Rudolph and the way popularity works

[Raphael]

I had originally planned to post this in December, but I'm just too curious if anyone will comment on it, and if so, what they will say, so here it goes:

I've been thinking a bit lately about that notoriously overplayed classic Christmas song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". Specifically, about the lyrics of the song. More specifically, the ending of the lyrics. So Santa has Rudolph guide the sleigh with his red nose, and as a result, all the other reindeer, the ones who used to laugh at Rudolph and call him names, suddenly start to love him?

Err, in my experience, if everyone else in a group hates one specific person, and then someone in a position of authority does that person a special favor, it will generally make everyone else in the group hate that person even more. Ok, we're talking about fictional semi-anthropomorphic reindeer here, whose psychology might work differently than that of real-life human beings, but still.

Somewhat related, but probably a bit more seriously, there are the lyrics of a 1990s US rock song called "Popular", by Nada Surf. The song is about a stereotypical high school popular kid, and at various points, the singer sings about the various ways in which he's popular. What confuses me is that at one point he sings "I'm a teachers' pet".

Um, what? At the schools that I went to, being perceived as a teachers' pet was about the most effective way to become unpopular.

So this is all very confusing for me.

[Ares Land]

I think you're overthinking it Rudolph is supposed to be cute and edifying. Popular is supposed to reflect teenage angst. Neither's going to be too deep.
(I loved Nada Surf back in high school but I had completely forgotten about them.)

In my experience, though, you may be too pessimistic. People at work will often respect someone who's genuinely good at his jobs, or brings valuable skills. Nobody likes a brown-noser though.

Teenagers can be immature and stupid. But I remember that the teachers were themselves pretty nasty to the kids that were being bullied. I remember a particularly obnoxious example of a teachers' pet... but he was actually fairly popular.
We had problems at my collège (= middle school) and lycée (= high school) but on the whole they were definitely not as nasty and cliqueish as American high schools are depicted in pop culture. (I hope actual American high schools are decent places!)

[Raphael]

I think you're overthinking it Rudolph is supposed to be cute and edifying. Popular is supposed to reflect teenage angst. Neither's going to be too deep.

True enough, but my impression is that many people, myself included, usually expect some basic minimum psychological plausibility even from works that don't have any other kind of plausibility, and that aren't particularly deep.

In my experience, though, you may be too pessimistic. People at work will often respect someone who's genuinely good at his jobs, or brings valuable skills. Nobody likes a brown-noser though.

Oh, I'd say that's not that different from the point that I was making.

I remember a particularly obnoxious example of a teachers' pet... but he was actually fairly popular.

Now that genuinely surprises me.

We had problems at my collège (= middle school) and lycée (= high school) but on the whole they were definitely not as nasty and cliqueish as American high schools are depicted in pop culture. (I hope actual American high schools are decent places!)

On the topic of "differences between our own schools and those depicted in US pop culture", I can mainly think of two:

1) US pop culture usually depicts the social life of students as determined by official school institutions. You're popular if you're on the football team or the cheerleading squad, and who you hang out with is determined by what teams, clubs, or other institutions you belong to. Well, at my school, official school institutions had basically no influence on how popular students were, and relatively little influence on who they hung out with.

2) US pop culture sometimes depicts unpopularity as something that's "catching". That is, if an unpopular kid tries to throw a party, and you're one of the three people who show up for it, you will become unpopular, too, no matter how popular or unpopular you were before. Ok, that doesn't fit with my own experiences at all. In my last few years of school, I was friends with some kids who were a good deal more popular than I was, and as far as I could tell (I might, of course, have missed some subtle clues), the fact that they were friends with me never hurt their own popularity in any way. (Generally speaking, the informal clique with which I usually hung out during those years was a weird mix of some more and some a good deal less popular kids, so according to the stereotypes in US pop culture, it shouldn't have existed.)

[Ares Land]

Same here.
Extracurricular activities here are mostly a few clubs to keep the kids busy. Nobody cares who's in it.

[Moose-tache]

I think you're missing the point of the song. Santa doesn't do Rudolph a favor. Rudolph does him a favor. Rudolph demonstrates usefulness in accomplishing a group task. If we want to relate it to childhood behavior, it would be more like a youth soccer coach recruiting the kid with weird hands to be goalie, and the kid is immediately amazing at it.

[linguistcat]

I have to agree with Moose-tache. It's not Santa doing the favor, and if Rudolph hadn't done the favor for Santa, then none of the reindeer would have been able to do their jobs/what they enjoy either. Tho then the moral sounds like "differences will make you reviled until you make them useful to others." Which, not great either?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

We aren't meant to read too much into it I'm sure, but the song does have a really terrible moral.

[zompist]

On the topic of "differences between our own schools and those depicted in US pop culture", I can mainly think of two:

1) US pop culture usually depicts the social life of students as determined by official school institutions. You're popular if you're on the football team or the cheerleading squad, and who you hang out with is determined by what teams, clubs, or other institutions you belong to.

Not quite— being on a sports team is important, nothing else is. E.g. I was on speech team and the school newspaper, and that affected who I hung out with, but no one outside those interests cared. Pop culture uses these things not as determiners but as signifiers: the nerd is in the chess club so you know he's a nerd.

2) US pop culture sometimes depicts unpopularity as something that's "catching". That is, if an unpopular kid tries to throw a party, and you're one of the three people who show up for it, you will become unpopular, too, no matter how popular or unpopular you were before.

I think the unreality here is showing the unpopular kids hanging out together. In my experience, unpopular kids don't want to be with each other, they want to be with the popular kids. Showing them befriending each other is the screenwriter pushing their own later realization on them— "why didn't I just make friends with Ratso and tell the jocks to go to hell?"

(I exaggerate a little, but the thing is, people are often unpopular because they're undersocialized; they lack the social skills to make friends, and they easily absorb the prejudices of those around them. This often persists into later life in dating: it just doesn't occur to many nerds to date other nerds.)

[Moose-tache]

Tho then the moral sounds like "differences will make you reviled until you make them useful to others." Which, not great either?

I think the morals are "differences can be gifts" and "achievement brings social reward," which aren't terrible things to teach children. We're never told that it's acceptable that the other reindeer are assholes before Rudolph demonstrates his talents, just that they can no longer maintain that behavior once he smokes them all at sleigh-guiding.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

However, they're very easily forgiven, and don't get any comeuppance for their bad behaviour.

[hwhatting]

However, they're very easily forgiven, and don't get any comeuppance for their bad behaviour.

Well, that's so because it's meant to be a story with a happy ending, in the Christmas spirit, and not a dark revenge fantasy. Rudolph is the kid that dreams of doing something great and everybody will love them, not the kid that dreams "they will one day all grovel before me".

being on a sports team is important

And I think that's the big difference to Europe - in Germany at least, school sports by far don't have the importance they have in the U.S,, with school and university teams playing against each other and being a big part of a school's identity. There is sports as a subject, and sometimes there are circles for specific sports at schools, but most students who actively do sports do it in clubs outside school, and sports identies are much more connected to cities / towns / neighbourhoods than to schools.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

However, they're very easily forgiven, and don't get any comeuppance for their bad behaviour.

Well, that's so because it's meant to be a story with a happy ending, in the Christmas spirit, and not a dark revenge fantasy. Rudolph is the kid that dreams of doing something great and everybody will love them, not the kid that dreams "they will one day all grovel before me".

I know it isn't meant to be dark, and I don't think such a song would be appropriate; I simply think this one happens to have multiple bad messages and that this fantasy isn't particularly healthy.

[Raphael]

being on a sports team is important

And I think that's the big difference to Europe - in Germany at least, school sports by far don't have the importance they have in the U.S,, with school and university teams playing against each other and being a big part of a school's identity. There is sports as a subject, and sometimes there are circles for specific sports at schools, but most students who actively do sports do it in clubs outside school, and sports identies are much more connected to cities / towns / neighbourhoods than to schools.

Oh, I'd say at German schools, the more athletic kids are usually higher in the pecking order than the less athletic kids, too, it's just that it's because of the direct impact their athleticism has on their looks and physical strength, not because of their position on some team.

A factor here is, I think, the fact that most Germans live close enough to a major city to regularly attend games of the professional sports teams there if that's what they're into. In the USA, there are large stretches of land where the next city with a major league sports team is so far away that it would be highly impractical to regularly attend games there. So, since adult amateur sports for some reason apparently never got far in the US, in those places, if you're into attending sports events live, school sports are often all that's available.

[hwhatting]

Oh, I'd say at German schools, the more athletic kids are usually higher in the pecking order than the less athletic kids, too, it's just that it's because of the direct impact their athleticism has on their looks and physical strength, not because of their position on some team.

Sure. Physical strength and good looks are an advantage in almost all settings, even if to different degrees.