Jim Henson and the Carnivalesque Style
	Laughter fills the air everyday in countries all over the world bringing a feeling of happiness and escape from the world that we are living in today. Television is filled with violence and images of hate that make us turn our head wishing that we were able to transport ourselves to a world of laughter that does not exist. Jim Henson realized that he could bring this “other world” to people through the creation of the Muppets. Jim Henson uses a carnivalesque style that is based on laughter. The Muppets have made us chuckle, giggle, and laugh so hard it hurts. Laughter is the force that gives structure to the carnival and makes it what it is. Laughter allows one to detach themselves from the pressures of the outside world and feel carefree as one did as a small child.  
	There is no doubt that Jim Henson’s creation made us laugh. Jim Henson had the ability to look at the world that he has living in, analyze it, and then portray it in a reverse setting that was humorous, but also had a deeper meaning. Jim Henson used his Muppets to spread a message to the viewing audience. The audience responds to the Muppets on a higher level because the Muppet are asking of nothing in return. People do not want to see pictures of people starving or dying and do not want to have others asking for their money that will be sent to distant foreign countries. The Muppets were able to spread a message just as powerful as the images of sick children, but the Muppets were also targeted to the child viewer, instilling the message at a young age.
Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock is one show that portrays a world that was not imaginable during the time of the show. With the world is turmoil Henson looked to create a show that would spread the world and ideas of peace, but in a humorous way so that it would be easy for many levels of intelligence to understand. The social make up of Fraggle Rock, when examined closely, was a model of life as it is and should be respected as. Jim Henson explained his concept for the world that he was attempting to create as he wrote:
What the show is really about is people getting along with other people, and understanding the delicate balance of the natural world. These are the topic that can be dealt with in a symbolic way, which is what puppets basically do all the time.  
								(The Works 200)
The different groups of characters all have their own destiny and purpose in life, but each group works together, unknowingly, to coexist. Jim Henson used the carnivalesque to show what he thought to be the answer to peace and harmony, it was also a safe way of challenging the world and authority.   
Jim Henson’s Muppet creations have a carnivalesque style that Mikhail Bakhtin describes in Rabalais and His World. Bakhtin states that the “carnival is the people’s second life, organized on the basis of laughter. It is a festive life. Festivity is a peculiar quality of all comic rituals and spectacles” (Bakhtin, 8). The worlds that Jim Henson created were not a mirror of the “real” world that we live in, but have an “other” world where life is full of love, happiness, and harmony. 
The interaction between the Muppets and humans in Jim Henson’s stories inverted the social make-up of the world that we know by portraying the Muppets being the intelligent creatures and the humans being clumsy fools that need the help of the Muppets to get along in the world. This suspension of social hierarchy can be compared to the festa stultorum or the “feast of fools” that took place in the Middle Ages. On this day the people would themselves invert the social hierarchy for one day with the crowning of the most foolish person at the feast. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one story that is placed in the Middle Ages and explores the carnivalesque life that was live. It also has a “feast of fools” where the main character Quasimoto is crowned the fool for best costume, but the costume is actually his real identity.
 Jim Henson took everyday life and put carnival aspects into to make it fun and entertaining. One central idea that is often over looked is the fact that the carnival is trying to bring live in to perspective through a symbolic nature. 
The work that Jim Henson did was very creative and was his silent protest to the things that he felt could make the world a better place. Jim Henson’s Muppets did not reinforce the existing mindset of reality, but challenged the “stable, unchanging, perennial” (Bakhtin 9) world that Bakhtin believed in. Jim Henson was able to show that reality is not always what it seems through his shows with the Muppets. 
Jim Henson took an old craft and used it to express the messages that were important to that time and for times to come. The carnivalesque technique that Jim Henson used allowed for laughter as basis for sending his message. Laughter is a universal emotion that over comes barriers of any race, gender, or heritage. The fact that Jim Henson chose to use the carnivalesque style proves that laughter is the best medicine.