For Everything But...'s November/December 2020 issue, I designed and lead the whole publication, while also writing a piece about 'The Santa Clause.' The story in original format can be found here.
For years, we’ve shrugged off the 1994 Christmas blockbuster, The Santa Clause, as a fun movie prior to Tim Allen’s problematic tweets and his replacement by Chris Evans as Buzz Lightyear in the upcoming Pixar release, Lightyear. In my case, I thought the movie was just the reason why I still have trouble spelling ‘Santa Claus,’ but that was the only beef I had with it. But upon rewatching, I think we’ve been avoiding the dark truth about the film for quite some time: While the film does have puppets, flying reindeer, and a fuck ton of hot cocoa; it also features capital M: Murder.
The film starts innocently—as these things always do. Scott Calvin’s (Tim Allen) workplace, B&R Toys, is holding an office party to celebrate the holidays while also praising Calvin and the rest of the Midwest Marketing and Distribution Team on a successful release of Do-It-All-For-You-Dolly (whose jingle goes “Don’t you burp me. Don’t you change me. I’m the dolly,” which, on one hand, is kind of stupid because what the hell are you supposed to do with the doll? But on the other hand, it does teach kids about consent and saying “no.”) Then, Scott is easily kicked out of the running for “Father of the Year” by pretending to get stuck in traffic to make up for being late to host his son, Charlie (Eric Lloyd), for Christmas Eve.
While this is all happening, we see these strange elf spies investigating his town. Keep in mind that Scott Calvin is not Santa yet and it’s literally Christmas Eve, so these elves should be otherwise occupied. Should be. If they weren’t… up to something.
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