Jim Henson is dead

Our internet friend Mark links to an article in the Los Angeles Times about how the Disney corporation is trying to bring the Muppet characters back to their former place of greatness (and profitability).

The executive in charge of the Muppets says the studio envisions Kermit and Miss Piggy as "evergreen" characters, akin to Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh. Every division at the company is contributing ideas to the renewal project. Among the proposals under consideration: a mock reality TV series and a Broadway musical à la "The Lion King."

Oh, good. When was the last time you saw a great Mickey Mouse cartoon? Come to think of it, have you ever? As for Winnie the Pooh, well, we already know that Disney's latest highbrow idea is to celebrate the bear of very little brain's anniversary by replacing Christopher Robin.

I think Mark puts his flipper on the flaw when he says

The main problem those characters face is that they will never have another person as creative as Jim Henson guiding their fortunes.

Yeah. I loved the Muppets well into my teens, when they were having Muppet Family Christmases on TV (with and without Emmet Otter or John Denver). I constructed lamebrained fannish theories linking the Star Wars universe with The Dark Crystal and Fraggle Rock.

I was seven years old when The Muppet Movie opened. I'm one of the few (apparently) who saw Labyrinth in the theater and I'm part of the "cult" that loves it now. When an art exhibit featuring the real, honest-to-god Muppets (in glass cases, darn it) toured the US when I was 10, I went to see it in San Francisco.

My mother still has in storage somewhere my McDonaldland Great Muppet Caper drinking glasses. So what I'm saying is, the Muppets and me, we go way back. But with only a couple of exceptions, nothing they have done since Henson's death...

Suddenly I'm thinking of something John Lennon said in one of the last interviews before his death. Trying to draw a distiction between his affection for Paul, Ringo and George and his desire not to be drawn into a Beatles reunion, he said,

"I love them, and it's over."

Jim Henson is dead.