One Million Moms after ABC's "The Muppets"

Muppy

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I find this stupid as well. The thing that irks me the most is that they made up lies that the new show is all about sex and drugs. IT ISN'T NOW AND IT WILL NEVER BE!
 

atrane

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Bunch of overreactive headline seeking "snarkers" in my opinion. Follows suit with how that group operates in my opinion
 

D'Snowth

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My concern is that while the Muppets always had a level of adult humor to many of their shows and movies is that with this show, the adult humor will be less subtle and sophisticated as its been in the past and more forced and overdone in an attempt to appeal to audiences, since almost all shows today are about sex and drugs, as this is show is apparently accused of being about.

But, let me (mis)quote the article for a minute:
1MM suspects there are going to be a lot of shocked moms and dads when they discover that the family-friendly Muppets of the 1970s are no more. It appears that no subject is off limits. ABC’s new Muppet Show, airing on Tuesday evenings at 8:00 pm ET/7:00 pm CT, is not what Jim Henson imagined and created. The mature version of “The Muppets” will cover a range of topics from sex to drugs.
I guess 1MM is unaware that Jim Henson titled, marketed, and aired the original TMS pilot as SEX AND VIOLENCE in an attempt to prove that Muppets aren't just for kids.
 

Iscah

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I know everyone loves to bring up the title "Sex and Violence" to prove that the Muppets were always some degree of not-kid-friendly, but was it actually meant that way? Yes, it's what is written on the screen, but what they say is "the end of Sex And Violence on television" (and then destroy the words). So it's ambiguous intent, at least. Or just a visual pun that happened to be in the right place to pass for a title card.

I also wonder if it was a reference to some kind of issue going on at the time? I read somewhere that it was a suggested title for Monty Python's Flying Circus too?

Has anything ever been said about it in interviews?
 

dwayne1115

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In his biography there is more detail about Sex & Violence and Jim's vision for that show. From the beginning Jim knew that he wanted that title for the show. Through the writing and production of the show many changes had to be made but the one thing that would stay the same was the title. There where several different reasons Jim wanted that title,but to me his main reason was to prove to everyone that puppets on TV where not just for kids, but for adults to.

In the late 60's and early 70's Jim was very frustrated with the fact that TV network big wigs would tell him that puppets do not belong in prime time, and that they were just for kids. After production Jim showed the show to his 10 year old daughter who at the end asked "where is the sex?" So yes Sex & violence was Jim's way of separating or trying to separate the Muppets from Sesame and the mentality that puppets on TV where just for kids.
 

Drtooth

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Like I said in another thread, don't sweat this. One Million Moms (an organization that has neither of those things) is just a theocratic hate group that attacks anything with the whiff of a gay character because JEEZAWWZ and BAH-BUHL! These are the same nuts that went after Archie for adding Keven Keeler. As in a famously puritanical and square comic book company that's so darn bent on keeping it's clean, pure image, it gets humorlessly (but humorously) litigious about its image was more accepting of gays than a bunch of not Moms playing the "mother" card. As in, created a gay character before they deemed KISS inoffensive enough to cross over (though to be fair, that's probably just when Gene started really wanting money and licensing the snot out of his band's images, so...).

Regardless of whatever political standing or religious views you have, the truth of the matter is, any relatively tiny but vocal group that wants sweeping censorship for whatever agenda, be it laziness, finger wagging, or something more sinister, sucks. I hate parental groups be they far right, far left, or just freaking lazy parents that want the government to do their job. You know how I usually have a bug up my butt about 1970's cartoons? ACT. And they had the purist of motives. But road to heck being paved with good intentions and all that... they're the reason the Superfriends couldn't punch out Lex Luthor, and had to wait until 1978 to even get the privilege of having Lex Luthor in there. Heck. Seduction of the Innocent. We all should know what that was, and it was based on insane troll logic and lazy poor correlation. Commercial Free Childhood is one of the reasons kids get the privilege of waking up to pet care and healthy cooking shows on Saturday mornings. I mean, that movement's main beef was that Spongebob was on cereal boxes and therefore "brainwashing" kids to want things. Or as I like to call it,freaking how Capitalism works, you freaking lazy, entitled parents.

But A Handful of Crazy Religious Leaders and barely a Thousand Crazy Guys on Facebook One Million Moms and the like are a special kind of awful. These are the same Ultrafundies that went after Harry Potter for being about witches which are clearly only associated with Satan somehow. They went after Pokemon for unintelligible reasons because it was popular and therefore a good way to scare parents. I mean, even PETA had the "it's cockfighting" paranoia. They don't care about family values, they care about "Family Values." As in code word for unconstitutional religious take over of the country. As in the same thing they have insane conspiracy theories about Muslims doing. They don't want to censor television to protect their kids, they want to censor television to show that they have that amount of power and to make sure they indoctrinate their kids instead of getting any outside views. Because the only way to get rid of this sort of thing is for the younger generation to realize how shallow and pathetic something like it is.

Make no mistake. If you have very deep religious beliefs, they're your beliefs. There are Christians on the right and the left. But values are a personal thing. If a movie, TV program, comic book, or whatever is offensive to your sensibilities, there's things called alternatives. There are religious channels that run nothing but The Waltons. There's also the ever popular ignoring it. That off button on the TV is there for a reason. And further more, I can't trust a supposed Christian organization that spends all it's time and effort scaring its followers about fiction instead of pooling those resources to help the homeless and feed the poor. THAT'S what Christ was talking about.
 

antsamthompson9

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My concern is that while the Muppets always had a level of adult humor to many of their shows and movies is that with this show, the adult humor will be less subtle and sophisticated as its been in the past and more forced and overdone in an attempt to appeal to audiences, since almost all shows today are about sex and drugs, as this is show is apparently accused of being about.

But, let me (mis)quote the article for a minute:

I guess 1MM is unaware that Jim Henson titled, marketed, and aired the original TMS pilot as SEX AND VIOLENCE in an attempt to prove that Muppets aren't just for kids.
Have you seen the presentation pilot? The adult humor is very subtle.
 
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