Being the second in my Wholly Trinity, pretty much unchanged from the last time, as are Rankin/Bass animated specials in general
As I type this, yet another Rankin/Bass holiday cartoon is playing, doubtless on heavy rotation. And I spent much of the last week staring at the back of Hermie and Bumble dolls decorating the front of my workspace at the office, so now that it's Christmas Eve I wanted to repost and revisit (or, as Alton Brown would say, ”it's a RELOAD") my original essay from 2002:
When I was a kid, we didn’t do Christmas of course, but even then it was becoming a de facto secular holiday thanks in large part to special holiday programming on TV. In those days before VCRs and Netflix you pretty much had to wait all year to see this kind of cool stuff, and it was even more interesting to me because it celebrated the most important day in a culture that was both alien to me and right next door.
[I could probably write at least one essay on growing up Jewish in a pretty fundamentally Catholic neighborhood, and maybe I will someday, but I’ll just digress into a couple of anecdotes. When the movie 1776 premiered at Radio City Music Hall, I was in 9th grade in an all-girl religious high school, and we went to see it as a class trip. But we weren’t allowed take our seats before the movie started because – as astute readers may have already guessed – the preceding stage show featured a Nativity scene. Naturally, this made us all the more curious, as we took turns pressing our noses to the small windows in the theatre doors and being shooed away by the rabbis who God forbid couldn’t be bothered to explain that there were other religions in the world. But then, I was the smart kid who was put in the dumb class because her parents weren’t Orthodox and her best friend was a shiksa, who eventually escaped to a secular high school despite everyone telling me I’d never last, I’d be back, and one rabbi even making a nasty response to my rote answer of a rote essay question that I recall read something like “How do we encourage our children to partake in Jewish culture?” Right next to the part of my response where I wrote “build more schools” he’d written in angry red pen, “AND MAKE SURE STUDENTS GO TO THEM, RIGHT MISS WECHSLER?” It was the first time I ever confronted a teacher over a major philosophical difference, and it felt great because I knew I was right and he was totally out of line sticking his little sarky opinion into his grading; it also sealed my decision to leave both the school and the organized religion and never look back. And, aside from the occasional cultural marker like candle-lighting, I never have.]
My first viewing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – and this had to be ’64 or so when it was initially broadcast, sponsored by the Norelco company which featured Santa (and at least a couple elves, the hefty one and the one with the glasses as I recall, although nobody else on a brief web search seems to share that memory) sledding down snow-covered hills on their razors – is not only fondly remembered to this day (yes, a sob still occasionally escapes at hearing “There’s Always Tomorrow” and “Island of Misfit Toys”) but opened my eyes a bit to, erm, as it says on their website, “the enchanted world” of Rankin/Bass. What’s always fascinated me most this world is the writer of apparently most of it, Romeo Muller.
I'd previously considered myths and folktales to be basically immutable things. Certainly, plot points and themes undergo variations and metamorphoses as they’re handed down through the generations and are translated and reinterpreted, but that’s to be expected, it’s in the nature of storytelling. However, modern media being such a cannibalistic beast, well, I don’t have to tell you about all the discussion that ensues online every time Disney “updates” a “timeless fairy tale” (from animation to Broadway to live-action!) or Hollywood decides to remake a movie they just made a decade ago. Many folks go with the flow, others consider the studio’s inevitable softening to be close to blasphemy. For whatever reason, Disney never really bothered me in this respect but Rankin/Bass did. I think it’s partly because a number of their TV specials contradict each other, and kids naturally expect every story that has the “house look” of a particular company will take place in the same world and therefore have the same internal rules. But it’s also because of the smarmy, condescending way in which R/B specials twisted and presented the “facts.” The best example of this involved the conceit that made me grit my teeth, the old story-within-a-story device, where the storyteller (I think he may have been an “Animagic” version of Fred Astaire, voiced by him, as happened with a few of the other R/B specials, most notably the Easter ones) takes turns spinning the myth and fielding comments from the treacly kids surrounding him, who nod their heads at his gospel and make matter-of-fact remarks like “So that’s why he comes down the chimneys!” and “So that’s why he gives out toys!” One of my favorite jokes goes, if R/B ever tackled the life story of Jesus (they did the Nativity with Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, I kid you not), doubtless there would be kids gathered ‘round an Animagical Fred pronouncing revelations like “So that’s where He got the Crown of Thorns!”
Yeah, I've had issues with R/B in my time. As I recall, the Santa in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (based on the Baum book) and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town and Year Without A Santa Claus and even Rudolph had the same look but wildly divergent origin stories. I felt somehow cheated that Rankin/Bass couldn’t keep their stories straight with pretty much the same writing team for everything – and that, moreover, their version (whichever they chose at the moment) of holiday stories was the one that came to be remembered as The Real Version, supplanting all other myths that had been handed down through the generations.
And yet, it’s a love/hate kinda deal, part of me still can’t get enough of the stop-motion and the silly songs and the guest voices by celebs (for whom R/B created look-alikes) long before it was in vogue to do it for The Simpsons or South Park and even the asinine sequels. Rankin/Bass specials are as fondly remembered from my childhood as are the shows of Sid & Marty Krofft (hey, I first learned about Cockney rhyming slang from watching The Bugaloos!) and hand-clapping games. So when Rudolph came around again this year of course I watched bit here and there. I may miss the Norelco Santa but I'm always Team Clarice. Because, you know, there’s always tomorrow for dreams to come true; tomorrow is not far away…
As I type this, yet another Rankin/Bass holiday cartoon is playing, doubtless on heavy rotation. And I spent much of the last week staring at the back of Hermie and Bumble dolls decorating the front of my workspace at the office, so now that it's Christmas Eve I wanted to repost and revisit (or, as Alton Brown would say, ”it's a RELOAD") my original essay from 2002:
When I was a kid, we didn’t do Christmas of course, but even then it was becoming a de facto secular holiday thanks in large part to special holiday programming on TV. In those days before VCRs and Netflix you pretty much had to wait all year to see this kind of cool stuff, and it was even more interesting to me because it celebrated the most important day in a culture that was both alien to me and right next door.
[I could probably write at least one essay on growing up Jewish in a pretty fundamentally Catholic neighborhood, and maybe I will someday, but I’ll just digress into a couple of anecdotes. When the movie 1776 premiered at Radio City Music Hall, I was in 9th grade in an all-girl religious high school, and we went to see it as a class trip. But we weren’t allowed take our seats before the movie started because – as astute readers may have already guessed – the preceding stage show featured a Nativity scene. Naturally, this made us all the more curious, as we took turns pressing our noses to the small windows in the theatre doors and being shooed away by the rabbis who God forbid couldn’t be bothered to explain that there were other religions in the world. But then, I was the smart kid who was put in the dumb class because her parents weren’t Orthodox and her best friend was a shiksa, who eventually escaped to a secular high school despite everyone telling me I’d never last, I’d be back, and one rabbi even making a nasty response to my rote answer of a rote essay question that I recall read something like “How do we encourage our children to partake in Jewish culture?” Right next to the part of my response where I wrote “build more schools” he’d written in angry red pen, “AND MAKE SURE STUDENTS GO TO THEM, RIGHT MISS WECHSLER?” It was the first time I ever confronted a teacher over a major philosophical difference, and it felt great because I knew I was right and he was totally out of line sticking his little sarky opinion into his grading; it also sealed my decision to leave both the school and the organized religion and never look back. And, aside from the occasional cultural marker like candle-lighting, I never have.]
My first viewing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – and this had to be ’64 or so when it was initially broadcast, sponsored by the Norelco company which featured Santa (and at least a couple elves, the hefty one and the one with the glasses as I recall, although nobody else on a brief web search seems to share that memory) sledding down snow-covered hills on their razors – is not only fondly remembered to this day (yes, a sob still occasionally escapes at hearing “There’s Always Tomorrow” and “Island of Misfit Toys”) but opened my eyes a bit to, erm, as it says on their website, “the enchanted world” of Rankin/Bass. What’s always fascinated me most this world is the writer of apparently most of it, Romeo Muller.
I'd previously considered myths and folktales to be basically immutable things. Certainly, plot points and themes undergo variations and metamorphoses as they’re handed down through the generations and are translated and reinterpreted, but that’s to be expected, it’s in the nature of storytelling. However, modern media being such a cannibalistic beast, well, I don’t have to tell you about all the discussion that ensues online every time Disney “updates” a “timeless fairy tale” (from animation to Broadway to live-action!) or Hollywood decides to remake a movie they just made a decade ago. Many folks go with the flow, others consider the studio’s inevitable softening to be close to blasphemy. For whatever reason, Disney never really bothered me in this respect but Rankin/Bass did. I think it’s partly because a number of their TV specials contradict each other, and kids naturally expect every story that has the “house look” of a particular company will take place in the same world and therefore have the same internal rules. But it’s also because of the smarmy, condescending way in which R/B specials twisted and presented the “facts.” The best example of this involved the conceit that made me grit my teeth, the old story-within-a-story device, where the storyteller (I think he may have been an “Animagic” version of Fred Astaire, voiced by him, as happened with a few of the other R/B specials, most notably the Easter ones) takes turns spinning the myth and fielding comments from the treacly kids surrounding him, who nod their heads at his gospel and make matter-of-fact remarks like “So that’s why he comes down the chimneys!” and “So that’s why he gives out toys!” One of my favorite jokes goes, if R/B ever tackled the life story of Jesus (they did the Nativity with Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, I kid you not), doubtless there would be kids gathered ‘round an Animagical Fred pronouncing revelations like “So that’s where He got the Crown of Thorns!”
Yeah, I've had issues with R/B in my time. As I recall, the Santa in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (based on the Baum book) and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town and Year Without A Santa Claus and even Rudolph had the same look but wildly divergent origin stories. I felt somehow cheated that Rankin/Bass couldn’t keep their stories straight with pretty much the same writing team for everything – and that, moreover, their version (whichever they chose at the moment) of holiday stories was the one that came to be remembered as The Real Version, supplanting all other myths that had been handed down through the generations.
And yet, it’s a love/hate kinda deal, part of me still can’t get enough of the stop-motion and the silly songs and the guest voices by celebs (for whom R/B created look-alikes) long before it was in vogue to do it for The Simpsons or South Park and even the asinine sequels. Rankin/Bass specials are as fondly remembered from my childhood as are the shows of Sid & Marty Krofft (hey, I first learned about Cockney rhyming slang from watching The Bugaloos!) and hand-clapping games. So when Rudolph came around again this year of course I watched bit here and there. I may miss the Norelco Santa but I'm always Team Clarice. Because, you know, there’s always tomorrow for dreams to come true; tomorrow is not far away…
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