It really goes to show you how much things changed in the modern world, even over the lifetime of a single person. Henson's creations certainly outlived him like he wanted them too, though not due to the quality being carried on in his stead (His head writer, Jerry Juhl, died in 2005, and the last thing he wrote was 1999's Muppets In Space, before Disney consumed the Muppets whole) but because his work was just that original and full of quality that it has withstood the test of time. You can watch the first episode of the documentary above. Be warned, it's six parts long and quite long!
All that aid, if you are into art or an artist yourself, it is a must watch. Creativity is so terribly undervalued these days.
For around 35 years or so, Jim Henson worked as a creator and writer in the early days of Golden Age TV up to the beginnings of the decline of popular culture itself in 1990 when he died. He was there in the early days of the industry, contributed to its rise, and died just as it was beginning to head down the slope to destruction into the pit it currently resides. His funeral honestly does feel like the end of an era, one that will not be replicated again.
Though I will say, as I inferred above, that his company's productions still remained quality up until Cultural Ground Zero, like everything else of the time managed. Things didn't just fall apart overnight: it was a long process of decay. Muppets In Space in 1999 wasn't good, and ended up being the final Muppet feature for over a decade, and also the last time they were culturally relevant, like most things from the time were. It's an interesting frame and time of operation, and probably one of the reasons Jim Henson and his creations are still so beloved today even while most other things have been ruined. They come from, and epitomize, a time much better than today, and they are so tightly identified with the man himself and his team.
That doesn't mean it was easy for him to do what he did. It really was not, as the documentary shows. But he did live in a much different era than the one we are stuck in now.
As a member of Generation Y, of course I was engaged in his work. It's hard to meet those who were not on some level. Labyrinth, for instance, is a film that has always stuck with me since I was a kid and saw it on VHS in my grandmother's house. But when it came out it was savaged relentlessly and took much time to gather the appreciation it has now. Now it is known as a classic, unique in what it does. And it is. But then? It was just another production for people spoiled with quality choices in their leisure. As we've said on Cannon Cruisers, it was a time spoiled with choice and you can't throw a rock without hitting an underappreciated classic currently receiving reappraisal in the modern day. There was just too much!
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't still build on what came before or hope for better times ahead of us. Art and creativity doesn't die because the industry made to promote it fails to do so. There will always be something: we just have to find and support it. Nonetheless, enjoy the documentary and I will see you next week! Keep warm.
We've got much more to see and do, and we still have to get out of this crummy winter weather!
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