(upbeat music)
- What's up Wisecrack?
Michael here to talk about
everyone's favorite yuletide underdog or under deer.
That's right, Rudolph, Santa's red nosed minion,
who was best memorialized in that
1964 stop motion animated special.
It's a heart warming depiction of our scrappy little friend
finding acceptance in his community
despite being a bioluminescent freak.
(intense buzz)
But what if the movie can accidentally teach us
about the dystopia of modern life?
(intense music)
Allow us to ruin your childhood in the Wisecrack edition
on the philosophy of Rudolph: The Red Nosed Reindeer.
And of course, spoilers ahead.
Before we get too deep into the world of
stop motion holiday cinema,
I wanted to take a second to talk about
my favorite island of misfit toys, the Wisecrack Patreon.
It's a community of folks who have no problem
finding the deepest of meanings in the weirdest of places.
Not to mention you get to watch
all of our videos early and without ads.
You also get exclusive access to the Wisecrack discord.
Where you can connect with like-minded folks
and even share takes with Wisecrack host and writers.
To give you a free preview,
here are some of my hot takes on Christmas movies.
Die Hard doesn't actually count as a Christmas movie,
but In Bruges absolutely does.
Four Christmases is an underrated classic
exploring the fluidity of the American family.
The Night Before is a great movie
to watch with your grandparents and or young children.
In Home Alone Joe Pesci is actually the good guy.
And until Jeff Bridges plays Santa in a movie,
I'm not interested in any cinematic representations
of Kris Kringle.
For takes like these and ones that are even worse,
go to Patreon.com/Wisecrack and join today.
Memberships start at just two dollars.
It's the holiday gift you deserve to give yourself.
So go to Patreon.com/Wisecrack today.
Now back to the show.
But first, a quick recap.
Rudolph follows the adventures of the eponymous reindeer,
who was born with one very prominent trait.
- He's, he's got a shiny nose.
- Shiny?
I'd even say it glows.
- [Michael] But instead of being celebrated for his gift,
Rudolph receives a crash course in feeling ashamed
of his body taught by his own father.
- You'll like it and wear it.
- Aw, but daddy.
It's not very comfortable.
- [Rudolph's Dad] There are more important things
than comfort.
- [Michael] Rudolph is instructed to hide his shame,
but of course you can't keep an incandescent nose
hidden for long.
Once his cover is blown our hero finds himself
ruthlessly mocked.
To the point where he enters a self-imposed exile.
On the road Rudolph teams up
with a fellow North Pole weirdo Hermey the elf.
On their journey the two meet
the prospector Yukon Cornelius,
narrowly avoid the Abominable Snow Monster,
and end up at this surreal place,
the Island of Misfit Toy's.
Eventually though, Rudolph realizes that he can't keep
running away from his problems and decides to return home.
The only problem, his family has been captured
by the Abominable Snow Monster.
But with help from his friends,
Rudolph is able to save his family
and live happily ever after.
Well, almost.
After a last minute snowstorm hits the North Pole,
grounding Santa's sleigh,
it seems like Christmas will be canceled.
- Everything's grounded.
Oh the poor kids.
- [Michael] That is until old Kris Kringle realizes
he's got a pair of headlights in the form of Rudolph.
- That nose, that beautiful, wonderful nose.
- [Michael] Rudolph then leads the teams,
Santa picks up and the misfit toys and Christmas is saved.
The stories take away seems to be
bullying people for being different is not cool.
So case closed?
Not quite.
Incidentally, Rudolph is also a weird masterclass
in the dystopian reality of what philosopher Michel Foucault
called biopower or biopolitics.
Basically if being in charge used to mean
beheading your subjects when they were naughty,
modern government power is about the management of life,
aka biopolitics.
It's about keeping a well fed, disease-free population
who can show up to work on time,
and go fight in a war if you need them to.
But what happens when people resist being managed?
When they either can't or won't be good productive citizens.
Enter deviancy or the violation of social norms.
Since that deviance is a threat to the biopolitical order,
it must be policed.
Historically these deviants were criminal misfits,
or labeled mad, or considered physically unfit
to do the work, or unwilling to do the whole,
be heterosexual and make babies thing.
On this flip side of deviancy and biopolitics
is normalization.
Reforming criminals and sexual deviants and so on,
so that they can be integrated into society.
Now you might be wondering
what this all has to do with Rudolph.
It might seem like a stretch,
but throughout its 50 minute runtime
almost every single major plot point explores
how biopower normalizes and disciplines deviants.
Social norms in Christmas Town are pretty simple.
Wake up and do your part
to make Christmas happen for the kids.
For example, be an elf making toys.
And these norms work great for their leader, Santa.
Whose primary aims is, you know,
Christmas for whatever reason.
Even when the elves aren't on the job,
Santa ensures that they remain loyal, tireless workers
by having them participate in elf practice.
Which by the way, is totally not brainwashing.
♪ We work hard all day ♪
♪ But our work is play ♪
- [Michael] But it doesn't just stop there.
Reindeer, for example, can fly.
And so Santa has created a regimented training program
to take advantage of this trait.
- Our first game is called take off.
We all wanna pull Santa's sleigh someday don't we?
- [Michael] In the North Pole it's not crazy to say that
a reindeer's whole existence revolves
around working for Santa.
Just look at the moment Rudolph is born.
- Well Donner, where's the new member of the family?
After all if he's going to be on my team someday,
he'd better get to know me.
- [Michael] But what happens when someone
deviates from the norm?
Take Hermey, Rudolph's elf friend,
who would rather be a dentist than a toy smith.
For whatever reason, dentistry isn't exactly considered
a social utility in the North Pole.
So he's basically ostracized from the social order.
Rudolph's nose isn't a hindrance to his job function,
but his physical abnormality gets aggressively policed
by his family and his fellow juvenile reindeer.
Despite both our heroes having very real ways in which
they could contribute to society,
they're deemed to have little to no social value
because they don't fit in.
- It's like he said, I'll never fit in.
- And in fact, Rudolph and Hermey are what scholars,
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder,
would called non-productive bodies.
Or those who have been shunned largely by virtue
of biological incapacity, aesthetic non-conformity,
and or non-normative labor patterns.
And what does the biopolitical state of Christmas Town
do to non-productive bodies?
It expels them or treats them with such hostility
that they expel themselves.
Hermey, for example, leaves after his boss threatens
to fire him for giving a doll teeth.
They don't even ask the question,
why can't our society handle more doll teeth?
(intense buzz)
And Rudolph is told that he's forbidden
to practice with other reindeer.
- Alright, alright now yearlings, back to practice.
Oh no, not you.
You better go home with your folks.
From now on gang, we won't let Rudolph join
in any reindeer games right?
- [Other Reindeer] Right, right.
- [Michael] Also, did we mention that Santa is
kind of a dick here?
- Donner, you should be ashamed of yourself.
What a pity, he had a nice take off too.
- [Michael] But it's not just Rudolph and Hermey
who are expelled from society.
In fact, the outside world is teeming
with other non-productive bodies.
Perhaps nothing embodies this better than
the entire Island of Misfit Toys.
In the platonic ideal of toyness,
a toys job is to bring a child happiness.
As such, toys who are unable to fill this role are useless.
And are therefore castaway for such trivialities
as having the wrong name.
- My name is-
- Don't tell me.
Jack?
- No, Charlie, that's why I'm a misfit toy.
My name is all wrong.
No child wants to play with a Charlie in the box.
- [Michael] Philosopher Anna Selmeczi calls this process
biopolitical abandonment.
The process by which people who refuse
to conduct themselves properly,
place themselves outside of the population,
and thus are no longer deemed worthy
of society's care or protection.
The core logic of biopolitics as Selmeczi notes
is not only the fostering of some forms of life,
but the disavow of others, even to the point of death.
Like that weird team building exercise,
where you have to pretend you and your coworkers
are stuck on a life raft and you have to awkwardly decide
who doesn't get a life preserver
as you sink to your watery grave.
Am I the only one who did that?
It was weird 'cause I said me,
and then everyone just got really sad,
but I thought I was taking one for the team.
I don't work there anymore.
In the case of the misfit toys,
that means being abandoned to some weird leper colony.
But hey, Rudolph is about how this stuff is bad.
The film has a happy ending in which everyone apologizes
to Rudolph and Hermey for treating them so poorly.
If anything Rudolph is the celebration
of the things that make us different, right?
Well yes, and that makes it even more interesting.
That's because it not only shows us how
biopolitics manages deviancy,
but how it can end up incorporating it.
First and foremost, it's important to note
that when Rudolph finally comes back, nothing is different.
He's still the object of scorn in the North Pole.
- Hey look who's back, old neon nose.
(reindeer laugh)
- [Michael] Even more depressing,
Santa seems to only care about Rudolph's return
and so far as it benefits his mission.
With Rudolph's father out looking for him,
Santa will be down a worker come Christmas.
- Christmas Eve is only two days off,
and without your father I'll never be able
to get my sleigh off the ground.
- [Michael] And maybe most depressingly still,
Rudolph is only hailed as a hero when the very nose
that he was vilified for becomes socially useful.
Suddenly, Rudolph goes from being a
non-productive body to being a hero.
- I knew that nose would be useful someday.
I knew it all along.
- [Michael] Rudolph's transformation from scorned misfit
to savior of Christmas,
can best be understood as a rehabilitation.
Or what Mitchell and Snyder call,
a productive process of recovery,
leading to a return to employment
and the activities of civic life.
In other words, rehabilitation amounts to
an economic transformation.
And it's one that all the misfits undergo in this film.
For example, Yukon Cornelius claims that he's
reformed the now toothless Abominable Snow Monster.
- I reformed this bumble.
He wants a job.
(bell dings)
(everyone cheers)
- [Michael] Once the scourge of the North,
now the monster is toothless and capable
of being assimilated into the biopolitical order.
And then there are the misfit toys.
After Santa confidently promises to find children
who would want to play with them.
- Rudolph I promise, as soon as this storm let's up,
I'll find homes for all those misfit toys.
- [Michael] The misfit toys see an elevation
in their social status.
In short, because Santa decreed it so, they're wanted again.
And as such, they're reintroduced into society.
- Well, let's be on our way.
- [Michael] And finally, there's Hermey.
Who finds himself rehabilitated when the head elf,
apparently realizing that cavities are a thing,
allows him to open his own dental practice.
- I better set up an appointment for you
a week from Tuesday.
- This then is the logic of biopolitics.
Expel the non-productives or at least abandon them.
If you can, normalize them.
Take away their teeth and rough edges
so they can become a productive member of society.
However society defines that.
But biopower is a technology.
And one that's always shifting.
So yes, your tooth fetish might've made you
a freak a few months ago,
but now that we can put it to use, welcome aboard.
The same applies to Rudolph's nose,
which once they realize it can help Santa
navigate the snow storm, suddenly becomes highly valuable.
It reflects the ongoing process in the real world,
in which behaviors and attributes that were once labeled
deviant can be assimilated into the productive order.
People once thought, incorrectly,
that gay people were a threat to the social fabric.
Particularly in the army.
But once the military realized,
that they can be drone pilots too,
inclusion became a strength.
And so, like Rudolph's red nose,
different categories of so-called deviants
can be accepted into the social order
on account of their differences.
But what do you guys think?
Is Christmas Town actually a utopia
where everyone can contribute with their own unique traits?
Or is this classic Christmas tale actually
a grim demonstration of how biopower functions
in the modern world?
Let us know in the comments.
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And as always, thanks for watching.
Later.
(upbeat music)