The Entertainer, Miss Piggy-style
Some thoughts on our bodies and parenting and why I always feel so clueless.
My seven-year-old daughter and I have slowly been plowing through the Muppet Show catalog. This is the TV I grew up on, so rewatching it with my kid is nostalgic and also eye-opening for how little I understood of the cultural commentary being advanced by these weirdos. Recently, we watched an episode from 1977 starring Milton Berle. Depending on your age, you might remember Berle as Mr. Television, largely responsible for making TVs prevalent across the country (“Texaco Star Theater” was such a hit, entire city industries went dark on Tuesday nights when it aired); maybe you recall him being the disastrous host of SNL who got banned by Lorne Michaels for being a tyrant; maybe he was that dirty old man who harassed Ru Paul, trying to find moral equivalency between Berle’s deployment of drag for the comedic purpose of denigrating women (so funny, Milty!) and Ru’s drag in the name of, among other things, the freedom and joy of the shapeshift. Maybe you know Berle as that guy whose son wrote a tell-all, who had a bitter and public feud with Mickey Rooney, or who stole his colleagues’ jokes without apology. Or maybe he’s just that comedian rumored to have had an enormous penis.
Whatever his legacy, by 1977, his star had fallen. He’d made a few movies. Hosted “Jackpot Bowling,” which is just depressing. Did a little radio. But his tenure as the face of comedy in this country was over.
Enter the Muppet Show to reprise some of Berle’s more famous gags and to play with at least some of the innuendo re: him stealing material. The show opens with a song about how “ugly is in,” followed by a “Pigs in Space” bit that sees Link patronize Piggy in standard fashion. Into this context arrives the centerpiece of the show: Berle speaking the lyrics to Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” as Rowlf plays the piano (apparently there’s actually a word for this, for speaking over music: Sprechgesang). As Berle stares off into the distance—into his memories, I imagine—it all comes off as a wistful sendoff for his heyday spliced with a little muppet fanfare.
In the U.S., the next scene was Fozzie in disguise, trying to hide from Berle, the latter being a comedic genius and Fozzie being…Fozzie. But in England, there was a coda to Berle’s version of “The Entertainer.”
In it, Miss Piggy asks Rowlf to play the song again for her. “For moi,” she says sweetly. And so it begins. Piggy sings the first verse politely, anemically, swapping out “he” and “his” pronouns for “she” and “hers,” and emphasizing the swap as she does. Which seems great. Way to go, Piggy! Women can do anything! Women matter! I love that I’m watching this with my girl.
But then the scene takes a turn. “Put something in it,” she tells Rowlf at the start of the second verse, and so he starts playing with a little grease, a little fat, a little burlesque, it turns out. Piggy starts dancing with some oomph, the backing band comes in with a snare and deep drum, and the laugh track turns to the hoots and howls of army boys at the strip club. “She’s a born ham,” Rowlf says, which is code for: she knows how to sell what she’s got. The dance gets increasingly sexual—“hubba, hubba,” Rowlf says—and next we know, Piggy’s lying supine on the piano keys, shaking her rack while Rowlf toggles between covering his eyes and not being able to look away. She shakes her ass. Grabs her breasts. And ends with a can-can move that leaves her totally disheveled. Meantime, the lyrics: “Yeah, she knows just what she must do, knows how to bring down the house when she’s through, snappy patter and jokes, she knows what pleases the folks, the entertainer the star of the show.”
I have watched this scene at least 20 times this week. As a result, my daughter’s been running around the house, shaking her butt and flaunting her seven year old’s chest. I find myself trying to explain how messed up this scene is without wanting to have to explain why—“what’s a stripper, mommy?”—which begs the question: why do I keep playing the scene for us over and over? Why do I find it so funny and disturbing and funny all over again? I keep thinking: Piggy, surely there’s some lament attached to all of this, right? Like: look what I have to do—what women have to do—to entertain all of you barbarians? But no. She’s fairly pleased with herself. The way, for instance, a lot of exotic dancers feel like they own the discipline—that it allows them to reclaim their bodies and use them, on their terms, for the enjoyment of others. There’s an interesting video series I was watching recently that covers this briefly (scroll down to the bottom, to the last video on the right). I’m not sure I disagree with this point of view, btw. Go be you. Do what makes you happy.
But still, I feel like I need to figure out what to say to my girl about all this. What the right takeaway is. But honestly, I have no idea. Which is why parenting is so freaking hard. And why so many of us mess, it, up. So for now, if you see a seven year old running around Brooklyn entertaining everyone with her butt—yep, that one’s on me.
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Separately, welcome to the first and probably weekly installment of Name Your Shame, in which I list incredibly popular things, people, events, etc. I only just found out about because I am too busy being old and busy to participate in the Culture:
Spotify Wrapped. What is this? It’s a yearly retrospective, it seems, of the best music on Spotify, complete with games and emojis and stuff.
Doja Cat. Nope. More people have watched her video for “Kiss Me More” than live in the United States and yet somehow: never crossed my radar. Does hearing her music in Rite Aid while buying incontinent underwear count?
Mr. Beast. Guy who stages elaborate and expensive stunts on youtube, who also has a brand of candy snacks and a meat thing going. Millions and millions of views.
You’re welcome!