The Secret Meaning of Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock

Ah, Fraggles! Tiny humanoids that live in caves and share a universe with all manner of offbeat, random characters!

Or are they so random?

Let's start with the Fraggles themselves.  As the theme song explains, Fraggles choose to "dance (their) cares away," and believe that "worry (is) for another day."  The Fraggles then directly exhort the viewers to "Let the Fraggles play."

It all brings Bohemians to mind, for me.  So let that be our starting point: The Fraggles represent young, artist-types, eschewing their own middle class upbringings for a carefree life of aesthetic enjoyment.

If that's the case, what in the world are the DOOZERS doing there?

Doozers.  If the Fraggles loosely represent Bohemians, these little guys must be the Bohemians' arrogant take on the working class. Tiny, indistinguishable, laboring away for the Fraggles' pleasure... How fitting that they are so tiny, building small-scale skyscrapers! They are exactly how real-world Bohemians view real-world construction workers. Tiny, toiling figures in the distance.

The Gorg mother and father call themselves the monarchs of "The Universe." Yet they rule over a pathetically small patch of garden, which the Fraggles must periodically visit. The Gorgs represent the Fraggles' parents back home in the flyover states! But what about Junior? Where does he fit in with this theory? Are Bohemians typically afraid of their big brothers? Junior always presents a more imminent threat to the Fraggles than the King and Queen do. WHY? 

Because Junior represent the Fraggles themselves if they slump back home, back to their hick hometowns, and accept the artless lives of their parents.

The Trash Heap. The Trash Heap which is located in the Gorgs' yard. If the Gorgs represent your left-behind-for-a-life-of-art-and-pleasure FAMILY, then the Trash Heap, with her sage-sounding but sometimes useless advice, is probably supposed to be Religion. Specifically the religion of your parents.  Think "Trash heap of history."  Just a collection of all the superstitions a family (or a region) might have accumulated over the years.  And yet there is such longing in the Fraggles for the wisdom of the Trash Heap, they go back, again and again, risking capture by Junior Gorg.  I get a big whiff of "lapsed Catholic" in this story.

What of the Tinkerer? The old guy in the basement with the crack in his wall leading to Fraggle Rock?  He is a metaphor for Jim Henson himself.  By the 1980s, he was already seen as the wise old sage of the puppeting community.  I suspect the Fraggles are how Henson viewed the young people who flocked to him.  He had great affection for them, but he was not one of them.  He humbly thought of himself as more of a grandfatherly, inventor type.  Where, physically, do we see the Tinkerer?  In a basement.  One level down from the goings-on on street level, just as Jim Henson was eternally one level below the actors (human and Muppet) on his stages.

Sprocket presumably represents Frank Oz.