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"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" Is Your Latest Problematic Fave

An emotional abuser and his victim.

Rankin/Bass Productions

Every December for the past several years, seasonal culture critics have wondered what to make of Rudolph. The tale of the crimson-nosed reindeer—perhaps the longest-running and best-loved holiday character, aside from Santa himself—is, on its face, the heartwarming triumph of an underdog battling social and workplace discrimination wrought by a facial deformity. Only the ultimate takeaway for kids is a little mushier. Do people with differences but deserve respect when those differences benefit their tormentors? And if Santa cares so much about condemning naughty beliefs, shouldn't he accept stepped in to put the bullies in their place?

A few popular memes have captured the dubious moral of Rudolph's story. 1 has Santa beseeching Rudolph to guide his sleigh through the fog, only to get mercilessly shut downwards: "I'm lamentable Santa, just I experience uncomfortable giving you help after the verbal abuse and bigotry I suffered during my determinative years," the reindeer says. "It has taken me a long time to realize that my self-worth does not stem from my usefulness to yous. I do not owe you annihilation." Some other image pairs a still from the 1964 Rankin/Bass cease-motion Television receiver special—the most famous delineation of Rudolph's plight—with a concise distillation of North Pole capitalist philosophy: "Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable."

For generations, ever since the story was written as a verse form in 1939 and popularized as a song a decade later, Rudolph's lesson was interpreted more than simply: Don't make fun of people who are different, because everyone has something to offering. But around the time that the cyberspace became the identify for people to revisit problematic themes of quondam artworks, and for parents to fret about how they were raising their kids, Santa and his crew came in for a long-overdue reckoning. Rudolph "doesn't want to teach you kindness or clemency, or any of that crap; it only wants to teach you spite and how to commit hate crimes," claimed a blogger in 2010. Parenting groups on Facebook have hosted debates almost whether it'due south ameliorate to lookout the Television set special with kids and discuss what'southward messed upwardly about it, or keep it away from them altogether. In 2013, Michael Schaffer argued in the New Republic that the story "presents a adequately grim, Hobbesian vision of order: If you want to exist accepted, you have to prove your economical utility—which, in the instance of magical flying reindeer, appears to only involve the almanac sleigh-pull."

Trick News had a chip of a different have. On a 2011 episode of The Five, host Greg Gutfield mocked a professor of special pedagogy who said "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" promoted bullying. "Like most profs, he pursues his opinion while ignoring facts," Gutfield said. "We know what smacks yous around makes you lot stronger. … I mean, how has the liberal-loving media helped President Obama? Not well. He has fabricated more missteps than a tap dancer during an convulsion. Merely his fanbase media shielded him, which is why he got creamed in 2010." In other words, Rudolph needed to be shamed for his appearance in order to reach his potential—an even worse moral of the story, about parents would agree. Later in the same segment, Andrea Tantaros, who would go along to sue Roger Ailes and other Play tricks News colleagues for sexual harassment, praised Rudolph for dealing with his hostile work surround "the right way" by failing to sue Santa.

This yr's critiques of the beloved tale have situated themselves in ongoing public conversations almost politics, race, and gender. 1 writer in Alabama, where an accused molester who spoke lovingly of the days of slavery narrowly lost a race for the U.Southward. Senate, wrote that "the PC world where everyone is offended by everything," including Rudolph, "gives us something to be depressed nigh other than the current soul-sucking land of Alabama politics." Twitter users have pointed out that male reindeer lose their antlers just before winter, while females keep theirs until spring. Since Rudolph and his contemporaries are nigh always illustrated with antlers, they may exist women whose labor is erased by the 1964 film, which has all the lady reindeer watching in awe as their men pull Santa'south sleigh. (Others have suggested that Rudolph still identifies every bit male and is transgender. In existent life, castrated male person reindeer that practice accept antlers in winter are normally used to pull sleds.) Food blogger Angela Davis recently likened Rudolph to black women voters who reliably plough out Democratic victories across the country, even every bit prominent liberals and political party bigwigs push a swing away from "identity politics" and toward a renewed focus on the "white working form." That is, the analogy suggests, Santa and the black-nosed reindeer are content to belittle Rudolph's protests for off-white handling until they demand him to save their end-of-yr projection.

When I re-watched the Rankin/Bass product this year, I was alarmed past the common cold-heartedness of 1 of Rudolph'southward persecutors in particular: Santa, who I'd always remembered every bit a sort of silent, complicit bystander to Rudolph's abuse, non the ringleader he'southward fabricated out to be in the TV special. Santa visits Rudolph's family cavern soon after his birth; his main reaction to the newborn son of Donner, one of his about trusted reindeer, is "I promise that [blood-red nose] goes away." Subsequently an older Rudolph's nose cover-up falls off in public, revealing its cerise glow, Santa tells Donner he "should be ashamed" of himself for raising such a son. (This interaction is one of the clearest $.25 of testify that the whole tale is an allegory for being gay in a homophobic social club.) Santa also repeatedly insults his elves when they write a cute little vocal for him, slouching and rolling his optics like a peevish child during their operation. This depiction of Santa, who is typically portrayed every bit a generous, avuncular fellow, may exist especially confusing for children taught to please the Christmas gatekeeper with "overnice" behavior. Santa equally unfeeling, punishing patriarch is not much of a role model.

Then once again, seeing a magical icon equally a fallible homo whose cruelty is enabled past an unequal power structure could be a determinative, radicalizing feel for a kid. In existent life, there are no Santas with unimpeachable moral compasses. Good people can still end up with coal in their stockings, and sometimes, the people who shame others the loudest are doing the exact things they condemn. It's never too early to disabuse a child of her respect for authority.

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Source: https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/12/rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer-is-your-latest-problematic-fave.html

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