You better watch out: Break out the tinfoil hats, Christmas is a-coming!
I've finally emerged from my world of darkness. Or rather, my world of endless, forever present-preparation. I was kinda wrapped up in presents. But they are finally off to the States! (Post Office vultures...)
So to get in the Christmas Eve spirit last night, I watched "The Santa Clause" for the first time in years.
Mostly for Bernard. (onlymesmerized this is all your fault.)
I love his jewelry.
Buttons!
I was intrigued by the elves a number of times in this movie because there was so much left a mystery about them.
A. THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE NEW SANTA AND JUDY, A FEMALE ELF
From this conversation, we can posit several things:
1. Elves can have sex with Santa (ow my brain).
-Santa is obviously trying to use humor to combat his disbelief and insecurity about being landed in this crazy new place with all these strange little people. But Judy takes him seriously and thinks that he's actually coming on to her.
-Yet she doesn't say "Ewww, you're a human!" She doesn't make a face or shift away or do any of the things people do when taboos are broken.
-The reason she gives for her polite refusal of his apparent interest is that she's already in a relationship, not that it would be impossible for her and Santa to ever have a relationship.
This could mean that, culturally speaking:
a. Elves can have sex with humans.
b. Elves can have sex with Santa only among all humans.
c. Elves can have sex only with other elves.
The question needing to be answered here is: Is Santa an elf?
-When he asks who is the head elf, the elves say, "You are."
-He has magic now, changing his physical appearance. He uses elf magic later to drive the sleigh, come to Charlie, etc. But Charlie also uses the elf magic to call his dad with the snow globe and use the sleigh.
So is Santa simply possessed/affected by elf magic, or does he control it like an elf?
2. Elves live for a freaking long time.
Elves do not age, seem not to die of natural causes, and I wonder if you could kill them by means of physical harm. Are they invulnerable? Does their magic protect them from that as well?
If Santa is an elf now, it would follow that he could also live forever, and perhaps the old Santa's fall from the roof proves that elves can be killed by external trauma. This is only true, however, if one accepts that Santa is an elf, which I think the evidence casts into doubt. (Do we ever really see him in control of the magic? No, he is always tossed around and bullied by it. This might be because he is new and hasn't learned yet, true, but he still seems more human than elf.)
Judy has been around for at least 1200 years.
Where did the elves come from and why did they leave? Were they persecuted? Is the North Pole their Zion?
What came first, Christmas at the North Pole or elves at the North Pole? Did the elves invent Christmas?
For Judy, in the more-than-1200 years she's been alive, one of her most important accomplishments is to have perfected a good hot cocoa recipe. I mean really.
That just goes to show how different the elves' priorities are from our own. Christmas is paramount. Did they just stop caring about everything else out of self-protection, like an old retired general devoted to his gardening?
Have they lived all of those years in this insular community at the North Pole? God but I would be sick of those people after the first 200 years. And yet, Judy is still forming new relationships. She's "seeing someone in Wrapping," not married.
New relationships beg the question: Can the elves reproduce? If so, wouldn't the North Pole get a little crowded (not to mention highly incestuous) after a while?
B. ELF MAGIC AND TECHNOLOGY
1. Elves have innate magic.
-Bernard can appear and disappear at will. We see much evidence of their magic in the operation of the North Pole facility, the workings of the sleigh, and perhaps the reindeer's flight powers as well.
-Are elves really corporeal as we think of it? Maybe they're made entirely of magic, and that's why they don't age or die.
2. Elves use technology.
-The audience's first introduction to elves is when an elf punches in a code on the North Pole, opening the door to the facility.
-The jetpacks also seem technological.
-The toys they make, like the propeller planes and train set, work with children who don't use magic.
-One of the transportation options within the North Pole facility is a train that seems to operate like a regular train.
-Some of the sleigh accoutrements, like the anti-radar etc. seem technological.
Does their technology run on magic?
-The jetpacks and other technological things could be perfectly functional but have no fuel or power source - they could be running off magic as a power source.
Or are the elves in fact technomages?
-This would put a whole new spin on their magic usage. Bernard, instead of disappearing, would simply have mastered the elusive teleportation technology. Genetic engineering and nanoviruses could account for their eternal life and youth. Technology sufficiently complicated, after all, seems like magic.
Does elf technology come from human technology, adapted to work with their magic?
Or, more interestingly, does human technology come from the technomage elves? A physics book to a bright child here, a complicated mechanical toy to a future inventor there....
Alternatively, it could be argued that elves are a victim of their magic. Santa at the beginning doesn't want to be Santa. He doesn't want to have white hair or be fat or deliver presents. Yet he learns that he can't resist the magic that changes his appearance. And gradually he accepts his present-delivering role (because he is brainwashed by the magic?).
Maybe the elves started out similarly. Maybe they had their own culture and own individual desires, but they stumbled across the North Pole in their tribal wanderings of long ago, and were caught by the magic - this "Spirit of Christmas" - and could never leave. They were frozen in time, unable to age, unable to have children, unable to do anything but become the perfect servants to the "Spirit of Christmas."
Is this "Spirit of Christmas" in fact an insidious force that mindrapes Santa and the elves into serving IT above all things?
When Santa tries to rebel, to break free of his role, Bernard warns him in a room full of silently judgemental elves, "You wouldn't want to be responsible for killing the Spirit of Christmas, now would you?"
Is this "Christmas Spirit" actually a spirit, a demon (Buffyverse style), holding everyone in its thrall? Does it feed off our belief and adulation? Maybe its powers are blunted by the sheer number of people in the world, and it only can really capture those young, malleable minds for a time, but that's enough to keep it going.
In this view, "Christmas" amounts to nothing but a psychic parasite.
So, um... Merry Christmas everyone!
These are the things I think about when watching children's movies apparently. LOL.
Wow, how much do I love over-analyzing silly stuff? THIS MUCH. Ah, those bygone college days...
So to get in the Christmas Eve spirit last night, I watched "The Santa Clause" for the first time in years.
Mostly for Bernard. (onlymesmerized this is all your fault.)
I love his jewelry.
Buttons!
I was intrigued by the elves a number of times in this movie because there was so much left a mystery about them.
A. THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE NEW SANTA AND JUDY, A FEMALE ELF
From this conversation, we can posit several things:
1. Elves can have sex with Santa (ow my brain).
-Santa is obviously trying to use humor to combat his disbelief and insecurity about being landed in this crazy new place with all these strange little people. But Judy takes him seriously and thinks that he's actually coming on to her.
-Yet she doesn't say "Ewww, you're a human!" She doesn't make a face or shift away or do any of the things people do when taboos are broken.
-The reason she gives for her polite refusal of his apparent interest is that she's already in a relationship, not that it would be impossible for her and Santa to ever have a relationship.
This could mean that, culturally speaking:
a. Elves can have sex with humans.
b. Elves can have sex with Santa only among all humans.
c. Elves can have sex only with other elves.
The question needing to be answered here is: Is Santa an elf?
-When he asks who is the head elf, the elves say, "You are."
-He has magic now, changing his physical appearance. He uses elf magic later to drive the sleigh, come to Charlie, etc. But Charlie also uses the elf magic to call his dad with the snow globe and use the sleigh.
So is Santa simply possessed/affected by elf magic, or does he control it like an elf?
2. Elves live for a freaking long time.
Elves do not age, seem not to die of natural causes, and I wonder if you could kill them by means of physical harm. Are they invulnerable? Does their magic protect them from that as well?
If Santa is an elf now, it would follow that he could also live forever, and perhaps the old Santa's fall from the roof proves that elves can be killed by external trauma. This is only true, however, if one accepts that Santa is an elf, which I think the evidence casts into doubt. (Do we ever really see him in control of the magic? No, he is always tossed around and bullied by it. This might be because he is new and hasn't learned yet, true, but he still seems more human than elf.)
Judy has been around for at least 1200 years.
Where did the elves come from and why did they leave? Were they persecuted? Is the North Pole their Zion?
What came first, Christmas at the North Pole or elves at the North Pole? Did the elves invent Christmas?
For Judy, in the more-than-1200 years she's been alive, one of her most important accomplishments is to have perfected a good hot cocoa recipe. I mean really.
That just goes to show how different the elves' priorities are from our own. Christmas is paramount. Did they just stop caring about everything else out of self-protection, like an old retired general devoted to his gardening?
Have they lived all of those years in this insular community at the North Pole? God but I would be sick of those people after the first 200 years. And yet, Judy is still forming new relationships. She's "seeing someone in Wrapping," not married.
New relationships beg the question: Can the elves reproduce? If so, wouldn't the North Pole get a little crowded (not to mention highly incestuous) after a while?
B. ELF MAGIC AND TECHNOLOGY
1. Elves have innate magic.
-Bernard can appear and disappear at will. We see much evidence of their magic in the operation of the North Pole facility, the workings of the sleigh, and perhaps the reindeer's flight powers as well.
-Are elves really corporeal as we think of it? Maybe they're made entirely of magic, and that's why they don't age or die.
2. Elves use technology.
-The audience's first introduction to elves is when an elf punches in a code on the North Pole, opening the door to the facility.
-The jetpacks also seem technological.
-The toys they make, like the propeller planes and train set, work with children who don't use magic.
-One of the transportation options within the North Pole facility is a train that seems to operate like a regular train.
-Some of the sleigh accoutrements, like the anti-radar etc. seem technological.
Does their technology run on magic?
-The jetpacks and other technological things could be perfectly functional but have no fuel or power source - they could be running off magic as a power source.
Or are the elves in fact technomages?
-This would put a whole new spin on their magic usage. Bernard, instead of disappearing, would simply have mastered the elusive teleportation technology. Genetic engineering and nanoviruses could account for their eternal life and youth. Technology sufficiently complicated, after all, seems like magic.
Does elf technology come from human technology, adapted to work with their magic?
Or, more interestingly, does human technology come from the technomage elves? A physics book to a bright child here, a complicated mechanical toy to a future inventor there....
Alternatively, it could be argued that elves are a victim of their magic. Santa at the beginning doesn't want to be Santa. He doesn't want to have white hair or be fat or deliver presents. Yet he learns that he can't resist the magic that changes his appearance. And gradually he accepts his present-delivering role (because he is brainwashed by the magic?).
Maybe the elves started out similarly. Maybe they had their own culture and own individual desires, but they stumbled across the North Pole in their tribal wanderings of long ago, and were caught by the magic - this "Spirit of Christmas" - and could never leave. They were frozen in time, unable to age, unable to have children, unable to do anything but become the perfect servants to the "Spirit of Christmas."
Is this "Spirit of Christmas" in fact an insidious force that mindrapes Santa and the elves into serving IT above all things?
When Santa tries to rebel, to break free of his role, Bernard warns him in a room full of silently judgemental elves, "You wouldn't want to be responsible for killing the Spirit of Christmas, now would you?"
Is this "Christmas Spirit" actually a spirit, a demon (Buffyverse style), holding everyone in its thrall? Does it feed off our belief and adulation? Maybe its powers are blunted by the sheer number of people in the world, and it only can really capture those young, malleable minds for a time, but that's enough to keep it going.
In this view, "Christmas" amounts to nothing but a psychic parasite.
So, um... Merry Christmas everyone!
These are the things I think about when watching children's movies apparently. LOL.
Wow, how much do I love over-analyzing silly stuff? THIS MUCH. Ah, those bygone college days...