Nutcracker Assaults Peanut

(From the Archives)

“(It’s) … possibly the creepiest — and highest-profile — manifestation of the character.”

W

hen midnight comes to a household on Christmas Eve, strange things happen in “The Nutcracker.” A young girl, Clara, shrinks in size, household toys come to life, and a wooden nutcracker takes up arms against giant mice. Even today, many find this an enchanting idea, and companies market its main character, despite the oddity of the story itself. In the commercial below, for example, a fictional rivalry between the nutcracker, a fallen hero, and Mr. Peanut ®, takes center stage.

 

 

The nutcracker is not a hero here, and he does not save the day nor marry the damsel in distress. Here he is a loser. A creep who no one would want around their children, unlike in the ballet, where he escorts a favored Goddaughter on a winter journey. In some performances, it goes even further—he kisses her (a peer), which is how the story’s author, E.T.A. Hoffmann, wanted it. He wanted a happy-ever-after ending for his tale about a mouse king and a Christmas gift, a nutcracker.

 

Unfortunately, none of this history remains in this modern take, although it still highlights German Romanticism, but not as intended. German Romantics never tired of praising the virtues of chaos and confusion, which Hoffmann desired, but his model had a purpose. In “Der Sandmann: Reflection and Romantic Irony,” Maria Tatar highlighted this need for awareness. 

 

Today, our hero is a marketing tool, an antihero who attacks Mr. Peanut ®. He does apologize but then reverts to his compulsive behavior again. Why? Because he cracks nuts, which is cute but problematic. It erodes our understanding of  history, how fairytales work, and the mythos behind their telling. The character has nothing to do with the proper balance of life, relationships, or anything else. The meaning behind it and other stories’ complex, interwoven histories sells products.

 

Adam Tschorn, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, wrote in “Holiday Trends: Nuts for the Nutcracker” that the time-honored story had been exploited, nothing more. It was, he said, “ ... possibly the creepiest—and highest-profile—manifestation of the of the character (Planters’ new Mr. Peanut ad campaign), in which ‘Richard Stevens’ crashes the Christmas party with a six-pack of root beer and briefly apologizes for his past boorish behavior (whatever transgression it was—and we can only guess...).”

 

The commercial hasn’t aired for several seasons, but E.T.A. Hoffmann originally created the character in 1816. His story chronicles a battle between Clara’s dolls (Marie, in German) and mice coming out to feed on Christmas Eve. It is here where Clara’s favorite toy comes to life, leading other dolls into battle against the mice and their monstrous seven-headed Mouse King. Because he wins, “The Nutcracker” is a hero, and even though many haven’t read the story or seen the ballet, the toy soldier, a red nutcracker, is a holiday tradition.

Why is a soldier allowed to lead a girl around in her nightgown? It’s a dream. But more importantly, they’re peers.

H

ow Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” (“Nussknacker und Mausekönig”) went from a children’s Christmas story to a classical ballet is remarkable. Bradley E. Maxwell, on his website, the Nutcrackerballet, praised the ballet, which was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre of Russia, and later in America when the San Francisco Ballet staged a full-scale performance on Christmas Eve in 1944. Given this history, it is easy to see why commercialization is seen unfavorably.

 

Turning the iconic character into a commercial isn’t a big deal for most of us, especially given the nutcracker’s desire to crack Mr. Peanut’s ^® outer shell. (Calm down, Richard, okay?) But the juxtaposition of hero and villain of this iconic character cheapens traditions.

 

Hoffmann’s original story was bizarre, for sure, but Jack Zipes, who wrote the introduction to Penguin Classics’ translation, said the author’s goal was to keep childhood wonder alive until we pass from this life. Remembering the wonder of the world and creation should never be forgotten. Simply, the enchanting story kept going and going in a good way.

 

According to Nutcrackerballet, Marius Petipa decided to choreograph the story into a ballet (it is based on a revision of Hoffmann’s original novel by Alexander Dumas). Petipa’s version reflected more of what the public has come to love about Hoffmann’s work. Petipa and Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky turned Dumas’ adaptation into a beloved family classic. The only difference is that automatons were prominent in society when it was written, and fables instructive. Still, why was a soldier allowed to lead a girl around in her nightgown?

 

 

The answer is it was a dream, but more importantly, they were peers who transcended the unknown of childhood and lived happily ever after. The story had purpose and aimed to help children cope and survive into safe and healthy adulthood, never forgetting their foundational roots. In her paper, Der Sandmann, Tatar said that Sigmund Freud admired and wrote about Hoffmann’s work. It is true that in “The Uncanny,” Freud focused on what made readers uneasy, which can still be found in some productions of the ballet. But even this had a purpose.

 

 

For example, the word for uncanny in German is “unheimlich,” which means both the familiar and the unfamiliar. In English, unheimlich is translated as uncanny, said wiki.uiowa.edu. Thus, Freud’s “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” explores an age-old duality of give or take, in harm’s way or not, and even Yin and Yang.

 

This undersatnding of duality, Freud believed, gives us a measure of control in our lives. “Fort/da,” for example, which in German, basically means means "go away/come back." "Fort/da" was Freud’s name for a game played by his 18-month-old grandson. The little boy had a cotton reel which he would repeatedly throw, exclaiming ‘Oo’ as he did so, forcing his mother to retrieve it, at which he would utter an appreciative ‘Ah’. These noises, Fried believed, where babyish approximations of ‘fort’, meaning ‘gone’, and ‘da’, meaning ‘there’. In other words, Go away! Come back!

 

It is like running to hide from a mouse king, not because you want to, but because you have to, forever wishing to return to the way it once was. Children play this game all the time. A significance that Freud outlined in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920) shows how the child transformed an unhappy situation, one in which he (or she) had no control, into a happy one where the child was back in control. In this case, a parent’s running to get a thrown object and returning it, which, as we all know, doesn’t last for long. Neither mom nor dad will play that game for long, but it is foundational.

 

The idea behind fables, then? The understanding that they are there to read (or watch) and learn from, always with a happy ending (usually) an innate behavior that has nothing to do with sex or hangups. Instead, it is an understanding of the foundation of creation: fight and flight, heaven and hell, Yin and Yang.

 

“Richard” is not a compulsive, brawling schizophrenic in a bar, but a hero from the past.

And that’s why traditionalists like Adam Tschorn didn’t find the commercial enchanting. Nor is Clara’s marriage to the nutcracker, who comes to life in the original story, uncanny. “Life without the imagination in Hoffmann’s tales,” Zipes said, is “traced in the mechanical behavior of those ‘deadened’ adults who want to regulate the lives of children, or in adults who have been traumatized because they cannot use their imaginations to gain appropriate recognition of their identities and the control they have in their destinies.

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“Only by introducing disruptive and extraordinary characters like Drosselmeier, so Hoffmann believed, will children have a chance to glimpse the different worlds and alternatives to their lives that have already been chartered and prescribed before they were born.” 

 

 

In other words, it's all about wisdom.

 

 

Some of the old-time fables are not G-Rated. Drosselmeyer, Clara’s Godfather, is a clockmaker and inventor in the original. Unfortunately, in many productions, he becomes an over-the-top weirdo, commanding the snow, and even becoming a black magician. This can be frightening, and it is sometimes challenging to see Drosselmeyer as a legitimate part of the story (the disturbing imagery in the original is worse).

 

Still, history and understanding help children learn for themselves when they are ready. They know that “Richard” is not a compulsive, brawling schizophrenic in a bar, for example, but a hero from the past. He fought evil, journeyed to distant lands, and lived happily ever after, which has nothing to do with selling anything. And that alone is worth the price of admission.