It's Time to Raise the Curtain

Jim Henson's Fantastic World at the Museum of the Moving Image

           The past generation was raised on The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock. My own was raised on Sesame Street. The characters are instantly recognizable in any form.  Just their parody, Avenue Q, has been running seven years in New York City and won the Tony for Best Musical the year it began.  Their creator has been nominated for Oscars and is the father of the proudest and most famed puppet family ever to exist on the planet Earth.  I think it’s pretty clear we’re talking about someone with a great deal of talent—and power.

           The holder of all this power was, of course, the great Jim Henson, the eccentric puppeteer/graphic designer/writer/director who founded an empire of animation and family-style tradition.  He’s the subject of the newest exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image, Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.  The museum itself is filled with interesting old gadgets from the early days of cinema, but shares space through January with artifacts from Henson’s life, including some of his puppets.  (Miss Piggy in her wedding dress stands, serenely, midway through the exhibit.) It’s thorough and absorbing, but it is a little sparse and not very well organized.  The information is without a doubt fascinating, but it’s hard to follow the exhibit when there isn’t enough information, and when there is, it’s not positioned well.

           But the layout, obviously, is not Jim Henson’s fault, and that’s who you come to see.  Trust me, when it comes to Henson’s work, you will not be disappointed.  The exhibition features the filmmaker’s award-winning short film Time Pieceplaying on a loop, as well as props from many of his original works and some intricately sculpted objects used on the set of The Dark Crystal, Henson’s 1982 work, and Labyrinth, of 1986.  It’s enthralling to wander through the world of this visual genius, to think how he thought, to see what he saw, in the drawings and works of art he left behind.

           What is even more diverting ,is to follow Jim Henson’s trail from the beginning, to see how he got his start.  Henson began in graphic design for the covers of school plays and events, eventually beginning his own graphic arts company and leaving posters around campus.  Soon enough, once Henson was out of college, companies began to contact him (and he began to contact companies) about creating commercials for their products.  He, of course, gravitated to puppets.  He created the La Choy dragon, who cooked beans in “dragon fire” and knocked over an entire supermarket in hopes of selling his product; Wilkins and Wontkins, selling Wilkins coffee as Wilkins blew Wontkins to smithereens over and over for choosing the cheap brand, and even some of what would become Muppets—the Wheel-Stealer, who stole the delicious Wheel cookies, became Cookie Monster.  No matter what he did, Henson managed to parody commercialism in his commercials while still successfully selling products.  (During his reign with Wilkins coffee, the drink became ten times more popular.)

           Jim Henson had always wanted to create some kind of variety show centered around his puppets, and after years of trying, he finally achieved greatness—The Muppet Show, which paved the way for Fraggle Rock and, eventually, Sesame Street.  Henson was asked by one of the show’s creators, Joan Ganz Cooney, to populate her educational “street” with Muppets.  Henson was glad to.  The rest is history.

           The greatest thing about this exhibit is nostalgia.  No one of my age or older could exit without a smile on his or her face.  There’s nothing more fulfilling than looking back for a while.