Miss Piggy, Camp, and the Death of the Movie Star

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Miss Piggy may be a puppet, but she is one of the most recognizable pop culture icons on the planet. In this video, I take a look at how she evolved, the persona that Frank Oz developed, her relationship with Kermit, and why it's so challenging keeping her up to date in the contemporary entertainment landscape.
Styling Miss Piggy: • Styling Miss Piggy wit...
Frank Oz 2013 Interview: • Frank Oz Interview (2013)
Muppet Guys Talking: archive.org/details/muppet-gu...
Muptown Funk Video about Denise: • Muppet Deep Dive Episo...
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Music by Epidemic Sound
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[@lucasmcinnis5045]

Miss Piggy has been such a camp icon, especially with her resurgence in Gen Z culture where people are comparing her to Chappel Roan

[@Cutieapplepie123]

Honestly, I don't think Miss Piggy ever needed a modern update. I think her movie star persona is even funnier in the modern era

[@langleymneely]

All these decades and I still don’t get how Piggy never got a film of her own?! Her origin story is ripe for a parody to this day! Disney is leaving money on the table dammit!

[@notoriousrrz]

Love this. The one thing that only gets touched on briefly but I think deserves more attention is the way Miss Piggy was coded as being plus-sized and even fat while also being coded as a stunning sex symbol. There was truly no one else I can think of when I was growing up as a fat kid in the 1980s that could steal the man and the camera's eye away from thinner women. It was a joke, but within the joke there was something liberating, especially when body positivity was decades away from getting any kind of foothold in the mainstream. Even by the time The Muppets came out in 2011, there was power in Emily Blunt--whose character starved herself in The Devil Wears Prada--talking about Miss Piggy revolutionizing plus-sized fashion. Miss Piggy being glamorous, having access to fashion, being seen as desirable and karate-chopping anyone who told her she didn't have the right to all that was meaningful for a lot of fat people, and it's sad that the world she's in now doesn't know how to put her on her pedestal. She's still big, It's the puppet shows that got small.

[@colinneagle4495]

As much as I love Miss Piggy as a great comic character, it does bother me that the Muppets team never really bothered to create other female characters for the group. In the whole ensemble, the ladies consist of Miss Piggy, Janice (who mostly is wrapped up in stories with the rest of The Electric Mayhem), and Camilla the chicken who never talks. That's it. It almost feels like an example of the Smurfette trope where a large group of male characters includes exactly one woman who's personality boils down to being "the girl." I know that this annoyance of mine isn't super related to the topics in this video essay, but it just seems odd to be able to create any sort of character imaginable out of felt and foam and somehow more than two women characters is too difficult a task.

[@xingcat]

Someone I follow on Twitter once said that The Muppets aren't a cast of characters; they were a troupe of actors, and once those original actors died or moved on from the show, The Muppets can't be the same, because the troupe shone through each and every character and situation.

[@FishareFriendsNotFood972]

I love how unapologetically assertive Miss Piggy is, she's a good role model for girls about how to find your voice

[@duzztin31]

She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’s Miss United States.

[@michaeltonus3888]

Miss Piggy is kind of the perfect gay icon, a combination of like, Hollywood glamour, and the tragedy of her constantly thwarted ambition. She's a character who is famous and successful because she's never managed to become famous and successful. She has two layers, the inner layer where her creators are fully aware of her camp appeal and are able to harness that to the best possibly effect, and the outer layer of Miss Piggy herself who is completely oblivious to it.

[@helixier6629]

Miss Piggy walked so that Peppa Pig and George could run.

[@retrogradepink]

Jennifer Coolidge totally embodies the Miss Piggy spirit.

[@EyebrowCinema]

BKR while gesturing to Miss Piggy: We used to be a country. A proper country.

[@themorticians]

"Bette Davis never had to set up her own tripod." LOL

[@kleerude]

56:41

[@zw5851]

1,000% agree about the lack of glamor in the 21st century. It's impossible to project glamor, which requires mystique, in an age where we are encouraged by social media to verbally barf our every thought and perform our every action for the audience in our pocket.

[@tiio2208]

Miss Piggy is an absolute icon!!! I remember being absolutely obsessed with her style and attitude in the show as a kid.

[@trekkiejunk]

I think Gene Siskel's comment about Piggy being flipped upside down and seeing "how big her thighs are," is his illustrating that when many puppets may hide the secrets of puppetry out of camera, The Muppet Movie displayed those things, making it seem even less like a puppet. He probably could have chosen to say that you see their whole bodies riding bikes to make that point. But as weird of an example that was, i think that was his point.

[@hannahgrayy1051]

omg the shot to pearl "im not staying on this farm!" was amazing

[@elizabethbassett6598]

This video is sensational, breaking down the character, the performers behind her, hollywood, Disney, trend chasing. It does very well at being about Miss Piggy, but it’s also about the idea of an iconic character that no longer fits what she was parodying and how that informs how nostalgic cash grabs fail to launch. Love it

[@MasseurDavis]

Miss.Piggy has an impeccable sense of style, Im sure designers enjoy styling her.