Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (15 page)

One commercial
cleverly parodies Walt Disney’s
Snow White
. When a housewife asks her
magic mirror who’s the fairest of them all, the spooky mirror extols the
preeminence of Esskay’s refrigerated chicken. There
is a fun, ironic quality to it, almost like it is a spoof of the ad copy
itself. In a sense, Henson was co-opting the sponsor spot and using it as his
own airtime. If given the choice to cede some of your precious five minutes to
a commercial sponsor or to use that time for an extra skit, it’s easy to see
why an artist might
choose
to do promos. If you watch this ad,
you may notice elements of Henson’s signature brand of humor that appear in his
other projects that were more … art for art’s sake. Though it is clearly
work for hire, it is also, in a sense, a mini-show.

It seems only natural, then, that upon seeing
these Esskay promos, other companies would start to ask Henson to have his
puppets spoof their chicken, their coffee, their photocopiers, and so on. A
great commercial advertiser, it seems, was born accidentally.

And to his credit, it is likely Henson
did
exercise judgment about what to promote, because most of the commercials he did
were for wholesome staples of American life. There are ads for coffee: Wilkins
Coffee,
^[16]
Community Coffee, Martinson Coffee, Nash Coffee, La Touraine Coffee, Red
Diamond Coffee
^[17]
;
ads for food: Wilson’s Meats, Claussen’s Bakery,
^[18]
Southern Bread,
^[19]
Taystee Bread,
^[20]
La Choy Chow Mein, General Foods Canada’s Wheels, Flutes and Crowns
^[21]
;
ads for household items: Aurora Bathroom Tissue, Linit Fabric Finish,
^[22]
Pak-Nit fabric
^[23]
;
ads for business machines: IBM,
^[24]
American Photocopy Equipment Company
^[25]
;
and other unassuming items: Canadian Purina Dog Chow,
^[26]
Bufferin,
^[27]
and the Easy-Bake Oven.
^[28]
Besides Chase Manhattan Bank
^[29]
and Getty Oil,
^[30]
the most questionable of Henson’s clients were Frito-Lay’s Munchos
^[31]
and Sprint candy bars
^[32]
—processed
sugary snacks, known even then to be bad for one’s health. At the same time,
Henson himself was rail-thin and had no problem with enjoying soda or rich
desserts.

These ads are wholesome—starching your shirts,
cutting down on paperwork, alleviating a headache, taking out a mortgage, eating
bread. It’s hard to find fault with a man for selling bread to a bread-eating
public. Yet Henson
did
have a problem with commercials.

In the late sixties, he made a parody ad for a
fake product called “Flapsole Sneakers.” If you watch it, you are promised in
sing-song rhyme diapers that “never rot,” and are then encouraged to “buy a
pot” of Cavity Candies. A boy falls off a “Tipsy Toy” and a girl models a
“Boo-boo Band-Aid” with a head gash still red with blood. The end of the
commercial tells the endlessly credulous parent, “friend,” if your kids
already
have
all these products, buy them a mutual fund, “open end.”
^[33]

According to Falk, Henson made “Flapsole
Sneakers” to “play around.”
^[34]
But more than that, the fake ad displays Henson’s obvious disdain for, and
discomfort with, the job he was paid to do. “Flapsole Sneakers” is a parody of
opportunist advertising, of selling unrealistic desires, and its complicit
knowledge that products are not what they seem. At the end, it seems to say,
none of these products will ever be enough, so when you’ve bought them all,
we’ll sell you imaginary financial “products,” which, of course, will make the
fund managers rich.

At its core, advertising is a game of
con-artistry. At its most honest, it tells you where you can throw away your
money on fleeting pleasure. And so, when you make a commercial for someone
else, you are lowering yourself to become a puppet for someone else’s greed.
Ads trick us, making us think they’re our friend, when they’re really working
for someone with interests that conflict with ours—put frankly, they want to
take our money out of our pockets and make us believe we did it in our own best
interest, which, by the laws of capitalism, can’t be true in order for the
company to profit. If you watch “Flapsole Sneakers,” you get a sense that
Henson is critiquing advertising in this manner—showing us that nothing “seen
on TV” is something we really need.

And here is how Henson the artist managed to
survive in the world of commercials for so long. Henson didn’t just parody ads
in this for-fun reel. He parodied ads in every one of his
for-real
commercials. The satirical streak we saw in the Esskay “Mirror, mirror” spot—a
knowingness
shared with the viewer—runs through all of Henson’s ads.

There is a clear element of satire involved in all of
Henson’s commercial work. At a recent Henson exhibit, Karen Falk said:

He was … making fun of Madison Avenue and the way things were sold, and yet he was
very successful at it. He was much loved by the Madison Avenue executives.
Maybe having it come from a puppet character made it O.K.
^[35]

Falk has described this kind of humor as “bit[ing] the hand
that feeds you.”
^[36]
For example, when Henson did a private show for the salesmen of Thom McAn shoe
stores, Rowlf sang, “Thom McAn, we love your credo, but we love the money even
more!” He also did a “customized” version of Stan Freberg’s “Money,”
^[37]
whose original lines were “Give me buckets full of ducats, give me case-os full
of pesos … money money money money money.” Falk puts it best: “Typically,
Jim was making fun of the capitalistic ambitions of the people that hired him.”
^[38]

In a presentation film Henson made for the sales
team at Wilson’s Meats, the mouthy character Skip greets the audience, “Hi
there, all you lovers of hot dogs and money!”
^[39]
In another, he says, “Hi there, all you hot-shot Wilson’s Meat sales-type
people!”
^[40]
They then go on to parody everything involving advertising. When doing customer
“research,” Frank Oz knocks over a customer’s vase, candles, and books, until
she chases him out of her house. One of the commercials they audience-test is
described as using “a lot of filmic gimmickry,” such as a shot of a hot dog
thrown bowling-style at a stack of hot dogs. It has the same absurdist feel as
a Terry Gilliam animation. Another “test” commercial is full of glasses-wearing
lab coats using a machine labeled “smokeometer.” The product doesn’t look
appealing and neither do the advertisers. The message underlying all these
skits is that advertising is not a very helpful profession.

How did Henson get away with insulting his
client, Wilson’s Meats, and his partner, the Campbell Mithun ad firm? In these
films, he showed them their
worst
selves—money-hungry, thoughtless to their
customers, trying every stupid method of brainwashing there is. And yet, Wilson’s
Meats
liked
this film. They must have, because they contracted Henson to
do a second round of commercials and another presentation film. In order for
Henson to get more work out of them, he showed them just how recklessly he was
spending their money—on silly skits and pranks. It’s a pretty
crazy
strategy, actually. But it worked. Why?

Perhaps there is something, as Falk suggested,
about puppets that makes it okay. Kermit, Henson once said, “can say things I hold back.”
^[41]
If a puppet insults you,
you might be hurt, but you likely feel foolish for being angry at a puppet.
Puppets are play things, so the insult is perhaps a play-insult. Perhaps it is
all part of a game. Even so, the puppet has got your attention—has got you to
engage with it. And for
some
reason, when working with puppets, negative
emotions seem to be converted into play—into laughter.

Henson’s strategy seemed to imply that people
value laughter more than basically anything else—more, we see here, than their
own pride. As a pitch reel, the film has done its job. The Wilson’s Meats
parody shows the client that Muppets can produce laughs. It shows them by
making
the client
laugh. If Henson can make the client laugh, they know
he can make their audiences laugh. Even as the presentation parodies the very
idea of advertising, it is literally a demonstration of Henson’s skill with
engaging the viewer.

Henson’s parody also worked in television ads.
The over-the-top violent Wilkins coffee spots mock the very notion that ads can
compel loyalty. A cowboy puppet shoots a prop gun at the character who doesn’t
drink Wilkins, then turns the gun on the viewer and says, “Now what do
you
think of Wilkins coffee?”
^[42]
What exactly goes through a viewer’s mind?
I should buy that coffee?
More
likely something like,
Things I hear on TV can’t really control me.
If
it is true that people become immune to violence over time, perhaps these ads—by
upping the ante to the point of ridiculousness—produce an immunity to the
message of advertisers.

Henson even used this underlying message of
skepticism in a commercial for his own line of Kermit toys in 1966. The puppet
Kermits and Rowlfs sang in unison:

Oh buy us, oh buy us, oh buy us we beg

And if you don’t buy us, we’ll bite you in the leg.

Buy us at once, we’re a bundle of charms

And if you don’t buy us, we’ll break both your arms.
[43]

The ad essentially calls attention to the empty threats and
promises ads wield. There is no real power behind their persuasion. His ads
seem to teach young viewers the magic words of
Labyrinth
’s protagonist,
“You have no power over me.”

The ad for these trash-talking Kermits is
transparently
capitalist, and because of that transparency, not really very capitalist at
all. In this way, Henson’s ads functioned more like public service spots,
alerting the viewer to the motives and tricks of Madison Avenue. It was
education, teaching anti-ad-literacy.

Henson occupied a
complex position in the 1960s—one of being a successful advertiser while at the
same time a very
skeptical
critic of the industry. We can see why Henson
would give up ads in 1969, and yet, ironically, ads led him to the nonprofit
stage of his career,
Sesame Street
.

AD VS. ART
AD
AS
ART

It is easy to see how the Esskay promos attracted the
attention of Chicago ad agencies. If Henson could get laughs for Esskay, why
not get Henson to do it for them? The same thing happened when the creators of
Sesame
Street
saw Henson’s ads. They realized that if he could make bathroom
tissue irresistibly entertaining, he could probably do the same for the
alphabet. In a strange way, Henson’s “compromise” second job led to his first
big chance to use art to change the world.

In
The Tipping Point
, Malcolm Gladwell explains
that
Sesame Street
’s creators wanted to use the power of jingles to
teach:

Part of the appeal of Jim Henson and the Muppets to
the show’s creators, in fact, was that in the 1960s, Henson had been running a
highly successful advertising shop. Many of the most famous Muppets were
created for ad campaigns: Big Bird is really a variation of a seven foot dragon
created by Henson for La Choy commercials; Cookie Monster was a pitchman for
Frito Lay; Grover was used in promotional films for IBM.
^[44]

Henson did retool his commercial characters in
service of education, yet it would be quite wrong to think of Henson as an
advertiser-
turned
-artist. He didn’t get his start doing ads. He got his
start doing puppets, and that just so happened to lead him into ads
and
education,
not because he chose those worlds, but because they chose
him
. It’s
important to remember, Henson’s mission—art—preceded both these pursuits.

It would be wrong to picture Henson as a “Mad Man”
from Chicago or Madison Avenue. He was not
of
that world—he merely
engaged with it. The language from Karen Falk’s
Red Book
makes it clear that
Henson was never an
employee
of an ad agency. He would go to Chicago to
work on ads for a day’s shoot
^[45]
because of “relationships”
^[46]
with agencies, which he made ads “through.”
^[47]
Agencies like Campbell Mithun and companies like La Choy were both equally his
“clients.”
^[48]
He had “contracts” with these agencies, but in at least one case, he bought
that contract and produced commercials without the agency.
^[49]
With his band of puppeteers simultaneously doing bits on
The Jimmy Dean Show
and dreaming up various pilots and projects, Henson was always a kind of
outsider, having only one foot, so to speak, in the cesspool.

Jim Henson’s company, called Muppets
Incorporated at the time,
^[50]
was not a subsidiary of any advertising company. It was both its own
advertising company
and
its own production company. Because of that,
Henson wanted much more than a typical advertiser wants.

One Muppets writer, Joseph Bailey,
was
a
self-proclaimed Mad Man at one time. His memoir shows a picture of him clean
shaven in a slick sixties suit and. “I’ll admit it,” he writes, “Being a Mad
Man on Madison Avenue in the 1960s was fun.… Advertising was challenging,
creative, glamorous, sexy and lucrative.”
^[51]
Later, when he joined the Muppets in the 1970s, he looked very different—in a
photo taken at the time, he sports a dark turtleneck and a hippy beard
indistinguishable from the rest of his long hair.

In contrast, Henson never donned this glamour or
anything like a sexy image. We can see him in the presentation film for
Wilson’s Meats, acting in a behind-the-scenes recreation of the commercials. In
it, Henson’s team appears as fun-loving, zany man-children, and the employees
of advertising agency Campbell Mithun appear as buttoned-down suits, almost
like parents. Campbell Mithun staff all seem to wear the same suit and haircut.
Each Muppets Incorporated member wears a different outfit—white shirt, suit,
work jacket. Jerry Nelson wears paisley with sunglasses. Henson sports a beard,
and his hair is overgrown on top. Jerry Juhl displays the affectation of a smoking
pipe.
^[52]

What made Henson different from the Mad Men was
that Henson’s enthusiasm in his ads came from an honest belief that he had
something to offer viewers. And what he had to offer wasn’t bread or coffee or
gasoline at all. It was his art. Henson pitched his commercials the same way a
playwright would pitch his play to a theater—giving it
everything
to get
to make his art.

By the time Henson started college, he already
had an innate sense of commerce. At the University of Maryland, he ran a “poster
business.”
^[53]
Making illustrated bills for plays and concerts, Henson used advertising quite
well:

POSTERS

Silk screen process

for information

•
call Jim Henson WA 7-0351.

•
Inquire at S.U. cigar counter.
^[54]

2 colors, 30 posters: $25

3 colors, 50 posters: $35
^[55]

It’s a classic up-sell. Who wouldn’t go for the option with
more quality and quantity for less money? We can see here that Henson was already
thinking like a salesman. He was also thinking like a sign-maker. His posters
display the design abilities he promises—lettering that is slick, yet has a
personality, an abstract three-tone print of a jazz band, described as
“reminiscent of a famous Picasso painting” by Finch.
^[56]
The poster itself is pretty nice. That is because a person who makes art and
also
sells art thinks in a very
uncommon
way.

Henson’s “second job” did more than pay the
bills. If you want to go from being an artist with a day job to being an artist
whose work pays for itself, exposure is the key. With enough exposure, an
artist can
find
his market, or perhaps
create
it. Henson’s
commercials were, in a sense, a lot of free exposure. Shifting the lens a bit,
they were an ad for his own work. Every time Henson displayed his puppetry,
whether it was for love or money—no matter whom the ad was technically
for
—it
became an ad for Jim Henson’s Muppets. His distinct look—a look of quality—was
one that people began to crave more than sugary soda.

There is a simple joy in humanity that runs
through all Henson’s projects. The knowing
positivity
of Henson’s
Muppets is just as strong in the ads as it is in
The Muppet Movie
. I
would not go so far as to say that the ads themselves are what one would call
“art” proper. Yet they certainly grew out of art.

We can think of it like this: In
The Muppet
Movie
, Kermit becomes an advertiser by accident and definitely by
necessity. At the El Sleezo Cafe, Kermit and Fozzie are trapped onstage and
told to dance at gunpoint for the crowd of drunks. Doc Hopper’s underling sees his
performance and recognizes its money-making potential. If Kermit can console a
barroom full of thugs with his frog legs, he can surely hypnotize viewers into
buying a carton of frogs’ legs, deep-fried. Like Kermit, Henson had to do ads
for
Sam and Friends
, and the Doc Hoppers of the world begged him to
dance for them.

Kermit loved to dance and sing for the joy of it.
The agent, fast-food magnate, and Hollywood producer each see dollar signs in
Kermit’s work, and while he does work for some of them, his dance and song,
like Henson’s puppetry, has its own
raison d’etre
. More than the usual
con-artistry of commercials, there is art
in
the ads.