This from a man who never changes his clothes and plays with elves.

As you may have gathered by now, I'm not a particularly PC person (commence eye rolling and snorting and so on), and as such, old children's' books and tv specials don't offend me. They probably should, right? With all those messed up gender, racial and socio-economic stereotypes. But my thought has always been, I grew up surrounded by all that nonsense, and I turned out okay, right? Okay, already! Enough of the eye-rolling and tsk-tsking...


Now here's my dilemma. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is so horrifically prejudiced I can't watch it without crying out in indignation. Here's a sample:

• When Rudolph is born, his dad Donner's eyes go all stop-animation googly and he freaks out at the sight of his red nose. Santa comes in, sees the nose and freaks out as well. Donner says, "I'm sure it'll stop as soon as he grows up." Santa says, "Well, let's hope so if he wants to make the sleigh team someday."
  
• After Santa sings his song, he leaves and Donner gets angry/sad at the state of Rudolph's nose. He scrapes up some dirt and smears it on Rudolph's nose and says, "Here - you'll be a normal little buck just like everyone else!" Rudolph balks at having dirt smeared on his face and his dad scowls and says, "Now now, you'll get used to it."
  
• Later, when Rudolph is trying out for the sleigh team his nose disguise falls off, and the other reindeer cower in fright (again with the stop-animation googly eyes). They taunt and yell derogatory names at him. Rudolph, shaken, yells "Stop calling me names!!" but can barely be heard above the crowd.
  
• Then Cupid, the coach sees Rudolph's nose and says, "From now on Rudolph can not join in any reindeer games."
  

Well, you know the rest. Rudolph saves the (foggy) day and then he's accepted and becomes an icon of Christmas. BUT, What The Fuck?? The whole premise is that it's okay to treat someone with a physical difference like ass, UNLESS that difference is useful and validated by some patriarchal figure. It really pisses me off, and when I pointed out to Madeleine how shitty everyone is to Rudolph before they saw that his shiny noise could do something for them, she caught on immediately. In fact, she helped me make a list of Mean Things That Happen to Rudolph before I wrote this. Now when she watches it, she calls out to me when it's time to be angry, like some kind of kiddie drinking game.

It's sad that this is what it takes to make someone like me realize what the fuss is about when it comes to PC-ness, and I still think a lot of it is over-the-top, but Madeleine and I are going to read and watch stuff differently now. In fact, I'm bristling at the thought of old Richard Scary word books in which all of the "hard-working" jobs are taken by men. Sheesh! Okay, now you can eye-roll and snort again.