Ho! Ho! Ho!
All right, let’s get to this Christmas movie. One of the most classic Christmas movies. It really established a certain style of Christmas imagery for movies and advertising. It was made by Rankin/Bass Productions and they made several other stop-motion Christmas TV specials. So that style has become associated with the experience of Christmas. You see it even today. There’s a recent commercial featuring Lebron James drinking Sprite, and he’s animated in a style similar to these old Rankin/Bass animations. Of course, it’s done on a computer to make it look like the old stop-motion movies, but I digress. I always digress.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is my favorite Christmas movie. Just wanted to get that outta the way. So the movie is sort of “hosted” or narrated by this gentleman snowman guy. He’s got a vest and a pocket watch and a little hat. He’s great. It’s always funny when snowmen are dressed with scarves and stuff, like they’re trying to keep warm. They’re made of snow! Burl Ives does the voice and he has such a unique warmth to his voice. A snowman with a warm voice? Now I’m temporally confused. Wait, temporally means having to do with time, not temperature. So what, I’m thermally confused?
So Rudolph is born and his dad is like “What the fuck! His nose is red! And it glows! Fuck! I’m ashamed of my own son!” They try to hide it and then Rudolph goes to reindeer kindergarten or reindeer school or whatever. Reindeergarten? They have this coach, which is funny, because he has a hat and whistle on, but he’s still a reindeer. I love those little human accessories on cartoon animals. And this girl reindeer thinks he’s cute, which excites him so much that he acquires the power of flight. But then his red nose gets exposed and everyone makes fun of him. Even Santa! Santa goes up to Rudolph’s dad, whose name is Donner by the way, and Santa’s like “You should be ashamed of yourself, man! Fuckin’ red-nosed kid!” Rudolph gets sad, obviously, but the girl reindeer still likes him.
It’s all pretty standard stuff, you know? Disaffected youth and all that. While this is all happening, we get a second storyline about the elves that work at Santa’s workshop. Now there’s some weird stuff that happens in this movie with regard to the voices. So there’s a head elf, and he has a bossy, booming, angry voice. But then it totally changes for just one clip. The elves are all about to sing for Santa Claus, and the head elf is counting in the music, saying “And a one-uh, and a two-uh…” in this squeaky, whiny, completely different voice for some reason. I guess he could be trying to sound nicer in front of Santa, but he doesn’t sound like the same person at all! Bizarre.
The other weird thing is when Rudolph grows into a young adult reindeer. He runs into his old classmates [who were assholes to him back in Reindeergarten], and they all have New York accents for some reason. Maybe it’s customary to send reindeer to New York for boarding school.
Anyway, one of the elves doesn’t like making toys, so he becomes an outcast, creating a nice parallel of Rudolph’s own misfit-ness. Nice! They even sing the same misfit songr. The misfit elf, named Hermey, leaves to pursue a career in dentistry. He meets Rudolph and then they meet a silver-and-gold prospector named Yukon Cornelius. I love this guy. He’s so aggressively enthusiastic. The trio is floating on a small iceberg, and they crash into land, and Yukon just screams, “Laaaaaaaandddd HOOOOOO!!!” so loudly, and Hermey’s like, “yeah, no shit.”
I used to be kinda creeped out by the island of misfit toys, but now I like it. The song is still kinda creepy, but it stands out from the rest. Then Aslan won’t let them stay there.
Rudolph goes home to find his family gone, taken by the abominable snow monster, who sounds like that monster in the basement of Jabba the Hutt’s palace in Return of the Jedi. I love the scene where Hermey is oinking to draw out the monster. It’s such a pathetic little “Oink, oink!” I love it. Then Yukon just drops a fuckin boulder on him, then pushes him off a cliff. Get owned!
But then they come back and everyone starts feeling bad for how shitty they were. Santa apologizes to Rudolph, and the head elf apologizes to Hermey, and the abominable snow monster apologizes by putting a star on top of the tree. And he tried to eat them! But they’re like, “No worries, man, it’s cool.”
Okay, now, there’s this current analysis or “take” on the movie that’s like this: Santa at the end is like “Hey Rudolph, your nose is bright and can help me get through the storm. Help me!” and then Rudolph is like “Nah. Y’all were assholes to me, and you’re only nice to me now that I’m useful for your personal gain. I don’t owe you anything,” and blah blah blah. Interesting take. But if you watch the movie, you’ll see that Santa was actually being nice to Rudolph before he came up with the idea of asking Rudolph to guide his sleigh tonight. He wasn’t just being nice to win over a favor. It’s almost like people don’t watch the fuckin movie.
Then people say that Santa’s just using him for personal gain. What personal gain? Is he gonna get fired if he stays home? Who’s gonna fire him?
Okay, but then you might say, “Okay, fine, it’s not personal gain, and Santa changed his mind before asking for help, but Rudolph is still not obligated to help Santa after the abuse.” Sure. Great point. He’s not obligated. A lot of movie characters aren’t obligated to do heroic things.
How about this unnecessary thought process: “Hey Santa, you were pretty cruel to me when I was a child. That was bad. But now I can help you bring happiness to a billion children. I will do that, despite your previous actions against me.” Maybe that can be the story.
Lefty Forrester 