Down in Atlanta, we took Caroline to see a puppet re-creation at the Center for Puppetry Arts of the Rankin-Bass “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The puppet builders have done an astounding job creating puppets that are absolute dead ringers for the ones from the original TV special. But in seeing it in a new venue for the first time, things occurred to me that either hadn’t before or had, but I just hadn’t thought of them for a while.
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1) WTF is up with Santa? He has never been a bigger douche than in this story.
He is depicted as a lousy and unsupportive boss so clinically depressed that he isn’t eating. He seems enthused about the birth of Donner’s son until he sees the red glowing nose, at which point he dismisses out of hand the notion that Rudolph could ever be part of his team. Later when Rudolph proves he is unquestionably the most naturally talented of the yearlings when it comes to flight, Santa is impressed, right up until the nose starts glowing. Coach Comet announces that Rudolph will be excluded from all reindeer games, but okay, he’s an animal and a gym coach, so I’ll give him some latitude. But Santa not only doesn’t find this behavior unacceptable, he mournfully says that Rudolph showed “such promise,” and then walks away shaking his head, meaning that thanks to his different looks, it’s okay to treat him like crap. When three of the reindeer (Rudolph’s parents and Clarice) go missing later on, Santa isn’t concerned about their welfare, but only what it means for his sleigh being pulled. Toward the end of the puppet show, when Santa suddenly sees the usefulness of Rudolph’s glowing nose in the face of a snowstorm and asks him to guide his sled that night, Ariel–sitting next to me–muttered the appropriate reply given how he’d been treated: “Go to hëll!” I sure wouldn’t have blamed Rudolph if that had been his response. (As an aside, I pictured Anthony Hopkins as Santa murmuring, “Hello, Clarice.”)
Was there no way to tell this story without Santa being such a dìçk?
2) How did Donner stick the fake nose on Rudolph with benefit of thumbs?
3) I wouldn’t let Hermey the Elf anywhere near my teeth. No formal training, no access to painkiller. Screw that.
4) When Rudolph’s family gets trapped by the snow monster, all I could think was, “And so, tragedy once again struck yet another ill-fated Donner party.”
5) I admit sometimes I’m slow on the uptake, but I can’t believe it took me nearly five decades to realize that Yukon Cornelius calls the snow monster “a Bumble” because he misunderstands and thus misspeaks the word “Abominable.” Also, when he goes over the cliff and survives because Bumbles bounce, I wondered if that was how Gandalf survived a similar fall. Or Sherlock Holmes for that matter.
6) When Santa is delivering the misfit toys to children, they are tossed out of the flying sleigh one by one with umbrellas to serve as parachutes. All save the Bird, who is simply chucked out of the sled. But the reason he’s a misfit is that he’s a bird fish; he doesn’t fly. He swims. So basically they’ve just thrown a toy to its death. It was better off on the island.
But maybe I’m overthinking it.
PAD
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Don’t forget that Santa’s doucheyness doesn’t just focus on Rudolph — apparently he is such a dìçk that whole piles of toys have been tossed away simply because the elves can’t be bothered to make them properly. (Perhaps because, judging by the comments of Hermey at the end, Santa apparently does not provide proper health care to his labor force.) One toy is even thrown away because it has the wrong name? What?!
And let’s not even get into why the girl reindeer are apparently not allowed to learn how to fly or even consider joining the team.
Well, you can’t tag the “Rudolph” Santa with that last one. Rightly or wrongly (most of the names as listed in “Night Before Christmas” are gender neutral) Santa’s reindeer are typically all depicted with antlers. So the male bias isn’t unique to the R-B cartoon.
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PAD
Vixen is a clearly femminine name. And reindeer (or caribou, as they are known on this continent)are unique amoung deer for having antlers on both sexes.
(I once read somewhere that the male antlers are shed before December, but the females keep theirs until January, so any antlered reindeer on Christmas would likely be female. I only read that once, though, and I can’t remember where, so I may be wrong.)
(most of the names as listed in “Night Before Christmas” are gender neutral)
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I remember seeing a tongue in cheek ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas AGES ago (Judith Viorst in Ms?) noting that actually only six of the names are conceivably gender neutral.
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The two that aren’t are Cupid and Vixen. Cupid, of course, being a male and the god of love. Vixen being a derogatory term for a female.
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Santa, misogynist?
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(Oh, and at the risk of becoming the site’s nit-picking typo finder: How did Donner stick the fake nose on Rudolph without benefit of thumbs?)
I’m now envisioning Santa’s workshop as a sort of arctic Sparta where the unworthy are dashed on the rocks below the village if they do not pass the fitness criteria.
Maybe Santa is so skinny because he has Gerard Butler’s 300 abs?
No, he only has 299 of them.
The one thing that always strikes people upon rewatching the Rankin Bass Rudolph is that Santa does come across as kind of mean. Truth is, this is kind of a more human, fallible Santa Claus. I like to believe that even Santa learned a lesson in the end.
I read recently that the original version of the story had Rudolph being hassled by regular reindeer, not Santa’s. Apparently Santa doesn’t even meet Rudolph until pretty far into the original version.
Yeah, he actually meets Rudolph when he’s already out flying around in the growing fog. He comes into the reeindeer’s bedroom to leave presents and sees the glow from his nose.
Cracked had a list recently that pointed out what a douche Santa was. http://www.cracked.com/article_18601_4-bad-lessons-rudolph-red-nosed-reindeer-teaches-kids.html
Rudolph has always been the story about how people are jerks until you have something they want. The Rankin Santa may go a little further, but he is only following the precedent set by the reindeer in the song.
The part that always bothered me was the scene with Hermy and the Bumble. What the hëll was Hermy doing with those pliers between the Bumble’s legs?!
I think that all stories need some conflict to be overcome so everything isn’t resolved in the first five minutes (“A reindeer with a glowing nose! That’ll be terrific! I wonder what we’ll do the rest of this time…”) but perhaps someone other than Santa could have been the “douche” — maybe someone who treated Rudolph poorly until Rudolph escaped and was welcomed at the North Pole?
Sadly, one of the biggest enemies of nostalgia is the present: Seeing something we loved as a child can prove disappointing, disheartening, or just plain stupid as an adult. When I was younger I saw the episode of THE SUPER POWERS TEAM: GALACTIC GUARDIANS: “The Fear” and was amazed how cool that they did Batman’s origin and the death of his parents. When I saw it as an adult, I wondered how I ever thought it was any good. (Plus it didn’t help that Darkseid alternated between trying to conquer Earth and kidnapping Wonder Woman to make her his bride.) Great to me as a kid — painful to me as an adult.
Fraser on an episode of “Cheers” poised this exact opposite, but since he was supposed to be the psuedo-intellectual foil for Sam, I don’t think it sunk in to anyone.
I meant “posed this exact position”
Sheesh, a little too much Christmas cheer going on I’m afraid.
I’ve always thought of Rudolph as the first X-Men television appearance. Think about it; Rudolph is a mutant, shunned by normal society, etc.
More thoughts on Rudolph:
1. Was it really a good idea to let Hermey be a dentist after all? One formerly bullied misfit suddenly given access to implements of potential torture…”Is it safe? Is it safe?”
2. Why was the little pigtailed dolly on the Island of Misfit Toys? Two possibilities come to mind…neither of which would be permitted on broadcast television back then, and are fairly gruesome to think of now.
2. She was a dollie that couldn’t cry if memory serves
I always felt Santa was a jerk in that one, even as a kid. But don’t feel two bad about 5. I didn’t get it until just now when you pointed it out.
Ugh. that ‘two’ should obviously be ‘too”
Yep, Rudolph, Hermy, and Cornelius should have formed their own toy-making concern and delivered on the 21st (the actual solstice), thus rendering Santa and his outmoded methods hopelessly irrelevant.
PAD wondered, “How did Donner stick the fake nose on Rudolph with benefit of thumbs?”
It’s been an acceptable motif of cartoons, and some comic books, that a lack of fingers doesn’t affect anyone’s ability to hold or manipulate objects:
–four fingers: everyone in THE SIMPSONS universe
–three fingers: Nightcrawler
–no fingers: the Powerpuff Girls
–THE WINNER: Bob Oblong of THE OBLONGS, who has no arms or legs but can drive a car and play classical music on a piano
(Speaking of the Powerpuff Girls, I found this on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8iDFG6d734 Hah!)
I’d like to point out that even though the Simpsons and Nightcrawler are missing one or two fingers, they still have the opposable thumbs that PAD was referring to. Ya got me on the Powerpuff Girls, though.
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And I’d also cite many characters in the Homestar Runner universe as able to do much without arms. (And of course Strongbad for being able to type while wearing boxing gloves.)
Reading over this, something occurred to me that never had before in all the years I watched the Rankin-Bass Rudolph: Maybe everyone’s crappy treatment of Rudolph, because he’s different, is an allegory for racial prejudice.
Think about it: The show first aired in 1964, at the height of the civil rights movement. It seems possible that someone decided to ratchet up the general meanness of Santa and the other reindeer so that perhaps viewers would think of other prejudices they observed every day.
Or I could be completely off-base there.
On the fingers thing: I seem to recall an episode of The Powerpuff Girls where there was some body-switching going on, and when one of the girls ended up in Professor Utonium’s body she couldn’t figure out how to work the fingers.
“On the fingers thing: I seem to recall an episode of The Powerpuff Girls where there was some body-switching going on, and when one of the girls ended up in Professor Utonium’s body she couldn’t figure out how to work the fingers.”
And on FARSCAPE when they switched bodies, the Pilot couldn’t walk (or even stand) in his new body, because the old one was fused to the ship at the waist.
what about in the R-B cartoon? Doesn’t Hermey sound a little… “Lavender” to you? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
Re-watching “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” as an adult I thought it should’ve been subtitled “Santa Claus vs the Nazis”. Burgermeister Meisterburger is Hitler, they’re burning toys, drab-colored uniforms of his army, etc.
Given when it was made, it’s probably meant to be Santa Claus vs. the Communists (which is amusing, since Santa isn’t really an exemplar of capitalism himself). It seems to be set in Pottsylvania, but that’s largely because of the presence of Paul Frees.
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This special also has one of the oddest line readings in the history of television. When the Winter Warlock tells Jessica that the only bit of magic he has left is some magic feed corn, her response is “MAGIC feed CORN?”, with the emphasis just like that (although reading it in print can’t give the full effect of how strange it sounds). It’s like the actress memorized the words phonetically without understanding their meaning (in fairness, Keenan Wynn gives the same emphasis but doesn’t punch it as hard).
I have a son with Down Syndrome,so watching RTRNR is now especially pertinent. But a couple of years ago my wife pointed out that Santa et.al. never apologized for their shabby treatment of Rudolph, and that the Boss Elf seemed to begrudingly allow Hermes to be a dentist. I had to explain to her the nature of the “guy apology” … the general aura of woe and shame, the hesitant and quiet speech that says “I know I was wrong and I feel bad about it but please don’t make me feel worse about it” without actually saying I’m sorry or admitting fault, the signaling that you’d like to move on and put the whole miserable episode behind you by acting like nothing happened and you didn’t have a fight, followed by a tinge of solicitousness.
Her response was much the same as Hermione’s when she witnessed a classic example of this in “Goblet of Fire” …. “MEN!”
Did anyone notice that Hermey isn’t an actual elf? He has round ears. The only other people in that cartoon with round ears are Santa and Mrs. Claus. One plus one equals…HOLY CRAP! Hermey is their son! My son: the dentist.
Rick Goldschmidt talks about the problem of the bird being dropped since he swims rather than flies in his “making of” book about Rudolph. Those weren’t the original credits. The originals had the elf dropping packages with the cast and crew names on them. Then people complained that, although the last thing that Santa says in the original broadcast is “First stop, the Island of Misfit Toys,” we didn’t see the toys get rescued. So they went back and filmed the little scene where the misfit toys are picked up. Somewhere along the line they lost the original credits, so re-filmed them. A year later no one remembered the bird couldn’t fly. Billie Mae Richards, who voiced Rudolph, hated the redone credits because her name was spelled wrong, and refused to speak to Rankin-Bass for years.
I always figured they made Santa that way to explain to kids why they didn’t always get what they wanted. Santa wasn’t perfect: he made the mistake about Rudolph and other things, so sometimes he can make a mistake about the toy you get.
I always loved Mrs. Santa in this. I didn’t know Santa Claus had married an Italian lady! She was just like all my aunts and cousins, telling him to eat!
Glad i am not the only one who thinks after watching the r&b special santa comes off as a douche. not to mention Hemie should not be near any thing he could stick in some ones mouth plus hate to say it but the reason he had those plier’s near the bumbles legs the teeth were not the only thing Hemie took from the bumble.