SJWs Want Us All to Read Nonexistent Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia into 'Rudolph'

On Saturday, HuffPost published a hit job on a 53-year-old movie, based on nothing more than unthinking animus (a.k.a. “bigotry”) toward a popular children’s tale. HuffPost accused the film of racism, sexism, homophobia, and every sort of bigotry — not realizing that the movie actually condemns these attitudes toward “misfits.”

The HuffPost video featured a montage of tweets attacking the 1964 film “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” — and attacking the movie’s “sins.” It concluded with a tweet from user Cass Martino: “Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable.”

speaking of #rudolph, your yearly reminder… 🔴 pic.twitter.com/RAsLiIook6

— 𝙘𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙚 ✨ (@CassMartino) November 29, 2017

The HuffPost attack suggests that this is the key theme of the movie, as if “Rudolph” were defending the kind of bullying directed at Rudolph and his elf friend (who wants to be a dentist) throughout the film.

“Yearly reminder that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is a parable on racism & homophobia w/ Santa as a bigoted exploitative prick,” tweeted Garytt Poirier in the first message to show up in HuffPost’s video.

https://twitter.com/Garytt/status/935688351872466949

Next, the video featured an attack on “Santa’s operation.” A user with the handle “AngryBluePlanet” declared, “Santa’s operation is an HR nightmare and in serious need of diversity and inclusion training.”

https://twitter.com/AngryBluePlanet/status/935694981288820736

The video featured one last tweet from self-described “Anti-Trump! Geek!” John T. Terrible. This user posted a meme reading, “It’s good we don’t fit in. It means we’re not a**holes.”

An appropriate bit of wisdom for #Rudolph pic.twitter.com/8uxSxwCh06

— JJT (@JohnJTerrible) November 29, 2017

The HuffPost video also listed all the “marginalization” in the movie: Rudolph’s father Donner “verbally abuses him”; Santa Claus mocks Donner for his son’s nose; the school coach encourages bullying; Donner forbids his wife from joining the search for his son, saying: “No. This is man’s work”; Rudolph’s girlfriend Clarice has a bigoted father; and “even the elf is an outcast for wanting to be a dentist.”

Every single one of these accounts is true. Donner is a bully, the coach is a bully, Santa is a bully, Clarice’s dad hates Rudolph for a skin-deep reason, and both Rudolph and the elf are marginalized characters.

But the movie doesn’t end there. In fact, “Rudolph” has the main character and his elf friend prove themselves, and receive honor — and heartfelt apologies — from Santa, Donner, and the insulting elf.

Then there’s the movie’s actual message, with which no good social justice warrior can disagree. “When everybody hears their story, they start to realize maybe they were a little hard on the misfits. Maybe misfits have a place, too. Even Santa realizes that maybe he was wrong.”

The movie concludes with Rudolph and the elf saving the day. Even the abominable snowman, an evil scary monster, is redeemed at the end of the film after the elf proves his dentistry useful by pulling out the snowman’s teeth.

HuffPost interpreted this as “deviation from the norm” being “exploitable” — since society was able to gain something from Rudolph and the elf, their deviation from the norm would no longer be “punished.”

What “Rudolph” presents as vindication, HuffPost decides to view as oppression. In this context, no amount of praise for formerly “marginalized” people is enough to make up for the original marginalization. The validation of having bullies apologize is nothing to these SJWs. The whole system has to be upended.

In short, these SJWs have ruined an uplifting children’s tale by imposing their view of ultimate societal upheaval on a story about “misfit toys.” Rather than watching the film and understanding the message as it was intended, these liberal Scrooges cherry-picked the worst parts of the film, divorced them from context, and yelled, “Bigotry! Racism, Homophobia!” (As they do for the Constitution, American history, and often Donald Trump.)

Had they taken a second to think about the movie in its context, they would have realized that the 1964 film was a cartoon version of a song written in 1949. The song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was adapted from a popular children’s book.

It tells a story of a reindeer being born “different” — with the shiny, red, glowing nose. Despite bullying (a constant feature of childhood in any era), Rudolph goes on to prove himself by saving Christmas with his beacon-light nose. He receives the ultimate vindication, “You’ll go down in history [like George Washington]!”

The movie adapted the song, and because it was doing so, the film had to show various forms of bullying. But the bullying was not the point — the vindication was the point. The moral was to teach both bullies and kids who were bullied that being different can be a good thing, and that bullying is wrong.

In other words, it was a social justice warrior movie, long before there were social justice warriors — or rather, it was what social justice warriors should be.

SJWs should advocate for the Golden Rule — treating others the way you would like to be treated. They should be advocates for the poor and downtrodden, reminding the wealthy and powerful that they really do need to care for the poor and suggesting concrete voluntary ways to do so.

Instead, this good purpose is hijacked by a lust for power. Rather than attempting to help the poor, SJWs want to take down the rich. They wouldn’t even settle for Robin Hood, but want the whole Bolshevik Revolution. This is why they ruined “Rudolph.” It’s all well and good to show that people who are different can still be valuable and deserving of respect, but it’s not enough unless the bullies are trampled and the marginalized take power.

Watch the HuffPost video, and the original 1964 movie, below.

Here’s the original film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCc3kbTQne0