Catholic and Enjoying It!
The network that feels a burning need to turn Mulan and Sleeping Beauty into lesbian experimenters and social engineers for viewers in need of ideological reformation now turns its instinct for culture war vandalism to the Muppets and destroys another childhood delight:
In one scene, Animal laments his consequence-free promiscuity. In another, Zoot from The Electric Mayhem is outed as an alcoholic. And then, most heartbreakingly of all, there’s Kermit.
This version of Kermit is absolutely unrecognisable from anything that’s ever come before. This Kermit badmouths fellow celebrities, openly discusses his sex life and, at one point, describes his life as “a living hell”. That’s not who Kermit is. Kermit is the perennial wide-eyed optimist, the figure who grounds the chaos around him in sincerity. Kermit is the dreamer who believes in the power of people. He’s the one who sings The Rainbow Connection. He is most definitely not the stress-eating, coffee-drinking executive that The Muppets paints him as. It physically hurts to see what ABC have done to him.
One of the gags in the Muppet Movie reboot a couple of years ago was the corporate exec who thought it would be brilliant to do a “gritty” urban, dark reboot of the Muppets. Now some idiot at ABC has done it. Nobody needs to hear about Kermit’s sex life. Nobody needs complicated divorces and trophy girlfriend menage a trois. Nobody needs cynical Muppets–except a corporate culture that is in bondage–lock, stock, and barrel–to the fundamental spiritual principle “Show me a culture that despises virginity and I will show you a culture that despises children and the things of childhood.”
In not at all unrelated news, Steve Greydanus warns:
Well, the writing was on the wall. Per the Variety review, it looks like Joe Wright’s PAN has “gone full midiclorian” (HT: Sam Adams, via Twitter).
The first trailer turned Peter from a carefree perpetual boy determined to flee responsibility like the plague into a somber Prophesied Chosen One. The second trailer actually gave him Freudian maternal orphan angst. So this latest twist is hardly surprising.
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