Notes from a Festive Queer: The Misfits of Rankin/Bass's Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

**Just as I was polishing this post, The New York Times published ‘”Rudolph”: The Queerest Holiday Special’ by Jennifer Finney Boylan on their website. Any similarity between this post and Boylan’s article is purely coincidental.**

Fig. 1 - Santa discovers Rudolph’s nose.

It’s Christmas in the Western world, which, in the United States at least, means it’s time for holiday movie marathons! As per tradition, thousands of Americans gather around the television to watch animated classics like How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Chuck Jones & Ben Washam, 1966), A Charlie Brown Christmas (Bill Melendez, 1965), Frosty the Snowman (Jules Bass & Arthur Rankin, Jr., 1969), A Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993), and, of course, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (Larry Roemer, 1964). Though there are multiple animated adaptations of the Rudolph story, few are so popular – or outright bizarre – as this Rankin/Bass 1964 stop-motion version. Once described as “half holiday cheer and half acid trip,” the film follows Rudolph, a young reindeer ostracised for his bright, glowing red nose, and Hermey, an elf in Santa’s workshop who wants to be a dentist. Alienated and rejected by their friends and family, the two run away from their home in Christmastown to find their place in the world. On the way they meet an eccentric prospector named Yukon Cornelius, who looks after the pair in the wilderness of the North Pole. Together, the three discover another group of misfits abandoned on the Island of Misfit Toys, a safe haven for unwanted and cast-off toys (Fig. 1). The entire film is essentially a celebration of the queer misfit as described by J. Halberstam, i.e. those who lose “and in losing […imagine] other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being” (2011: 88). In this case, Rudolph, Hermey, and the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys all fail to conform to their society’s expectations so spectacularly that they are then able to create entirely new modes of being. However, the Rankin/Bass Rudolph is not an allegory for a queer utopia. While Rudolph, Hermey, and the toys are welcomed back into their communities, their acceptance is conditioned on their productivity.

In The Queer Art of Failure, J. Halberstam observes that “nothing essentially connects gay and lesbian and trans people to [confusion, loneliness, alienation, impossibility, and awkwardness], but the social and symbolic systems that tether queerness to loss and failure cannot be wished away” (2011: 97-98). This quote encapsulates Rudolph’s experiences throughout the Rankin/Bass animated film. From the moment Rudolph is born, his bright red nose blazing, he is pitted against his family’s and community’s intensely high expectations. His father, Donner, is the lead reindeer on Santa Claus’s sleigh team and both Donner and Santa make it clear that if Rudolph does not grow out of his red nose (i.e. his queerness), the youngster will never be able to follow in his father’s footsteps. Anxious and afraid of what his son’s queerness might mean for his family, Donner attempts to hide Rudolph’s nose, exclaiming, “Come here, boy, you’ll be a normal little buck just like everyone else!” When Rudolph protests, Donner replies, “There are more important things than comfort: self-respect! Santa can’t object to you now!”. Here, Donner is the father whose masculinity and sense of identity depend on his son’s ability to successfully embody western society’s intense and strict masculine norms. ‘Self-respect’ and being ‘normal’ are far more important than self-love and freedom of expression. Thus, any sign of queerness must be grown out of, hidden, or stamped out. However, Donner’s attempts at hiding his son’s queerness eventually fail. While playing reindeer games with the other new bucks, Rudolph accidentally loses his nose-covering, thereby outing himself to his entire community (Fig. 1). The other reindeer then shun Rudolph and ban him from their games. Only Clarice, Rudolph’s doe friend and love interest, embraces Rudolph’s unusual nose and loves him because of his queerness. Even Clarice’s companionship is fleeting, as her father tells them, “No doe of mine is going to be seen with a red nosed reindeer!”, as if Rudolph’s queerness is somehow contagious. Dejected, Rudolph runs away from home.

Fig. 2 - Shame on the dentist Elf!

Luckily, Rudolph meets Hermey, a fellow misfit, and they bond in their misfit queerness. Unlike other elves, Hermey does not want to make toys and spread Christmas cheer. Instead he aspires to becoming a dentist. According to the film’s narrator, Sam the Snowman, “elves have that certain knack for toy-making, all except for this...this one...misfit”. Like Rudolph, Hermey fails to fit in with his peers. When Hermey confesses that he doesn’t like to make toys, the other elves cry, “Shame on you!” The head elf rejects Hermey’s wish to become a dentist, and as punishment for his queer desires and failure to be a normal elf, he is forced to work through his break in order to catch up on the toy-making he hates so much (Fig. 2). Later, when Hermey skips elf practice, the head elf tells him, “You’ll never fit in! Now you come to elf practice and learn how to wiggle your ears and chuckle warmly and go “hee hee” and “ho ho” and important stuff like that.” Like Rudolph, Hermey’s success as an elf depends on his ability to quash his queerness and appear normal. And, again like Rudolph, it is when that queerness cannot be hidden or denied that Hermey decides to run away from Christmastown. In other words, true to Halberstam’s understanding of failure and queerness, Hermey drops out of being an elf to go and find fulfilment as a dentist. When he meets Rudolph, the pair strike up a homosocial friendship (Fig. 3). Earlier in the film, both Hermey and Rudolph separately sang, “Why am I such a misfit?/I am not just a nit wit.” Upon declaring their friendship, their song becomes one of celebration: ‘We’re a couple of misfits/we’re a couple of misfits/What’s the matter with misfits?/That’s where we fit in!’ In this way, they become each other’s found family, discovering love and acceptance in the face of their community’s ostracisation, and striking out for the freedom (and dangers) of the Arctic wilderness.

Fig. 3 - Two misfits find each other.

Eventually Rudolph, Hermey and Yukon Cornelius (the prospector whose eccentricity, wealth, and lack of a confirmed female partner codes him as a queer elder) wash up on the queerest land in the film: the Island of Misfit Toys (Fig. 4). Halberstam argues that “Under certain circumstances failing, losing, [...] may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world” (2011: 2). The denizens of the island absolutely demonstrate this: though they all ‘fail’ to be normal toys, and have thus been cast out, they are in fact more wondrous and creative than their acceptable counterparts. Moreover, the lord of the island, a winged lion named King Moonracer, flies out every night to find other misfit toys and bring them back to the island. In short: The Island of Misfit Toys is populated by queer characters who have been gathered together to create their own found family. Among these toys are a pink spotted elephant, a train with square wheels on its caboose, a water pistol that shoots jelly, a bird that swims, a cowboy that rides an ostrich, a set of clown nesting dolls whose final doll is a wind-up mouse, and the island’s sentinel, a Charlie-in-a-Box. While these misfit toys long to be normal, their differences open up space for the possibilities of the queer. What might a pink spotted elephant do that a grey elephant could not? Would a cowboy riding an ostrich wrangle something more fantastical than a cowboy riding a horse? Where would a bird that swims live? In other words, these misfit toys disrupt assumed modes of being and play, thereby offering more creative possibilities for engaging with the world.

Fig. 4 - Yukon Cornelius saves the misfits.

It would be wonderful if Rankin/Bass’s Rudolph ended in a queer utopia, one where Rudolph, Hermey, and Yukon Cornelius all settle on the Island of Misfit Toys and live together with the island’s inhabitants as one enormous, loving found family (Fig. 5). Sadly, this is not the case. Instead, Rudolph is shot through with a familiar queer tension: the fulfilment and joy of remaining in the queer wilderness versus the need to be accepted, loved and supported by your original, but less accepting, community. The misfit toys, for example, frequently wish that Santa Claus would come and rescue them from their isolation. In the song ‘Most Wonderful Day of the Year’, they sing, “We’re on the Island of Misfit Toys/Here we don’t want to stay/We want to travel with Santa Claus/In his magical sleigh”. King Moonracer also asks Rudolph to intervene with Santa on behalf of the misfit toys. For Rudolph and Hermey, this tension between wild queerness and the acceptance of society arises when they finally return to Christmastown. There, the pair face off with the Abominable Snow Monster, who has been pursuing Rudolph over the course of the film because Rudolph’s glowing nose keeps catching the monster’s cruel eye. Rudolph discovers that Donner, his mother, and Clarice all went out to search for him, but were kidnapped by the Snow Monster (presumably to be the monster’s next meal). Though Rudolph tries to rescue his loved ones, Hermey ultimately saves the day by removing all of the monster’s teeth (there is something to be said here about the Snow Monster’s queerness and how the monster is defanged/de-queered to make him ‘safe’, but that is an entirely different blog post). Back in Christmastown, the two are celebrated as heroes. Santa welcomes Rudolph back into the fold, and the Head Elf tells Hermey he can open up a dental practice. What’s more, Santa realises Rudolph’s nose is useful: as he contemplates cancelling Christmas because of the terrible snowstorm raging outside, he realises that Rudolph’s glowing red nose can be used to save Christmas! Moreover, with Rudolph as his guide, Santa even agrees to collect the misfit toys and give them new homes.

Fig. 5 - The Island of Misfit Toys.

A meme that has been going around this festive season sums the ending up the best: ‘deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable’ (Fig. 6). Where once Rudolph, Hermey, and even the misfit toys’ queerness lead to their ostracisation and alienation, that very queerness is later accepted only because it can be commodified and used. In other words, what was once the source of their failure becomes what allows them to become productive members of society. Halberstam’s reading of failure makes it clear that such productivity is the antithesis of queerness: “capitalism […] requires that everyone live in a system that equates success with wealth” (2011: 88) and wealth with productivity. Those who cannot be productive cannot acquire wealth and thus they fail. To fail, then, is to engage in “an anticapitalist, queer struggle” (88). Rudolph’s, Hermey’s, and the misfit toys’ return to their communities thus exemplifies the tension between assimilation (moulding their queerness to fit productive, capitalist modes of being) and the need for queer resistance against such capitalist strategies. All of the misfits are depicted as being more than happy to be accepted back into their communities, but on what grounds? For all their queerness, are they truly welcomed and loved? Or has their productivity simply rendered their queerness legible? For many, assimilating in to a heteronormative, capitalist society makes them happy; like the misfit toys, they want to be as normal as possible because normalcy means love and acceptance. But what about the other queers who fall through the cracks? Those who, in Halberstam’s thinking, still fail?

Fig. 6 - “Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable”.

There are no easy answers – queerness resists such answers. The misfits of Rankin/Bass’s stop-motion Christmas classic, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, fail so spectacularly to conform to their society’s expectations that they offer up new possibilities for moving through the world, yet they also return to assimilate into their communities’ conditional acceptance. To say that one mode or the other is ‘correct’ or ‘best’ contradicts the very nature of queer. Instead, ‘queer’, like failure, is about troubling our assumptions, be it what we consider to be normal or successful or loveable. Queer does not simply demand space for the failure and the misfit, it welcomes them both unconditionally.

**Article published: December 13, 2019**

References

Halberstam, J. The Queer Art of Failure (London: Duke University Press, 2011).

Biography

Kodi Maier is a queer Film Studies PhD at the University of Hull. Their doctoral thesis, 'Dream Big, Little Princess: Interrogating the Disney Princess Franchise from 2000 to the Present Day' will be done just as soon as they stop committing to other projects, such as their article 'Camping Outside the Magic Kingdom’s Gates: The Power of Femslash in the Disney Fandom' published in Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network or their forthcoming publication, ‘The Other Maiden, Mother, Crone(s): Witchcraft, Queer Identity, and Political Resistance in Laika’s Coraline’ in Coraline: A Closer Look at Studio Laika’s Stop-Motion Withcraft (forthcoming). All three touch on Maier’s academic interests, including animation merchandise, the formulation of female gender roles in the US, queer identity and queer theory. If you ask them to write something on queer issues and animation, they’ll probably say ‘yes’.