Whenever I hear the song Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer, I feel very conflicted. I never know what to make of
Rudolph’s legacy as a cripple
Afterall, as the story goes, RRR was
ostracized because he was considered to be a defective freak. All of the other
reindeer used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Rudolph join in any
reindeer games. Every cripple certainly knows how that feels.
But RRR refused to assimilate. He
continued being the freak that he was and eventually he got the last laugh on
that foggy Christmas Eve when Santa called upon him to save the day.
So
should I hold RRR up as a role model for little criplets? Is
he an example of a proud cripple who took the risk of letting their freak flag
fly? Or was he just another Tiny Tim?
This is the problem with the song. It
doesn’t go into how RRR felt about being laughed at and called names and
banished from the reindeer games. Maybe he said to the other reindeer, “Fuck
you guys and your stupid reindeer games!” But maybe he sulked in his stall and
watched longingly through the window, desperately wishing he wasn’t a freak so the
other reindeer would accept him as their peer.
The song needs another stanza that delves into
RRR’s psyche. But the songwriter leaves all this stuff open to interpretation.
My guess is that if RRR could have
assimilated, he definitely would have.
If someone had offered him a chance to have his red nose surgically
removed, he would have jumped all over it .
That would have drastically altered the
trajectory of the song. On that foggy Christmas Eve, Santa would have been
screwed and the sleigh would have been grounded . Either that or that or it
would have crashed into a mountainside
near Buenos Aires. Either way, Christmas would be cancelled.
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