24 November, 2011

“Mahna Mahna”: How a ditty from a soft-core Italian movie became the Muppets’ catchiest tune. - Slate Magazine

“Mahna Mahna”: How a ditty from a soft-core Italian movie became the Muppets’ catchiest tune. - Slate Magazine: Mahna Mahna, as the character would come to be known, made his televised debut on Nov. 27, 1969, during Sesame Street’s first season. (The YouTube clip below reads Nov. 30, but the authoritative MuppetWiki says Nov. 27.) The setup is identical to the more familiar Muppet Show version, with Mahna Mahna’s hoarse scat pitted against the dulcet “doo dee doo” of the twin Snouths (a portmanteau of “snout” and “mouth”), who shake their heads and purse their lips in disapproval when their irrepressible colleague strays from the script. In Street Gang, Michael Davis’s history of Sesame Street, several of Henson’s colleagues describe his artistic style as “affectionate anarchy,” and it doesn’t take much in the way of exegesis to see an anti-conformist message at work here.