When I saw the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer special when I was six, at its premier in 1964. (Dude, am I dating myself!) it made this impression on me that I had neither the maturity, insight, nor life experience to know understand. When I saw a very interesting diary on this show, which a interesting take, I decided to do one myself, but in a different direction.
Santa's kingdom at the North Pole was supposed to the next best thing to heaven, but it came across as a dystopian nightmare. We see a slave labor sweatshop run by a tyrant. We see a kid, (Hermie the Elf), who seems to have Asperger Syndrome, a condition that wasn’t known about back then, bullied for a being a bookworm, and daring to get out of his sweatshop and becoming a medical professional. We have a CEO, Santa, who is apparently doing well, as he lives in a palace, but does nothing about these working conditions, and even belittles the elf workforce for their musical effort. And he lets Rudolf and his dad know that Rudolf will not be welcome as part of the sleigh team, because his nose is red, despite the fact that he seems to have great flight ability. With Santa's wealth and power, he can't seem to get rid of that snowman monster. Could this be because its presence keeps the workforce too afraid to escape the North Pole?
I was six years old, with the neurological quirk later called Asperger Syndrome. I couldn't quite make sense of the world. I had problems picking up the rules, and it didn't help growing up in a household were the rules were made up as my parents – a brain damaged psychopathic alcoholic who would be dead in another ten years, and a borderline personality disorder type who lived and died for my father. - as they went along, and could change from day to day, or even from hour to hour. I was a misfit myself, although, I didn't quite understand that at that young age, but I sure empathized with the two characters that were branded as misfits, Hermie and Rudolph.
The show played to my fears and hopes in so many ways that I was unable to understand until I was an adult. But it’s always meant much to me and up to this day I try to catch it on TV every Xmas season. Video doesn't count. It must be live TV which was the only way I could see it back then. I only grab it off YouTube if I miss the actual broadcast.
I understand there is a kinder and gentler animated version of the story, where Santa is kind, the reindeer instructors are kind, and even Rudolph’s fellow reindeer are kind, and his mistreatment comes not from organized bullying, but a false accusation made by a troublemaker. It’s probably an easier story for the kiddies to watch than the classic version, but the classic surely must hit home to any child who has experienced discrimination or bullying.
There of course is the Hooray for Hollywood type ending where everyone loves Rudolph and forgives him being a freak when they decide his nose is good for something, and Hermie being Rudolf’s friend also gets forgiven for the crime of being different.
I’ve thought of writing an off-the-wall satirical version of the Rudolf story, and maybe I will, but for now I will speculate upon the question: Whatever happened to everybody? Here’s some possible answers:
Santa moved his sweatshop to China, because of the polar ice cap melting, and in 1990, sold his toy factory and its workforce to a subsidiary of Bain Capital.
The elf boss was killed by his elf workforce in 1995, when they couldn’t put up with him or the working conditions anymore. At that point, the Chinese People's Liberation Army came in and massacred the elves who were then replaced by more compliant Chinese labor.
Rudolph, who agreed to help Santa this one time, because of the storm, left after Christmas an bummed around the North, hanging out in bookstores, libraries, and coffee houses. After absorbing some rather radical ideas by reading and discussing such authors of the period such as Franz Fanon, Rudolf decided, in 1968 to go out and organize the indigenous people in their fight for justice, but unfortunately, the indigenous people he approached mistook his comradly approach for a desire to be eaten by them.
Hermie jumped sleigh on that Christmas of 64, on the US East Coast on his first trip with Santa and went AWOL in Pawtucket, RI. Having no money for an education, he joined the army, who didn't mind his pointy ears, and he served as a medic in Vietnam 65-66, came home with a Bronze Star, and a couple of Purple Hearts, some PTSD, another term that wasn't yet in the medical lexicon, and went to school on the GI Bill. He had decided to shift his goal from dentistry to psychology, hoping to understand the demons in his head that he had accumulated, and to help others with theirs. Today, he is a psychologist at the VA Hospital in Providence, RI.
I hope I didn’t offend anyone playing around with a Christmas classic. Forgive me, I know not what I do. Stop me before I write again.