Ep19 Positive Cinematic Spotlight: The Muppet Christmas Carol - a podcast by Academy for Success

Welcome back, Wolf Pack, to another Positive Cinematic Spotlight! Winter break is right around the corner and I was wondering… what is your favorite Christmas movie? Is it a classic like It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street? Is it an unconventional Christmas movie like Die Hard, Gremlins, or Batman Returns? Maybe a classic TV special like Charlie Brown's Christmas or How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Mine is 1992’s The Muppet Christmas Carol. There are a lot of things going on with this adaptation which cement it as my “must watch” for every Christmas Eve. I grew up watching The Muppet Show on TV and loved it, so there’s a nostalgic pull. As a lover of literature, the adaptation of one of the most adapted Christmas novels ever, written by Charles Dickens, has a place in reasons why I enjoy this movie so much. More than just that, however, is that this adaptation includes the narrator, played by Gonzo playing Charles Dickens himself, and he quotes parts of the original text as the narrator. Then, of course, he gets interrupted by Rizzo the Rat with comedic effect. Also, the film came out in 1992, the year I graduated high school and started college, so it was a time of great change in my life, and that sense of nostalgia was all the stronger for it.

Now, finding positive messages in a Christmas movie is pretty easy as almost all wear their positive themes on their sleeves, unless you go with unconventional Christmas movies. Is there positivity in Gremlins? Absolutely, but you have to chisel past the surface of irresponsibility and comedic horror which spans the majority of the movie. So, when we look at an easy mark like The Muppet Christmas Carol for a positive message, I try and find something kind of hidden. With any adaptation of A Christmas Carol, the story has been seen so much and interpreted so many times it’s hard to find something new. But when I was researching the movie, I discovered something of which I was not aware. I knew this was the first Muppet project after Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, died in 1990. What I didn’t know was that the new voice for Muppet front man, or front frog, Kermit the Frog, Steve Whitmire was nervous about taking over the role made internationally famous by Jim Henson. The night before they were to start shooting the movie, Whitmire had a dream in which he was visited by Jim Henson coming from an all white hotel. Whitmire confessed his anxiety to Henson in his dream and Henson responded in a way which those who knew him were very familiar: “It will pass.”Whitmire was assuaged by the message from Henson and was more at ease when shooting began.

That story struck me as we head to the end of 2020. “It will pass.” This has been a difficult year with viruses, politics, worries about how to handle returning to school in a manner that both considers the needs of students as well as teachers, administrators, and every member of a school district’s staff. But these concerns will pass. We treat midnight, that moment when December 31, 2020 passes the baton to January 1, 2021 as a chance to change, to try things differently. But we also know that it’s an arbitrary moment as we constructed the calendar we use to designate the new year. Before the current Julian calendar, with the Roman calendar there were 10 months and the new year started on March 1. Will all of our concerns from the past year evaporate on January 1? Of course not, but if the date change helps give you a starting point, go for it, and make that change. We have minimal effect, individually, on things like the virus, the direction the government we go in, and addressing all concerns with how the school year should proceed (we don’t have the manpower or money to do all the options to appease everyone.). But we have 100% control over how we respond. What can you do to help yourself handle the stresses of teaching in a pandemic world?

Be sure to reflect on the positives, because 2020 was hard, but there wer

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