You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch 12/22/2004 01:53 AM

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Last week I was having coffee with my coworkers and used the word 'grinchly' in a sentence which drew a completely unexpected quizzical look. Finland, and the rest of Europe, gets a seeming never ending stream of American TV, movies and, printed matter so, having been spoiled by Jarkko who has a near encyclopaedic recall for the more random bits of American pop culture, I was totally flabbergasted that Dr. Seuss had never made it this far north. I was also rather happy to find a rare chink in Jarkko's knowledge, but why couldn't that have been the Love Boat or some other lame 70s show instead of one of my most cherished authors? :)

A couple of people in the office today mentioned that the Grinch would be on TV tonight which made me nearly squeak with glee as that Christmas special, in the long tradition of Christmas TV specials in the US, still has a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, it is the Jim Carrey abomination rather than How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the 1966 animated TV edition with Boris Karloff narrating. I'm really quite sorry that anyone would have their first exposure to this charming classic with the modern version which has little of the original verse or story. Instead of the subtle, clever tale of Christmas gone mad, the movie strips it of any charm and dumbs it down so much that even the most slow of us would find the moral quite overwhelmingly obvious. I'm actually really pissed off that this movie even exists as it shamlessly savages something sacrosanct. Just imagine Jim Carrey deciding to adapt the Moomin stories....

I suspect that How the Grinch Stole Christmas and the corpus of Dr. Seuss hasn't been translated because of the difficult poetic verse and, perhaps, lack of cultural interest, but if Finland can import all the crap reality TV shows Finns can handle why not something every American grows up with and still thinks fondly of well into old age?. Finns would, I suspect, greatly enjoy the story about The Lorax with its trees and the Once-ler. The stories; their clever language and verse are a joy to read alone or aloud and always evoke memories of a time when I was younger and Christmas specials didn't suck quite so much with their overdone special effects and simplified scripts to make it mindnumbingly dull for kids.

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