#85
The tiles in the background of this episode reminded me of the azulejos of Portugal, where my family migrated from. My first boyfriend was a black man from Cape Verde, an island colonized by the Portuguese in the 15th century, and he has the same last name as me. I used to wonder what that might "mean" if we got hitched. Writing muppoems and going deep into subtext and interpretation, I started to wonder if I was wrong for loving The Muppet Show,
a program created by privileged white people. With roots in vaudeville, making many different inferences, I started to wonder if it was
racist to its core. My heart said the show's intentions were exactly the opposite, yet what does it matter in a world of condemnation and cancellation? I'm guilty of condemning other white people for their racism, but was this a way of ignoring my own? I wanted to write a blues problem for this episode, but questioned if I was "allowed," and so the poem became an examination of this inquiry.
