A Warm and Fuzzy Muppet Buyout

The Jim Henson Company, which produces the now famous Muppets, was just acquired by a German firm, along with the rights to use all of the Muppet characters. At first thought it seems somewhat strange that the wild fuzzy creatures of our childhood that were so quintessentially American should be owned by a foreign company. But on reflection it is part of a very worthwhile trend that can help diffuse a valuable American cultural innovation and adapt it to many other parts of the world.

The Muppets are not so much a set of identifiable characters as a concept which can be used and applied to a variety of different contexts. By diffusing the Muppets to other countries, it is possible for those countries to seize on this tool and create better children's programming that can be adapted to their local culture and values, just as the skill of animation can be applied to a wide variety of different projects.

A wonderful example of this is a new television show in Egypt called "Salaam Sesame." It adapts the idea of the American "Sesame Street" into a children's program mixing the use of Muppets and live characters. But it has modified the characters to promote social messages tailored towards contemporary Egypt. Set in a working-class suburb of Cairo, it features a similar assortment of human characters as the U.S. version, but they are altered to represent local types--the green grocer, the civil servant, the craftsman and the local schoolteacher.

For example, "Salaam Sesame" has a female Muppet who excels in her studies, to combat traditional biases against girls trying to do well in school. Similarly, it features other Muppets who represent Egypt's Christian minority, to show children a positive example of toleration and diversity.

Internationalizing the Muppets is an excellent way to promote worthwhile children's programming in other countries by providing the tools to create engaging shows that reflect the values and concerns of other societies. In an age when so American culture floods the movie theaters and television sets of other countries, this is especially worthwhile.

When television programming, and especially children's programming, is imported en masse from overseas, a wonderful opportunity is lost to gently teach the next generation some of the important values of a culture. We may think of the Muppets as a solely American phenomenon, but they are in fact a global treasure--as their purchase by a German company shows.

When other countries build on Western shows to produce their own programs, it allows some of the innovations of the West to be shared with the rest of the world--without the unfortunate loss of regional identity that so often comes when Western popular culture comes to dominate the airwaves.