Santa the fascist and his sexualized reindeer

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • 11/30/08 •

This Wednesday, December 3, CBS will rebroadcast the 1964 holiday special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The program, with its hand-crafted stop-motion animation, has become a classic despite being narrated by a folksinger—Burl Ives—infamous for cooperating with the House Unamerican Activities Committee, fingering Pete Seeger and others as possible Communists. (Now you know why Santa’s elves have never unionized.)

The program also features some amusingly dated gender stereotypes, which I referenced in a recent blog entry. I did a little Googling for that piece and turned up a 2002 paper written by Katie Beck, titled “If Barbie Were a Reindeer: How Gender Representations in Rudolph Exemplify the Need for Teaching Media Literacy.” In five single-spaced pages, Beck righteously eviscerates Rudolph‘s gender representations. A few highlights:

• “Since does and bucks are physically dissimilar, due to the absence of antlers and a lighter skin tone, it was unnecessary to add additional gender-identifying features. Apparently, for the producers, this distinction was not enough, at least not for the adolescent reindeer, who only had budding antlers. Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr. applied polka-dotted hair bows to the does and gave them long curled eyelashes to ensure that the audience understood the difference between the males and the females.”

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• “Mrs. Donner…her title itself illustrates her insignificance. (It also makes you wonder if Donner is her husband’s first name or his last.) With this title, which only identifies her by her husband’s name; she is not even her own person, merely a wife and mother. She is the typical stay-at-home Mom, basically a Mrs. Cleaver of the reindeer world…Like Mrs. Donner, Mrs. Claus also represents the housewife. Plump and gray, she is not sexual. Instead, she fulfills a maternal role, constantly making sure Santa is eating enough and being considerate to the elves. Clarice represents another stereotypical role—the sexualized virgin. She first grabs Rudolph’s attention at the reindeer games, where, like high school cheerleaders, she and the other does are there to check out the new reindeer. When Rudolph first notices the girls, Clarice sticks out because she bats her long luscious deer eyelashes at him.”

• “The structure of Christmastown itself illustrates the masculine authority in this society. There are several aspects of the social set-up that exemplify male dominance…Santa is the dictator, who makes the important decisions, such as who will fly the sleigh. Under Santa, there are two branches: the elves and the reindeer. The head elf, male, of course, runs the toy factory and maintains order within the lower elves. The reindeer branch is headed up by Donner, Rudolph’s father. He guides the seven reindeer below him. A subdivision of the reindeer department is the flying training program, with Comet the reindeer as the instructor. Santa, the head elf and reindeer, as well as the chosen elves and reindeer, hold all the power in this society. Since there are no women in these positions, the female opinion does not matter. In fact, this is emphasized in ‘The Reindeer Games’ chapter when Comet, after discovering Rudolph’s secret, declares, ‘We’re not going to let Rudolph play in any reindeer games.’ Even though his daughter, Clarice, opposes her father’s decision and supports Rudolph, as a woman, she cannot challenge authority, so any opinion she holds may as well not exist.”

This may be a matter you and your children want to take up in your holiday letter to the North Pole.