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Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer accused of bullying


alphanguy74

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Realistically, I see the criticism... and this special had a great deal of complaints when it first aired in 1964, so much so that they filmed a new sequence for the 1965 broadcast where Santa goes back to rescue everyone on the island of misfit toys. Children all across the country were sobbing because Santa abandoned them. To make room for this scene, unfortunately, they screwed up continuity by deleting the scene where Yukon Cornelius finally finds what he's been looking for all his life, a peppermint mine. So it leaves the viewer to wonder why he's licking his pick through the whole show. I do  see how it sends a message that if you are different in some way, you will only be accepted if you can give someone something, or save their ass in some way.  The whole scene with Clarice and her father, though, shows the innocence of children, until adults teach them fear and prejudice. 

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One complaint I've heard over the years is that Santa is portrayed as far too grumpy in this, he's supposed to be a JOLLY man. They would have done better to have Burl Ives voice Santa instead of the snowman. His voice was much friendlier.  They corrected it in 1970 when they made "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", Mickey Rooney did a far better job as Santa.  All of the Rankin/Bass special had a lot of tear jerking moments in them, though..... "Nestor The Long Eared Christmas Donkey" was the worst, with his mother covering him up with her body to save him from a blizzard, and then dying during the night. 

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The special is pretty depressing, and I've felt that way for many years, long before there were ever news reports. Santa is abusive to the elves, Rudolph, and has no time for his wife, and in turn the elves and reindeer who work for Santa are cold to their children or the elves who work for them. Rudolph is made to feel incredible shame by his father. All the men are terrible. And yet we are supposed to be happy because in the end Rudolph is accepted once he can be exploited. Not because they actually like him or respect him. 

 

And in the original special, they didn't even remember to pick up the unwanted toys they'd promised to help.

 

I still watch it for the music and because I do like Rudolph, Hermie, and the toys, but it's only something I can enjoy once I get past how unpleasant the message is.

 

Whoopi's outrage over anyone criticizing the special reminds me of her support of blackface, Michael Vick, Bill Cosby, Mel Gibson, and so on and so forth.

 

The View is just garbage and should be fired into space.

 

The 'hobby' mostly amounts to a quasi-satirical article and some tweets. As always the outrage machine takes up far more noise than the people who originally commented. And as always people are happy to feed into it.

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