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| Christopher Stevens is
an Atlanta-based writer
and designer and can be
reached at crankyboy@gmail.com |
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HOME > VIEWPOINT > EDITORIAL
By: Christopher Stevens
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I DON’T WATCH much television. I watch the news until I’m furious (which these days takes about 15 minutes), and then switch to the Simpsons (Homer, not O.J.) to calm me down.
But Christmas is different. I have so much required watching for the holidays, I need all 12 days to get it all in. I refuse to succumb to the networks’ evil dogma that Christmas starts on Nov. 1, with a two-month marathon of the Grinch and that dumb movie where the kid gets his tongue frozen to the flag pole.
No, we’re well into Advent before I start my holiday viewing, and then it’s quite a task. There’s the Grinch and Charlie Brown, of course, and several versions of “A Christmas Carol.”
Then there’s the more obscure stuff — a Dame Edna special from 15 years ago, featuring Roger Moore and Lulu, Mark Morris’s “The Hard Nut” (which leaves all other Nutcrackers in the dust), Pinky and the Brain, Opus the Penguin, Pee Wee Herman, and a 45-year-old nativity story with scary marionettes. It’s a huge undertaking to watch it all, requiring many gallons of hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps, but it must be done or it’s just not Christmas.
But for years I refused to watch “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” It was an essential annual event when I was growing up, but at some point the utter wrongness of the thing became apparent, and I just couldn’t watch it anymore.
It doesn’t pay to examine some things too closely (which is why bars are so dark), but look at this festive little confection, and all its sweetness sours. Everyone thinks it’s about acceptance, but conformity is the name of the reindeer game.
TAKE THE ABOMINABLE Snowman. He’s a wild animal — dangerous, yes, but probably endangered, too, and just wants to be left alone with the occasional harp seal or inattentive Inuit to munch on. Instead, Herbie the dentist elf (with the implied approval of sweet ol’ Santa) rips out the Bumble’s teeth with big pliers, and turns him into a tame installer of Christmas tree stars.
Then there are the women. Mrs. Claus exists solely to force-feed Santa, probably hoping for a massive coronary and his big, fat life insurance policy. Aside from her, there’s just Clarice the fawn and Rudolph’s mom, who are told to stay home while the men-folk search for the missing Rudolph. Ah, but they’re willful little things, and go off on their own, instantly displaying their feminine stupidity and helplessness by getting trapped by the Bumble and needing rescue by the bucks. Does ain’t nothin’ but trouble.
The Island of Misfit Toys is a reservation or internment camp for freaks who have been rejected by children. Personally, I don’t see what’s so awful about a Charlie in the Box, but a choo-choo train with square wheels is pretty awkward, and a dolly that cries jam instead of tears is just a sticky mess.
But Rudy and Santa come up with the perfect solution, which is to throw all these oddballs out of a speeding sleigh at 30,000 feet (with parachutes, bless them) back into the world that didn’t want them in the first place, without doing anything to alter either their supposed deformities or the society that is certain to reject them all over again. Solves everything, doesn’t it? At least that pompous flying lion won’t have to listen to the malformed little horrors whining for a week or so. But then they’ll all be back.
THEN OF COURSE we have Rudolph himself, with his problematic proboscis. Rejected by friends, family, even jolly old Saint Nick, just because his mom apparently had a fling with a blinking neon hotel sign. In the end, of course, he’s accepted, even applauded, by everyone, but only because his freakishness is useful to them, not because they actually like him for himself.
Sure he makes a good headlight, but would you want your daughter (or son) to marry him? It’s like people who are tolerant of gays as long as they stay in the salon, or onstage as Sugar Plum Fairies.
We don’t get much of Yukon Cornelius, but I’m sure if he ever finds gold, he’ll strip mine all of the Arctic Circle to get at it. And come to think of it, he’s always licking his pick-axe. Why doesn’t his tongue freeze to it?
And there you have it: the true meaning of Christmas. Animals are to be tortured and tamed, women are stupid and helpless, and anyone outside the norm is on his own, unless ...
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