ABSTRACT
Analysis of the music of Bagpuss and The Muppet Show reveals how weighty and sophisticated themes can form the core aesthetic of music-based children’s media. Analysis of the songs and music highlights the tensions raised in the simultaneous targeting of both child and adult through the use of the ‘dual’ and ‘double’ address. Both Bagpuss and The Muppet Show challenge protectionist constructions of childhood and critique ‘the family’ as an idealised unit. While the characters in the two programmes live and work together, both programmes subvert the moral, ideological, political and religious constructs of the post-industrial nuclear family that perpetuates it as white, middle-class, heterosexual and Christian. The Muppet Show’s abundant inclusion of the songs of British music hall and Bagpuss’ use of centuries-old British and Celtic folk melodies helped construct the socialised mixed-age domestic viewing environment in which the child could process the themes of violence, isolation, prostitution and sexuality raised by the music in the programmes. I argue that the child’s understanding of these issues is fostered by the sense of unreality created by animation, the racially ambiguous gender- and age-defying puppets, the use of humour, the adoption of on-screen personae, the ironic use of music and the domesticated viewing patterns fostered by 1970s televisual technology.
