Muppets Take Stalingrad

"What's actually going on there? Is liberal Hollywood using class warfare to brainwash our kids?" anchor Eric Bolling said of the new Muppets movie.

The Fox Business news anchor posed this question because the main villain of the new Muppets movie is (spoiler alert) an oil tycoon.  An EVIL oil tycoon. And Eric Bolling is taking this as a Marxist conspiracy against the American public.


Except that even children understand that muppets are...well...not real.


Let's be fair.  Yes - the muppets do have a more "left-ist" ideals like tolerance, working together, and friendship. But the plot involves the oil tycoon wanting to tear down the Muppets theater to drill for oil. But then the Muppets try to raise money through hard work to buy back their home.


That sounds like a capitalistic dream of working hard to make money to purchase things to make things right.  The Muppets weren't rounding up humans to work on a communal farm while forcing them to burn Bibles.


But... even if they did - which would be a cool movie  - THEY'RE PUPPETS.


Now I am not naive enough to think that stories like this have no effect on children, in fact the morals of all stories do work to shape our values.  As does basic parenting. This story talks about standing up to unfair practices and someone who is "evil" - which is about the most common theme in all of story-telling.


Eric Bolling however is not saying this because of being really concerned about the movie, however. In fact I would bet he has not watched the movie (and granted I have not either). He heard that the villain was an evil oil tycoon - and he objects to the fact that oil tycoons are vilified and treated as such stock evil characters.


By the way did I mention that this is a MUPPETS MOVIE! 


This is not Russian literature where we can have hundreds of pages to explain each thought. Stock characters are what you use. The evil businessman is a good villain because...well they exist and are easy to identify.  If you believe in the good of capitalism you have to admit to the fact that capitalism also does create winners and losers.  Not everyone wins.  And to the losers, the winners will seem to be villains.  That's just how it works.


What's next?

• Is Sesame Street bad because it teaches tolerance?
• Is Dora the Explorer a threat to English as the official language?
• Are the Teletubbies threatening the sanctity of marriage?
• Is Spongebob Squarepants bad because he doesn't go to church (that I know of)?

Here's the thing. They are stories. They teach tolerance, love, and critical thinking. Just like that guy...oh what was his name...something of Nazareth...I don't recall. Jesus. That was the fellow.

Veggie Tales and the Chronicles of Narnia are "right leaning" religious, Christian allegories. Which is fine.  I don't think, at least I would hope, that no one thinks that these stories should be somehow banned or warned against.  What most liberals realize too is that the Christian ideals in most of these stories are good morals - things like toleration, love, etc. (That's right kids. Jesus was a socialist.)

The end point is that the point of a story is not always what the villain does (oil baron) as much as what they are doing to be the antagonist (holding the Muppet theater for ransom, and being a jerk). 

I think the oil industry is fine.  We want oil.  We like what it does.  The "BP bans" lasted like a week following the Deepwater Horizon accident - and people then went to places like Arco...which are supplied by BP as well. 

Oil executives do not need protection from the Muppets.  Nor do Wall Street executives need protection from the Occupiers. They will continue to make boatloads of money. They will buy influence and power. The only thing that taking shots at the Muppets does is unnecessarily stir up misdirected anger and weaken any other argument you may make.  For if you feel the need to defend your friends from a kids movie with puppets, you probably don't have better arguments in general to make.


Original article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/us-muppets-fox-idUSTRE7B51MS20111206