Miss Piggy – “The Starlet”

Miss Piggy is a main character on The Muppet Show. She’s intriguing in that she is a pig that carries all the traits of a Hollywood starlet. She considers herself to have incredible talent and singing abilities and if you tell her any different she will be sure to let you know. In an interview with Time magazine, Miss Piggy performer Frank Oz said, “She wants everyone to treat her like a lady, and if they don’t she’ll cut them in half,” (Skow). Her life story is identical to one of a star. She began her career in the entertainment industry by winning a beauty pageant. She walks the red carpet, has been on the covers of people and life magazines, had her own perfume and published a book entitled “Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life”.

She presents herself as a strong and independent woman. Bonnie Erickson, the designer of Miss Piggy said in an interview with Smithsonian magazine, “The character was inspired by the jazz singer Peggy Lee who was a very independent woman,” (Gupta). Although she is a pig, her exterior appearance is reflective of a blond bombshell. She wears revealing clothing and carries extreme sex appeal. On the other side she knows karate and if insulted will not hesitate to use her expertise. All of her eccentricities are exaggerated and none of them reflects any type of sexuality. Miss Piggy’s costume designer Calista Hendrickson said in an interview with New York Times magazine, “Miss Piggy’s not aware of the fact that she’s overweight, she dresses as if she’s 30 pounds lighter. So she has a lot of fantasy,” (Culhane). Since Miss Piggy doesn't actually fit the stereotypical beautiful qualities of an actual woman, she uses her strength and character to be judged as an individual.
She's a prima-donna and has an inspiring personality. Miss Piggy’s attributes are just a presentation of what any sexual human being may be like. In “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” Judith Butler states, “It is necessary to consider that sexuality always exceeds any given performance, presentation or narrative which is why it is not possible to derive or read off a sexuality from any given gender presentation. And sexuality may be said to exceed any definitive narrativization,” (725). Therefore, the character that Miss Piggy portrays is not reflective of any particular sexuality. It's just Miss Piggy.

Works Cited
Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” Literary Theory: An Anthology Ed. Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, 1998. p. 725
Culhane, John. “The Muppets In Movieland; Muppets Moving Muppets.” The New York Times. June. 1979
Gupta, Anika. “The Woman Behind Miss Piggy.” Smithsonian Magazine. Oct. 2008
Skow, John. “Those Marvelous Muppets.” Time Magazine. Dec. 1978

The Postmodern Group Presentation

The idea of the presentation was to produce a game that the class could all be involved in. We wanted to use this game to interpret the theories of postmodernism. Thinking about the particular ways of how to make something random, reflective, self-referential, allegorical, pastiche, etc., we came up with the improvisation. With the improv, just as with postmodernism, anything goes. We were also fortunate to have Dominic in our group as he is the improv expert and came up with both of the interesting ideas entitled “Cliffhanger” and “The Patent Office”.
All of our ideas were formed within group discussions, once in front of Starbucks and then we all met together in “Second Life”, a website in which you can create your own Avatar, and your own virtual world. It was technologically enlightening and a little scary because within this little world anything can happen and you can be whoever you want to be, and while in our “Second Life” world we found that it reflects postmodernism in many ways. In our meetings, other than deciding what we would present, we also discussed the theories and tried to get a better handle on what postmodernism and post structuralism really consists of.
My personal contribution was given when advising the group that after each game, we should discuss how we included insight into all of the postmodern theories within the improvisations. Also, to make sure that we asked the class questions regarding the aspects of postmodernism that they saw within the games.

Life of Pi

Lyotard’s “The Postmodern Condition” and “A Thousand Plateaus” by Deleuze and Guattari, provides theories of the how to interpret the structure of literature. The reference of the allegory within postmodernism can be illustrated in each of the theories presented. The panopticon, metanarratives and rhizomes can all be considered allegories. A novel that represents the aspect of the allegory is “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel. It is highly eclectic and also carries post modern reflections of randomness, artifice and fragmentation.
Pi is a tale of survival under the most catastrophic circumstances. It’s complex because it’s actually a story within a story. The author tells his personal story and in doing so tells the story of another man. In “A Thousand Plateaus,” Deleuze and Guatarri say “The book imitates the world, as art imitates nature: by procedures specific to it that accomplish what nature cannot or can no longer do. The law of the book is the law of reflection, the One that become two” (380). This type of novel helps that statement to carry validity. When one begins to read it, it becomes a reflection of what one may think is reality, but there is no sense of reality in the tale.
The religious part of the allegory is introduced when Pi tells the author that when he finishes telling him his story, he will believe in God. Pi himself has grown up believing in 3 religions, he’s a Christian, Muslim and Hindu simultaneously. One of the strong quotes in the book is when Pi says “I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both” (24). This is reminiscent of the panopticon theory that Foucault speaks of.
Pi’s father is a zoo keeper in Canada, who flees the country because it is going through political turmoil. There is a terrible shipwreck in which the whole family is killed. Pi is the only survivor besides an orangutan, hyena, zebra and a Tiger. The story explains how human values might change when in a life or death situation. When Pi is telling his story it’s difficult to decide if the story is true and the end explains the nature of why and how the tale was told in the first place.
Within the story there are symbols for all disciplines. It indicates the power of humans being territorial when it comes to having to live alone with a tiger on a small boat for 277 days. It shows how starving changes the human condition. The whole story is symbolic of human nature and what one will do in order to survive. Martel does this by using a lot of metaphors and visuals that are unrealistic and combining them with postmodern theories of life.

Works Cited

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. “A Thousand Plateaus.” Literary Theory: An Anthology Ed. Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, 1998. p. 379

Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Canongate books, Ltd. Great Britain. P. 24