Recently, I came across some news which brought me right
back to my earliest television memories. Back to a time,
before we had multi-channel television, when I would spend minutes, which seemed
like hours, watching television test cards, waiting for television to start
broadcasting for the day. Children’s television programmes were the domain of
the early morning and early afternoon. Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock was one of my
favourite. Produced for Canadian Broadcaster, CBC, this show was screened
across the world from 1983 onwards. Now, it is reported to be making a come-back
in the guise of a film. According to The Hollywood Reporter, writers have been appointed to
produce a script, and Jim Henson Co. and the Montecito Picture Co. will
produce. This got me thinking about why I loved this programme, and what
message it broadcast to the docile minds of the children of the 1980's. This
post will consider how the world in which the creatures of Fraggle Rock live can
be seen as a metaphor for the reality in which we live.
Fraggle Rock Intro (From Retrojunk.com)
Fraggle Rock featured creatures called Fraggles, who lived
in a cave. They spent very little of their time working, enjoying a mostly
playful existence. This is most clearly expressed in the theme tune, where we are encouraged to:
Dance your cares away
Worries for another day
Let the music play,
Down in Fraggle Rock
Also living in the cave were the Doozers. In contrast to the
leisurely life of the Fraggles, the Doozers live to work. Doozers spend their
time feverishly constructing all manner of scaffolding throughout Fraggle Rock
using miniature building machinery. They can be seen beavering away in the
background, wearing their hard hats and work-boots. It is not clear to anybody
why they work so earnestly building these constructions. They appear to be
driven by their own innate belief system. This belief system even produced
"the legend of the Doozer who doesn't", which Doozer parents tell
their kids to extol the virtues of work. The world, in which these two types of
creatures live, is a fully enclosed environment. The Fraggles eat the fruits of
the Doozer labour. In a sense the Doozers are the Proletariat of this society;
the working class. The Fraggles live to have fun, literally eating the
scaffolding produced by the Doozers. It is a fully enclosed capitalist system
where the bourgeoisie Fraggles live off the fruits of Doozer labour. However,
this is not the area I wish to explore. It is the area beyond the cave, or the
reality they live in, which I wish to explore.
The mouth of cave opens to a mouse hole in a
tinker's shop (or a lighthouse, if you saw the UK version). Beyond the entrance
to the cave live another type of creature called the Gorgs. There are only
three of these creatures; a mother, a father, and their son. These three
creatures are so enormous that they believe themselves to be the only sentient
beings in the Universe. Throughout the series they believe that they are the
Universe's supreme rulers and give themselves the titles of King, Queen and
Prince. When they do encounter the Fraggles, the Grogs, see them as vermin and
a nuisance. They are viewed as inferior creatures. However, this is not the
limit of the world of Fraggle Rock. Beyond the Grogs, is the realm that is
referred to as ‘outer-space’. This is the land beyond the tinker’s yard, or the
lighthouse. This is the land of the 'silly creatures', or human beings as we
call ourselves.
One Fraggle, Uncle Travelling Matt, wanders through
outer-space, sending postcards to his nephew Gogo, back in Fraggle Rock. He is
the only Fraggle we meet who has travelled to the strange human world. This is
where we find one of the key ways in which Fraggle Rock can help us to
understand the world we live in. There is an element of Plato's Allegory of the
cave in the journey undertaken by Travelling Matt. The video on the left shows
us how he reacts to ‘outer-space’. Dressed as an explorer or 19th century
Anthropologist, Uncle Matt succeeds in doing what sociologist C. Wright Mills proposes
as being central to sociological investigation; by seeing the familiar strange.
In this video he describes how the "ground fell away" after boarding
a mysterious large shiny creature, along with the Silly Creatures. In
this journey, Travelling Matt claims to have discovered that the universe has “more
layers than an onion”.
The human world is silly to Travelling Matt. Each
video postcard captures an everyday aspect of human life and recasts it in the unfamiliar
eye of a Fraggle. Travelling Matt claims to never know what the ‘Silly Creatures’
will do next. He sees the world with innocent eyes. Each experience is new to
him and his attempts to relay them back to the inhabitants of Fraggle Rock are
humorous. But how does this fit in with Plato's allegory of the cave? The
journey which Travelling Matt takes is similar to the journey taken by one of
the prisoners in Plato's cave. The video below, is narrated by Orson Wells, and
provides an animated explanation of this allegory.
Plato's Cave (1973)
Produced by Nick Bosustow & C.B. Wismar
The basis of Plato's allegory is that four prisoners
are trapped in a cave, with their bodies shackled to the ground and their heads
restricted so that they can only face forward and see what is directly in front
of them. On a ledge behind the prisoners, is a fire, which lights the cave. In
front of this fire there are people who hide behind a screen and use puppets to
cast shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. The shadows on the wall are
the only reality that the prisoners can ever see. This is the reality that they
believe they live in. In time, one of the prisoners is released. He is shown
the fire, and the puppets which cast shadows on the wall. He is then brought to
the mouth of the cave, where he is shown the outside world for the first time.
The initial shock is eventually overcome, when he learns to deal with the
reality of the outside world. He learns to classify, name, and rationalise the
reality outside the cave. He learns of the role that the Sun plays in the
outside world and in effect, he becomes enlightened. In time, he is taken back
to the cave, where the remaining three prisoners lay staring at the shadows on
the wall. He tries to explain the reality outside the cave, but he is laughed
at. The only reality that they will accept is that which is right in front of
them, in shadows on the wall. He cannot describe what he has seen without being
laughed at or dismissed.
The video above concludes by summing up Plato's
message as follows: "It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend
to learning and to see the good, but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners
and share their troubles and their honours whether they are worth having or
not, and this they must do even with the prospect of death." This
description captures the essence of modern life, and our quest to understand the
world around us. However, finding our way out of the confines of Plato's cave
is a constant challenge in contemporary consumer society. The inhabitants of Fraggle Rock were insulated
from the outside world, in their enclosed capitalist world. An element of class
conflict does emerge in one episode when the Fraggles refuse to eat the Doozers
constructions anymore. The Doozers down tools and it is only resolved when the
Fraggles begin eating their constructions again. However, the world of Fraggle Rock is mainly
peaceful and absent of conflict. How does this compare to the world we live in?
We live in the cave of consumer society. It is a
cave illuminated with lifestyle images, and branding. Consumerism has adapted in
the late 20th century and early 21st century to create an ever more immersive
world of consumerism. We are sold the belief that we can buy a better life, and
be a better person through consumerism. In spite of this, many people attempt to make the
journey to the mouth of the cave of consumer society, such as environmental
groups, or anti-globalisation groups, but they are still regarded as outsiders.
They do not fit in with the honours we bestow on ourselves for understanding
the shadows on the wall. The rich and successful are revered and their
lifestyles aspired to. This brings us back to the Doozers. On reflection, it can
be said that they play a similar role in the creation of the reality of Fraggle
Rock, as the people who held the puppets in front of the flame in Plato's cave.
They are the creatures who construct the reality which the Fraggles live in.
Who constructs the reality we live in? I propose that it is the marketing
departments of global brands, the developers who build ever more immersive
shopping spaces, and the managers of the shopping malls who keep the dreamworld
of consumer reality alive. They keep the flame burning, stoking the flames of pseudo-enlightenment,
and making sure the Doozers, the Puppeteers, or the Store Assistants keep the
dreamworld alive.
To conclude, Fraggle Rock, is a mirror we can
hold up to ourselves, to understand the reality in which we ‘silly creatures’
live. It portrays the importance of enlightenment, through references to Plato’s
cave. Knowledge must be sought out and disseminated to all. You cannot remain
sitting on the floor of the cave watching the shadows on the wall, while you
know that there is a world outside waiting to be discovered. The character of Traveling Matt embraces this idea in Fraggle Rock. He leaves the rest of his Fraggle friends to "dance their cares away" as he ventures into 'outer-space'. In this vein, we
cannot sit back and accept that the dreamworld of consumer society is the only
way to spend our time outside the home.
The spaces of the consumer dreamworld are
private spaces, such as shopping malls, or semi-private shopping streets in a
city centre. Increasingly, we are spending more and more of time in these types
of spaces. It is easy to "dance our cares away" in spaces such as a shopping mall. The "cares" and "worries" of urban life are removed, such as homelessness, begging, and drug abuse. The shopping mall gives the
illusion of being public space, yet it is heavily regulated shopping cave. This is why urban
planning needs to focus attention on the public spaces of downtown. They need
to be strenghened to retain a public urban reality which is not just based on
shopping. Our downtown areas need to be places where people come to be urban; to mix
with others, and experience the essence of city life. Otherwise we will
retreat further and further into the cave, relying on marketers and brand
managers to curate and dictate the reality we live in while "we dance our cares away!"
