'MAH NA' MANIA
'MAH NA' MANIA
A woman is on a first date with a guy who's unpretentiously revealing himself as nigh on perfect: rich, generous, sensitive, etc. But she totally tunes him out once the waiter pours her soft drink – a taste sensation so rewarding, all she hears is everyone else in the restaurant giddily crooning Muppet nonsense: “Mah na mah na/do do do do do.” Mr. Perfect's whatta-man allure, these goofy syllables telegraph, is nothing compared to the thrill her Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper gives.
“Mah Na Mah Na.” It's a first-class earworm that has captivated millions and tormented millions more. You may remember it from a skit on Sesame Street or The Muppet Show: A hipster-looking scruffy Muppet provides the baritone murmur “mah na mah na” to the shiny-bright “do do do do do” chorus of two pink chick-singer Muppets. Hipster Muppet gets bored and starts improvising, scatting with increasingly wild abandon to his partners' strained patience and giggles from audience members of all ages. (Indeed, Muppets creator Jim Henson and company first brought the bit to the The Ed Sullivan Show; a later take on the '90s series Muppets Tonight featured a play on the word “phenomena.”)
You may also know “Mah Na Mah Na” from The Benny Hill Show; or perhaps from the sitcom Committed, as the character Marni's ringtone; or even as covered by rock band Cake for a children's music album. Less likely, you might've heard metal group Skin's version or the a cappella take by Orlando act Toxic Audio. Or maybe you saw the bit of business involving the tune on the original BBC sitcom The Office.
Although appropriately bubbly for soda-pushers' purposes, “Mah Na Mah Na” is, deliciously, not all good clean fun. It originated on the soundtrack to a 1968 Italian softcore porn documentary, Svezia, inferno e paradiso (Sweden, Heaven and Hell), which descriptions say luridly exploits the sex 'n' drugs side of Swedish life. The tune played, Wikipedia informs, “under a portrayal of lesbian BDSM.” (It doesn't reveal, however, whether those participants were transported to the same heights of euphoric distraction as the woman in the Diet CVDP commercial.) Obsessive Googling turns up the Muppet Show clip, as well as someone way more obsessed than me: musician Peter McLennan, who has a whole website dedicated to answering that musical question, “Who Is Piero Umiliani?” (http://www.geocities.com/pieroumiliani/).
Who, indeed?
Umiliani, who died in 2001, was an Italian film composer who wrote “Mah Na Mah Na,” along with a whole bunch of other movie music – overwhelmingly for foreign flicks (though he did have a posthumous contribution on the Ocean's Twelve soundtrack). Born in 1926, he doesn't seem to have been particularly subversive. Yet it's fitting that his composition has acquired a subversive patina, considering his own youthful admiration of Duke Ellington, whose albums, along with all American music, were banned by Mussolini. Umiliani wrote for a broad range of films and was seemingly crazy about American jazz. Said to have helped legitimize the use of the style in Italian films, he even recruited tragically romantic trumpeter Chet Baker to noodle on a half-dozen or so soundtracks.
Despite Umiliani's volumes of output, “Mah Na Mah Na” remains his deepest mark on pop culture. He knew this, telling Italian entertainment mag Il Giaguaro, “Unfortunately, not that I'm ashamed of it, but evidently they were three notes that worked at the time … and apparently still work today.” (Italian label Easy Tempo reissued the Svezia soundtrack, along with other Umiliani works, as well as releasing 1998's dance-oriented Mah Na Mah Na, the Complete Remix Project.)
Well, the track is a naturally seductive bit of nonsense … as timelessly captivating as the girl-on-girl action it originally accompanied. And nonsense always makes sense. But the Muppet versions also genially illustrate the ageless tussle between freedom and conformity. (Henson reportedly knew the track's origins; the question is, did Dr. Pepper?) The pink singers don't totally silence the hipster Muppet, although their disapproving stares do get him back in line, at least temporarily. To me, the message of this give-and-take isn't to obey the rules; it merely acknowledges the necessity of going along sometimes … if only to lull 'em into a false sense of security long enough to joyfully go “mah na mah na” your own way.
Published: 01/04/2006
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