I happened to put off doing my calculus homework long enough last night to catch most of the classic Christmastime TV movie: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In my mind, I remembered the story to be somewhat sappy, insubstantial, but inexplicably happy (like any other classic holiday movie...really, if you think about it, they all share these lovely characteristics, which I think are supposed to inspire Christmas-like, warm emotions). But I was in for a huge surprise.
Right at the beginning of the movie, when baby buck Rudolph is still lying with his mother in their modest cave abode, his father freaks out about his nose. I mean, this newborn Rudolph has already said somewhere around five coherent words mere seconds after his birth, and all his dad can say is "That nose!!" It doesn't matter that Rudy is smart (a super baby-genius, you might even say, if you're in AP English); all that is important is the fact that he doesn't fit in physically. To make matters worse for poor Rudolph, Santa comes blustering in, blathering about how he could never hope to make the sleigh team with that nose.
I'll admit, at first I thought I had just watched one too many deep movies in AP with Mr. Crowe; I decided to keep watching the childish movie I knew Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer really was, beyond my crazy first assumptions...right?
Dead, dead wrong. Rudolph continued to be ostracized by his peers, his elders (including the Coach of the flying team, who provided the young reindeer with this helpful suggestion: "And we're not going to let Rudolph play in any reindeer games, right??"), even his own father. Santa told his father that "he should be ashamed" for creating such a misfit son. No consideration was given to the plain fact that Rudy was pretty much the best flier ever, or that he was really smart, or that the only thing that was supposedly "wrong" with him was his funky nose. To make the hidden meanings in this children's movie even more jaw-droppingly obvious, Rudolph's merits were only taken into consideration on that fateful foggy night; Santa and everyone else immediately accepted and liked him...as soon as he became valuable to them.
Then there's Hermey, the outcast of Santa's elves that doesn't want to settle for a dead-end job making toys like everyone else; his ambition is to be a dentist. Here, the Crabs-In-a-Bucket Syndrome is striking (in any small community of people, when one tries to "escape" or move on, the rest hold on for dear life and try their best to drag them back in). Hermey's boss chastises him for holding onto such fanciful dreams, claiming that all the other elves like their jobs, and he should too. It's obvious that Hermey is a radical of sorts, trying to escape the cloying conformity of the "bucket" to basically do whatever he wants instead.
I won't even go into the misunderstood Bumble (that huge yeti-thing) and the dreary Island of Misfit Toys.
There was such an undercurrent of racism, sexism, bigotry, and all the other senseless views along these lines in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that it left me astounded that I hadn't noticed it until now. I have to think I'm not the only one who's interpreted the story like that, but adults never clue you in.
I guess it would be a bit tricky to explain to your preschooler why Rudolph isn't really going to go down in history after all.
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