Talk:Jim Henson

Wiki Education assignment: Equitable Futures - Internet Cultures and Open Access

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Asrogers23 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Asegura01.

— Assignment last updated by Asegura01 (talk) 19:09, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Henson's work/jobs in infobox and in the main text...

There have been some recent revisions to the first sentence of this article. So let's discuss...
Was Henson
a puppeteer, producer, director and filmmaker -
a puppeteer, animator, inventor, creative producer, director and filmmaker -
or was he
a puppeteer, animator, actor, inventor, producer, director and filmmaker.
A couple of things to keep in mind:

• voice acting is a recognized profession in acting. The people who provide voices for puppets or for cartoons are regarded as actors - like Mel Blanc or Daws Butler or June Foray among others. Henson provided the voice for the character of Kermit plus other Muppet characters, therefore he is an actor.
  
• Per MOS:LEAD, the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents and per MOS:ROLEBIO "The lead sentence should describe the person as they are commonly described by reliable sources."
  
• The term "filmmaker" is commonly understood to describe many of the top-level jobs in the film industry - one can be a producer or a director or a multi-hypenate director-producer-writer and be regarded as a filmmaker. Perhaps the creative producer, director, and filmmaker terms could be combined into the overarching term "filmmaker"?
• Though Henson did create the Muppets, there is nothing in the main article text that mentions inventing or inventor or inventions (even in the version I initially reverted to and the version that presently stands) so that term has been removed from the infobox and the first sentence.

And, as I quoted above, regardless of what anyone here might think, it all depends on how Henson is described in reliable sources.
So let's discuss, take a look at how reliable sources describe Jim Henson, and come to an editorial consensus. Shearonink (talk) 20:41, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

The Deadline article on Idea Man describes Henson as "a puppeteer, filmmaker, artist, performer and inventor and the Vanity Fair article on Idea Man also describes him as an "innovating experimental filmmaker" and "Muppet impresario". As the filmmaker terminology encompasses such terms as producer and director, we can combine those into "filmmaker". Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 00:47, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Sjones23 - I took a look at Filmmaking & its sources. Agreed. - Shearonink (talk) 01:20, 6 May 2024 (UTC)