“Wait,” my father said, incredulously. “Are you crying?”
It was early December, probably around 1984. My father and I were watching the classic Rankin/Bass stop-motion production of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” On television, three characters from the Island of Misfit Toys sat around a campfire: the Charlie-in-the-Box, the Spotted Elephant and the Dolly for Sue, the seemingly typical doll whose problems were many years later revealed to be psychiatric.
“Looks like we’re forgotten again,” Spotted Elephant said, beaten down by the merciless cruelty of the world.
“Might just as well go to bed and start dreaming about next year,” Charlie lamented, retracting into his box.
In the dark winter sky, a single light shone from the clouds. Distant sleigh bells rang through the cold stop-motion night.
“I haven’t any dreams left to dream!” Dolly said.
The sound of approaching sleigh bells grew louder.
“Wait a minute,” Spotted Elephant said. “What’s that? Is it —? Is it—?”
This version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” had been around for 20 years in 1984. But it wasn’t nostalgia for my ’60s childhood that caused tears of recognition to shimmer in my eyes.
No, it was the fact that then, as now, the subtext of this ridiculous story was the truth of my own improbable life. A fabulously blond elf who doesn’t like to make toys? A reindeer who is cast out by those who are supposed to love him, on account of an accident of birth? A whole island populated by outcasts?
Welcome to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the queerest holiday special ever.
I’m sure that conservatives who love this old holiday chestnut will be infuriated by this suggestion. But if you watch the show without understanding that its central conflict is the way people who are different are constantly shunned and humiliated — well, I don’t know what show you’re watching. It’s not “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” I can tell you that, a show in which, at the climax, “even Santa realizes that maybe he was wrong.”
Conservatives seem to miss the point of a lot of things having to do with Christmas, actually. Is it really possible that anyone can watch (or read) Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” without understanding its fundamental critique of capitalism? (Say this in your best Laura Ingraham voice: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”) What do they suppose is meant in “Good King Wenceslas” by the line, “Ye who now shall bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing”?
But please. Do enjoy your $60 Keep America Great hat tree ornament finished in 24-karat gold.
As for “Rudolph,” the whole movie feels as L.G.B.T.Q. friendly to me as any episode of “Queer Eye” or “Steven Universe” or “The L Word.” (In fact, the theme song from the Island of Misfit Toys, “The Most Wonderful Day of the Year,” once made it into the “Glee” Christmas special.)
There’s plenty of queer code in Christmastown. After Rudolph’s red nose shines in his father Donner’s cave, for instance, causing Donner a curiously profound mortification, the old man comes up with a fake nose for his boy to wear. You know: so as not to offend The Straights.
“It’s not very comfortable,” Rudolph says.
“You’ll wear it and like it!” his father replies. “There are more important things than comfort — self-respect!”
Maybe it goes without saying that this is exactly how I felt, putting on a coat and tie to go to my right-wing, all-boys high school, before coming out as trans years later. Is it worth adding that the character of the misfit male reindeer Rudolph in the special was voiced by Billie Mae Richards, a 40-something woman?
Prospector Yukon Cornelius’s sexuality doesn’t enter into the plot, of course. But in a scene that was deleted from the 1964 original, we learn that even though he claimed to be searching for silver or gold, in fact, Yukon C. was looking for a peppermint mine. No further questions, your honor.
And then, there’s Hermey the Elf. Beautiful and blond where all the other elves resemble bulbous-nosed Vulcans, all he wants is to be able to be himself (a dentist, in fact), instead of being forced to toil in Santa’s soul-crushing toy factory. “What’s eatin’ ya, boy?” his boss asks. “Oh, nothing,” Hermey explains, “I just don’t like to make toys.”
His boss roars with disapproval, and the other elves cluck and go tsk-tsk. “Not happy in my work, I guess,” he says. Oh, Hermey. Tell me about it.
Sometimes I dream of seeing an elderly, grown-up Hermey making one of those “It Gets Better” videos, sending a message back to a younger generation of closeted elves that with luck, things can turn out all right, if only you can gain agency over your own life.
As for me, I was able in time to do just that. As of this Christmas, I’ve spent more than a third of my life as a happily out member of the L.G.B.T. community.
My father died when I was in my 20s, though, and never knew me as his daughter. At this time of year, I think about him, as well as the millions of L.G.B.T. people still unable to come out. The holidays can be hard for everyone — but they can be especially hard for queer people sundered from their families. So many Charlies, stuck inside their boxes. So many Spotted Elephants.
Back in 1984, my father looked over at his inexplicably weeping child with love. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.
“I’m not crying.” I said, and wiped my eyes. “I’m fine.”
Jennifer Finney Boylan, a contributing New York Times opinion writer, is a professor of English at Barnard College. She is the author of the forthcoming “Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs.”
from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/2LMawd7
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