1999

21.3

Hugh H. Davis
A Weirdo, A Rat, and A Humbug:The Literary Qualities of The Muppet Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol has been a popular story since it was first published in 1843. In the years that have followed, its story has been repeated countless times, with the film industry especially fond of telling the tale. Film versions of Ebenezer Scrooge’s redemption have varied from straight attempts to show Victorian England, such as A Christmas Carol (1938) and Scrooge 1951, to modern adaptations, such as An American Christmas Carol (1979) and Bill Murray’s Scrooged (1988), to so-called "alternative" versions, such as the recent western version, Ebenezer (1997), and those with Mr. Magoo and Mickey Mouse. Scrooge has been brought to life in these countless adaptations, played by such notable actors as Reginald Owen, George C. Scott, Alastair Sim, and Patrick Stewart, as well as having been reformatted for other venues (e.g., Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter of It’s a Wonderful Life [1946], or Boris Karloff’s famed Grinch).

Throughout these variations and adaptations, the story has remained very much the same. The basic plot has been maintained in each version, with slight alterations offering variety among the familiar. Throughout all of these versions, however, a viewer struggles to find an expressly literary incarnation of the story. The novella’s charm and compactness have often been lost in the cinematic world of large sets and spectacles. One adaptation does use the original book for its script, however, and that version is, surprisingly, The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992).

The Muppet Christmas Carol (dir. Brian Henson) is at once both an homage to the work it is adapting and a spoof of the genre of literary adaptation in film. With the Great Gonzo playing the author Charles Dickens (yet revealing all along that he is only playing a role), this narrator links the film directly with its literary source, establishing this film’s acknowledged indebtedness to the work. Because Gonzo knows he is an actor playing a literary role, he reminds the viewers throughout that they are watching a movie version of a book.

A Christmas Carol is a peculiar work. Most people know its story as an oral text before they ever might begin to read its written form. As Paul Davis points out, this classic has become a "cluster of phrases, images, and ideas," that call forth memories: Tiny Tim on Bob Cratchit’s shoulder, "God bless us, every one!", and "Bah! Humbug!" (3). The remembered story has become as important and as well known as the Dickens story itself—if not more so.

This continuing popularity is not surprising because Dickens’s work was a success from the very beginning. Davis reveals it was written to pay off debts (7), and its immediate sales suggest that Dickens was successful in this endeavor. Lester Keyser notes that all six thousand copies of its first print sold out in one day (131), and, according to Davis, two thousand copies of the second printing were committed on orders before the publishers could print them (9). The work was immediately converted (without Dickens’s permission, naturally) into stage adaptations. Despite having a "simple" story, Dickens produced a best seller for his age and all ages to follow (11-12).

The story of the old miser finding the spirit of charity through trials and with the help of a child is not unique to this work. For example, that same story pattern is found in George Eliot’s Silas Marner (published in 1861, only 17 years after Dickens’s novella was first published). However, Eliot’s work is not the fixture in society that Dickens’s Carol is. Charles Dickens successfully blended elements of mystery and fantasy to create an institution, which is a part in turn of the institution of Christmas. Countless advertisements, parodies, and allusions have come from it. (There seems to be a rule that every sitcom should feature a take-off on the story.) The myths of A Christmas Carol have become a part of modern folklore, and Paul Davis accurately points out that the multiple film versions help to keep that folklore alive (216).

The Muppet treatment of Dickens’s classic does not appear to have surprised many critics. Jack Garner (of Gannett News) wrote that this "story of redemption and holiday hope couldn’t stand too many more adaptations. However, blending this familiar tale with the wacky and warm Muppets was a great idea." After Disney’s animated adaptation, which Paul Davis, among others, thought to be "too cute" and ineffective a version (218), the Muppets were the next natural popular culture icons to tackle the story; Rita Kempley saw the Muppet retelling as "needless but apparently unavoidable." As The Muppet Christmas Carol is, according to Thompson, the twentieth cinematic edition of Dickens’s story (59), critics did not seem to expect anything in particular to stand out about this version (even granting the novelty of puppet casting). The surprising matter, then, is the closeness with which this film’s script follows the book.

Starring flesh-and-blood Michael Caine as Scrooge and felt-and-foam Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit, this film could easily have become a cartoon of mayhem. Instead, it uses one of the most amazing calls for suspension of disbelief in film history to tell its dramatic tale. The audience is asked to forget that Kermit and Piggy are on the screen and, instead, see Bob and Mrs. Cratchit, as played by two actors. In an interview with David Hutchinson, director Brian Henson relates that the Muppets operate on two levels: "first, they’re the recognizable Muppet characters," and second they are the familiar Dickensian characters (32). Kermit the Frog explained in an interview, reprinted by Danny Horn in "Newsflash," "We’re staying pretty close to the original story, although the original was a book and this is a movie. The only real difference is that I don’t think Dickens knew about all these frogs and pigs that were going to be playing the main parts" (3). The fact that the Muppet character Kermit—a puppet performed by Steve Whitmire—participates in press interviews illustrates the nature of the suspension of disbelief which must occur for the film to succeed. The puppets create a surreal atmosphere initially, but once the movie starts, the audience is captured by the story and accepts Kermit the Frog as a character different from "just" Kermit.

Throughout their history, the Muppets have "played" roles. The Muppet personas exist for skits and appearances, but these personas also portray characters within shows. The Muppets have produced many television specials based on fairy tales—such as Hey Cinderella (1968), The Frog Prince (1971) and Muppet Classic Theatre (1994)—with various members of their puppet menagerie starring in lead roles, as characters different from their typical personas. Live actors appearing in these productions simply act with the Muppets as they would with any other co-stars. A similar illusion is maintained any time the Muppets appear; the fact that the Muppets are puppets is ignored, allowing the puppets to become their characters. The Muppet Christmas Carol takes this illusion to an elaborate degree. Unlike their earlier movies, in which they "played themselves," the Muppets here must play roles in a literary adaptation, as they recreate Dickens on the screen, thus requiring that the puppets fit into the story as seamlessly as possible.

These puppets—or, to borrow Kempley’s phrase, these "hand-held neo-Dickensians"— present their adaptation in a straightforward manner, and soon viewers are absorbed in the tale, noting characters, not Muppets. Roger Ebert notes that, as in the earlier Muppet films, viewers know they are watching puppets but are not "reminded of their limited fields of movement." Instead, "they seem to belong in Victorian London." Perhaps this occurs because of the image of seeming immobility that the popular mind often connects with the Victorian Age. Often, Victorians are popularly portrayed as a stiff population, exercising the utmost restraint of emotion, and this idea may help make the Muppets, who at least seem to be trapped in confined areas, appear to belong in this setting. Regardless, the result is a very natural adaptation. While the film could easily have veered from its source ("The Muppets Do Dickens"), the film is instead a faithful recreation (A Christmas Carol which happens to feature the Muppets).

A good example of this film’s fidelity to its source occurs with its creation of the first ghost. In the entry for Dickens’s novel in The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film, Frank Thompson notes that the Ghost of Christmas Past tends to be problematic for filmmakers, and he points out the many different incarnations this ghost has taken in the different versions (61). The strange figure of the first spirit is described by Dickens as "like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions" (18). Although Thompson dismisses the Muppet version of this character as "a child" (61), this is not entirely the case. The Ghost here is a small child-size figure, with the voice of a young girl, but this is actually the result of recreating Dickens’s description. Filmed in soft focus, the Ghost does appear to have been "diminished to a child’s proportions" and "receded from . . . view," with a face that lacks wrinkles, and the entire character is bathed, as Dickens describes, in "a bright clear jet of light" (18). Brian Henson makes the first of the three spirits a faerie-like entity, ageless and magical, thereby matching the ethereal description from the original prose. This careful construction of a difficult character reveals Henson’s dedication to faithful adaptation.

Ken Johnson noted that the "Muppets stay very close to the original story. They take only a few liberties with the story, like making two Marleys and making Charles Dickens . . . narrate the story." The presence of Dickens as narrator makes this version truly different from any other. Although the Daily Variety reviewer found this narration obtrusive, most critics, including Roger Ebert and Danny Horn, agreed that Gonzo’s role as story-teller added to the film.

With Gonzo as narrator, along with his partner, Rizzo the Rat, the film is given an extra dimension. In "Friends," Danny Horn notes that while Kermit could have been used as both narrator and Cratchit (which would be a familiar use of Kermit), the unstable Gonzo "could actually pretend to be Charles Dickens" (10; Horn’s emphasis). Furthermore, in "Reborn," Horn calls the casting of Gonzo "inspired" (19), allowing the film to be both reverent to the text and irreverent (in a Muppet fashion) to the conventions of storytelling and adaptation.

Following an introduction to London life, that includes such non-Dickensian lines as "Get your boomerang fish!"—or at least this is a line this author has yet to locate in any work by Dickens—the viewer is introduced to the two storytellers. Gonzo welcomes everyone to The Muppet Christmas Carol, saying that he is "here to tell the story. My name is Charles Dickens." Gonzo continually breaks the fourth wall in his role as Dickens, modifying his traditional Muppet role as literal breaker of walls. As Rizzo the Rat introduces himself, Rizzo stops and tells his partner that Gonzo the weirdo cannot be a "a blue, furry Charles Dickens who hangs out with a rat," for "Dickens was a nineteenth century novelist—a genius." Gonzo/Dickens thanks him, saying, "Oh you are too kind," and tells Rizzo that he knows the story "like the back of [his] hand." He then proceeds with that story.

The opening narration is identical to the opening of the book, except that in the movie the line has been altered to read, "The Marleys were dead," rather than "Marley was dead." This change is required because this film has added Jacob Marley’s brother Robert—which makes him Reggae master Bob Marley!—allowing Statler and Waldorf, the older duo from The Muppet Show, to appear as a pair. Aside from this necessary alteration, the book is followed. Scrooge’s first words in both are his trademark, "Bah! Humbug!" There is, however, a later switch from Scrooge’s assertion in Dickens’s novella that those wishing "Merry Christmas" be "boiled with his own pudding" (3-4) to "cooked with their own turkey," possibly because the anticipated American audience for this film would be more familiar with roast turkeys than boiled Christmas puddings.

Each moment of direct narration is a lifting of Dickensian prose straight to the script. Such lines from Dickens as those detailing that Scrooge lived in his deceased partner’s old house (9) are found in both the cinematic and literary versions. Rizzo is astounded that Gonzo can relay such lines in the story as a third person narrator. "How do you know what Scrooge is doing?" he asks, considering that they were outside while Scrooge was not. He is told that "Storytellers are omniscient. I know everything"; Rizzo replies, "Well, hoity-toity, Mr. God-like Smarty Pants!"

Gonzo and Rizzo continually spoof the storytelling conventions. After Dickens tells that "Scrooge was forced to light the lamps" just prior to a light going on, Rizzo asks the audience, "How does he do that?" Earlier, Dickens/Gonzo whispers part of his narration, explaining that it is for "dramatic emphasis." He and Rizzo discuss the scary nature of the spirits, but he decides that the kids in the audience will be all right, for "this is culture." However, the pair decide later that the story is getting too scary for them, and so they leave the audience on their own, telling the folks in the theater that the pair will return "at the finale."

Actions such as these create an intriguing atmosphere for the film. While its narrator (and author) is speaking the exact words of the text, he is also a viewer. He makes fun of the techniques of the story tellers while he performs them. Gonzo and Rizzo both profess curiousity about what will happen next despite the fact that they are the narrators bringing the story to the filmgoers. Because the weird Gonzo plays the role of the genius author in this adaptation (with a rat as his natural sidekick and colleague), this film is simultaneously the most literary of adaptations and the most ridiculous.

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is arguably the most famous fictional Christmas story. The traditions inherent in this story are so well known that they virtually have become a part of the story itself. The Muppet Christmas Carol addresses this seeming paradox—that to be faithful to the original novel is to recognize all that has occurred since—by treating the text both self-reflexively and reverentially. This simultaneous recognition of the novel’s importance as literature and its importance as culture serves to mark the Muppet version of the story as unique. The many adaptations have attempted to tell straight versions of the story which follow the book closely, while the various transformations have attempted to tell the story with a wink and a nod to the conventions that surround the book. This version successfully does both. Brian Henson’s film both recreates Dickens’s world, with language, sets and character designs lifted from the novella’s prose, and playfully toys with the conventions which surround such adaptations, with meta-cinema and cinematic intrusions which remind the audience of the nature of film adaptation.

One especially effective example of such an intrusion is the presence of Gonzo, which helps spoof the genre of adaptation. By presenting the author and acknowledging directly to the audience that this is a movie version of the book, the film eliminates the illusion that the movie occurs in a world separate from the rest of the viewers. While this version more than any other uses the text directly for narration and dialogue, it also presents itself as a movie that understands the audience watching it. The Great Gonzo is the medium between the audience and the story. In this way, this movie fulfills one of the key elements of parody, for the characters understand that they are acting in a movie and telling the story adapted from a book. As the medium and storyteller, Gonzo embodies this parodic quality, and the close retelling of the story strengthens the parody.

At the very end of the motion picture, Rizzo remarks to his companion, "Nice story, Mr. Dickens!" The storyteller then turns to the screen and says, "Thanks. If you like this, you should read the book." All along, they have known that the book is the ultimate source to turn to. As Ebert points out, viewers are reminded by the Muppets of "the story’s artistic importance," which the storytellers privilege throughout. This acknowledgment is both a signal of the parodic, Muppet-style elements of the film—understanding what is happening and still toying with conventions—and a sign of the literary elements of the production.

Critics generally recognize the film’s faithfulness to the original text. Ironically, however, this faithful recreation of Dickens’s work brought complaints from many Muppet fans. Fans found problems with the premise, feeling, as Danny Horn relates in "Reborn," that it kept the Muppets from being "themselves" (19). While the Muppets were praised for getting "back on track" after the deaths of creator/performer Jim Henson and performer Richard Hunt, the overall film concept is called into question. For example, Horn proceeds to praise Jerry Juhl’s portion of the script as witty while finding Dickens’s own contribution to be slow (20). Of course, Juhl is responsible for the entire film’s script, including the Dickensian moments, and yet his Muppet moments can be pronounced as superior, as though they existed in a separable form from the rest of the adaptation. Because a successful mix of Muppet and literature occurs within this film, some Muppet fans were disturbed to find a film which maintained such fidelity to the original text.

Although some Muppet and film fans—including this author— reacted favorably to this production, other die-hard Muppet followers felt the characters were straying too far from their roots (although Hutchinson reveals that the idea for this film was first proposed by Jim Henson before his death [33]). These fans thought The Muppet Christmas Carol was too literary, and they wanted less emphasis on the source and more emphasis on the felt creatures adapting that source. Jim Henson Productions responded to these detractors when the next Muppet film (and fifth overall) was prepared in late 1996. While Muppet Treasure Island draws its basic plot from literature, the Muppet side exhibits greater influence than the literary one; Horn reports in "Production" that the script’s first page proudly proclaims the film was "Very, VERY loosely based on the novel by R.L. Stevenson" (3). When The Muppet Show with guest star Brooke Shields presented Alice in Wonderland, Statler asked Waldorf in the final seconds of the show, "What’s that whirring noise?" Waldorf replied, "It must be Lewis Carroll turning over in his grave." The Muppet treatment of Treasure Island might have produced a similar response from Stevenson. Obviously, the Muppets’ experiments in adaptation shifted focus greatly between the two films; while Island mocks its source soundly, Carol follows its source carefully.

By presenting the character of Charles Dickens as the storyteller, and by understanding the nature of the adaptation, the Muppets produce a successful "literary" work with The Muppet Christmas Carol. This version successfully uses its literary source and takes the phrases of Charles Dickens directly to the screen. At the same time, the film unconventionally includes the author in the scenes, and it makes fun of conventional story-telling methods. The Muppet Christmas Carol may be the same basic story as other adaptations, but it uniquely is a presentation of the literature behind the story.

Hugh H. Davis
Department of English
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-5401

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—. "Old Friends Who’ve Just Met: The True History of Gonzo the Great and Rizzo the Rat." MuppetZine 11 (Winter 1995):6-11.

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