Father of a Superdetective
So Mrs. Wright and I have settled down on the day before Christmas Eve, (the antepenultimate Day of Christmas, 4th Sunday in Advent) with the three children (Orville age 9, Roland 7, Juss 4) to watch the Rankin and Bass RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER. Two comments from the kids I thought were interesting. The first was that my eldest, Orv, did not know what stop-motion animation was. He knew we were looking at puppets, but he could not see how they were being moved, or why they moved in such a jerky Ray Harryhausen way. I should not have been surprised, except that sometimes you forget what children know or notice, and what they don’t.
Remember this guy? Too busy studying dentistry to learn important elf-skills like wiggling his ears? Well, my four-year-old pointed out something that I had not noticed in 35-some-odd years of watching this Christmas Special. Little Juss points at the screen and says, “He doesn’t have elf ears. He’s not an elf.”
It was true. All the other elves had noses shaped like doorknobs, were bald, and Vulcan-eared. Most of them have little black beads for eyes rather than showing a pupil like a human eye.
Same species? We report, you decide.
The grim truth was borne home. Hermie is a Changling, one of those humans kidnapped at birth and swapped for a an elf-cub by malignant Svartalfar. Check out the picture above. Hermie is clearly a homo sapiens; Celebrimbor the Artificer there is clearly a Noldor of the house of Feanor, who of all elves was the proudest and most selfwilled.
Hermie the Dentist, victim of Human Trafficking! No wonder he does not fit in.
Shocking. I never noticed–it took a four year old to point it out to me.
Merry Christmas to all! Peace on Earth, good will toward Men!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
