There are things to like about Christmas -- if you don't venture out onto the street anytime between Black Friday and Epiphany, and don't listen to any seasonal music composed in the last hundred years or so.
I have an old friend -- an instinctive Lefty like you and me -- who nevertheless shamelessly acknowledges that his favorite movie of all time is "It's a wonderful life." Makes me want to shake him. I've always hated this movie, and every year I hate it more.
George Bailey is recalled to life because he's told that his life was in fact useful -- not pleasurable, or divinely ordained for reasons beyond our understanding, but drearily useful. So Clarence the angel is a stand-in for Jeremy Bentham's mummy.
The only authentic moment in the whole ninety minutes is when George tells his daughter to stop playing her monotonous tune on the piano. Anybody with kids has, like, SO been there.
Pelion upon Ossa: Our hero is a banker -- a banker, fer Baby Jesus' sake. His great contribution is that he's turned some poor hapless working people into "homeowners" -- with a mortage, of course.
For all his bourgeois sorrows -- he doesn't get the European tour, he has to worry about the bank examiner -- the guy doesn't even lose his big spacious Victorian house with its WBFP's.
On the other hand, perhaps being married to Donna Reed is punishment enough even for a banker.
The only funny bit, to my way of thinking, is that if George had died, Donna would have ended up as a... librarian! But then of course, one has to wonder: what other poor shrivelled creature became the librarian instead?
Comments (8)
this loving screed
is by father timeless hizseff
why i on occasion get fingered to take the glory
i suspect is an act of unconcious generosity
Posted by op | December 24, 2010 7:03 AM
Posted on December 24, 2010 07:03
I guess it's OK for something that's hopelessly, mindlessly optimistic and unreal -- still, I've always checked it out because I'm a big Jimmy Stewart fan -- but certainly not worth all the massive hype and fawning it's gotten, especially over the past twenty or thirty years.
I started noticing around the mid/late '80s it suddenly seemed to become really "hip" to watch It's A Wonderful Life at Christmas. I tried really hard to get into it, but not even Jimmy Stewart could make me like it as hugely as I'm supposed to. It just looked to me like empty cinematic comfort food, a big ol' slab of totally non-existent Reagan America. I've always preferred something a little more realistic, such as Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, for my traditional Christmas movie.
This year, though, I've been strongly considering trying to start a new Christmas movie tradition: an annual Christmas Eve telecast of Inglorious Basterds. Seriously, man -- Jimmy Stewart, Charlie Brown, Rudolph, Burl Ives, fuck that shit. I think that because everybody's attitude these days seems to be "fuck you", why bother with sweet, touchy-feely Christmas entertainment when you can just show Inglorious Basterds -- a real "fuck you" picture -- on Christmas Eve?
Posted by Mike Flugennock | December 24, 2010 9:29 AM
Posted on December 24, 2010 09:29
"why bother with sweet, touchy-feely Christmas entertainment when you can just show Inglorious Basterds -- a really fucking terrible picture -- on Christmas Eve?"
fixed
Posted by FB | December 24, 2010 9:42 AM
Posted on December 24, 2010 09:42
I'm always surprised that Wonderful Life has become so popular in my lifetime, after apparently tanking at the box office when it first came out. Its core message is actually pretty sad for an American "hit" movie: you'll work your ass off forever and still never get the enemy off your back. You'll never have everything you wanted, Sucker. But we love you for trying.
In adulthood, John Huston's The Dead is more to my taste for Christmas Eve viewing. The grownups are frantic in order to cover up how sad they are deep down, but the food looks good and the furniture looks comfortable. Sort of reminds me of my own elders, even though I've got no experience at all in being either Irish or Catholic.
Posted by ms_xeno | December 24, 2010 9:41 PM
Posted on December 24, 2010 21:41
Can't say it's one of my favorites, either, but I can sit through almost any film if it's old black and white.. Columbia serials, Monogram poverty row flicks with Lugosi or Karloff, mawkish stuff to be sure when it's not outright stupid, but I do enjoy watching great character actors work through crap material. One of the sheer joys of Christmas break is just sitting on one's ass and taking in stuff that asks for little to no thought. "It's a Wonderful Life" rates for me in that regard, sheer laziness and cornball bliss. A guilty pleasure. On with the show. I usually work up to Hammer horror in gory color by New Year's Eve, nothing is politically blessed. No thinking. None. It's great.
And in that light, I found a handful of old Oscar Micheaux films from the 1930s and 1940s in a budget bin in the wilds of Perth Amboy this holiday season, a buck apiece. Clarence Muse, an adult Stymie Beard, Louis Jordan. Early black film. Roll 'em, boys. Total bliss.
Posted by Michael Hureaux | December 25, 2010 10:35 AM
Posted on December 25, 2010 10:35
Completely off-topic but this site's been dormant so I'm allowing myself.
Today on Twitter, Glenn Greenwald called Dianne Feinstein's marriage to her military contractor husband
an inseparable two-headed beast - feeding itself money and political influence in a rotted symbiosis
And pointed to this Ralph Steadman cartoon for visual illustration:
http://www.signatureillustration.org/illustration-blog/wp-content/Ralph-Steadman-2.jpg
I thought that was pretty fucking awesome.
Posted by tarzie | December 27, 2010 5:58 PM
Posted on December 27, 2010 17:58
Greenwald is not that popular with the readership here, but I kinda like him. Yes, he has that lawyerly miss-priss constitution-worship thing going, but even so, there's a note of saeva indignatio in his stuff that rings a bell for me.
Posted by MJS | December 27, 2010 6:17 PM
Posted on December 27, 2010 18:17
I am not inclined to putting folks in good and bad columns unless they irredeemably suck.
in any event, it's the Steadman pic that sold it for me.
Posted by tarzie | December 27, 2010 6:38 PM
Posted on December 27, 2010 18:38