My friend Michael Whitney is one of the best feminists and funniest people I know. For Christmas, he wrote a takedown of the Rudolph claymation special that is absolutely brilliant, and I asked if I could share it with you. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did. Happy holidays!

smooches, kate

12 Fucked Up Things About Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

I just watched the claymation version of Rudolph for the first time in a while the other day, and I can confidently say it’s a tool of a patriarchal capitalist oligarchy.

This is just stupid, mostly, but the more I wrote the angrier I got about how messed up this story is and how laden with capitalist and patriarchal undertones and I kind of hate myself for writing so much about it. But there we were, 6pm Christmas Eve, and I had like 800 words about this.

Sorry.

Here are 12 fucked up things about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.



ABLEISM

Plainly, the movie is ableist. A red nose is considered a disability from birth; Rudolph was only given a chance because they could use his nose during a crisis. Christmastown’s root discomfort with Rudolph’s identity remains unresolved. He is only used to further the town’s capitalist endeavors.

1.A red nose is considered a disability from birth; Rudolph was only given a chance because they could use his nose during a crisis. Christmastown’s root discomfort with Rudolph’s identity remains unresolved. He is only used to further the town’s capitalist endeavors.

2. Rudolph is forced into the closet with his red nose, as his father, Donner, attempts to mask his son’s nose with dirt.

reindeer named Fireball with a shock of blonde hair, like he’s also not some kind of misnamed different kind of reindeer.

3. Meanwhile, no one seems to care that there’s a, like he’s also not some kind of misnamed different kind of reindeer.

PATRIARCHY

4. Female reindeer in the cartoon are depicted with lighter fur and without antlers, made to resemble their white-tail deer cousins and stripped of their true reindeer identities.

5. Further, only cis-gendered male reindeer are allowed to fly the sleigh. None of the female reindeer are even given a chance to train.

6. When Donner goes out to find Rudolph, “Mrs. Donner,” who apparently doesn’t have a first name, offers to come with. As told by the narrator, “Mrs. Donner wanted to go along, naturally. But Donner said no, this is man’s work.”

“AYFKM?”



7. After Rudolph saves his family from the Abominable Snow Monster, Donner says they need to “get the women back to Christmas town.”

Motherfucker, you were one of the ones captured by the Bumble and your cast-out son had to save you. Don’t deflect to the women.

~~**~~ INTERMISSION FOR ANOTHER

FUCKED UP CHRISTMAS THING ~~**~~

CAPITALIST DYSTOPIA AND INTRA-CLASS STRUGGLE

8. Hermey the Elf is given the false choice of making toys he doesn’t want to make, or being fired in an economy in which there is only one job function for his species. He is fired, and cast out into the Arctic to fend for himself.

9. Yet Hermey’s motivation for leaving his indentured servitude is to join a bourgeois class, and begins to identify not by his name nor his status as an elf, but as a “dentist” – his aspirational position.



10. The Island of Misfit Toys itself is a place of exile of disabled toys and toys with nontraditional identities. As the origin is all from the elves’ workshop at Christmastown, it is through errors on the workshop floor that the toys became unwanted and then exiled to the Island of Misfit Toys.

Yet when Rudolph and Hermey – two non-toy outcasts from the same place – arrive at the Island, they are only allowed to stay one night because they’re not toys. “How do you like that? Even among misfits you’re a misfit,” said Yukon Cornelius. The trauma and struggle endured by the toys have left them raw and vulnerable and distrustful of those who can be united in solidarity against the oppressors at Christmastown.

11. Hermey extracts the Bumble’s teeth, rendering the native beast powerless and unable to eat on his own. Then Yukon tackles him, and ends up enslaving him to serve the capitalist Christmas enterprise he so despises. Yukon brings the Bumble into Santa’s workshop and forces the defenseless animal to put the star on the tree – representing the cherry on top of the total enslavement of the native in service of the conquering colonialists.

12. Yukon Cornelius, an interloper capitalist explorer, shifts his sights downward in his exploration and mining. When he first meets Rudolph and Hermey, he says he’s looking for gold. He then changes his mind later:

Yukon Cornelius: You’re going to stay with me and we’ll all be rich with the biggest silver strike this side of Hudson Bay. Silverrrrrrr!

But by the end of the movie, he considers peppermint sufficient – and deludes himself that it really is what he’s been looking for:

Yukon Cornelius: Peppermint! What I’ve been searching for all my life! I’ve struck it rich! I’ve got me a peppermint mine! Wahooooo!

Yukon’s degrading aspirations represent the working class’s dwindling prospects at prosperity; his initial search for precious minerals winds up with him settling for a fictitious flavoring that will still end up exploiting the land.

; his initial search for precious minerals winds up with him settling for a fictitious flavoring that will still end up exploiting the land.

~~*~~

Jesus Christ I can’t believe I wrote all of this.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.

Michael