The Dark Side of Rudolph

I'd like to buy the world a home
and furnish it with love
Grow apple trees, and honey bees,
and snow white turtle doves
--I'd Like to buy the World a Coke,
Backer/Davis/Cook

All of the other reindeer
used to laugh and call him names.
They never let poor Rudolph
join in any reindeer games
--Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,
Gene Autry

All through my school life I was appalled
by the fact that masters and senior boys
were allowed quite literally to wound other boys,
and sometimes very severely
--Roald Dahl
____________

File this under, "We promote diversity, not."

So I'm singing a rather jaunty version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, when suddenly, like the proverbial needle scratching across the record (remember those?), I was stopped in my tracks. Under this spirited and earnest tune lies a brooding indictment of our non-acceptance of Otherness. Does anyone else think about this stuff?

Rudolph seems like an entirely innocuous Christmas tune, one beloved by kids everywhere. Burl Ives sang it, for God's sake -- what could be more wholesome? And yet -- the lyrics. They just hit me like a thunderbolt. Has anyone ever really listened to them?

"All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names", presumably not nice ones. Until, that is, Santa finds a use for his anomaly: To be lead reindeer in pulling his sled. So now that Rudolph has been personally tagged by the head honcho to front the slaving part of the operation, everyone's his pal.

"Then how the reindeer loved him, and they shouted out with glee: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you'll go down in his-to-ry." O.K., so the moral is, if you are an outlier -- but can make yourself useful -- you, too, may join in the reindeer games and stop the torment suffered at the hands of your fellows. Who wants such fair-weather friends?

Rudolph: The ultimate capitalistic morality tale. Because you really have to be a brown-noser to get by.

[cross-posted at Big Brass Blog]