It's a Wond— Well, It's a Life
Around this time last year, I marked the holiday season with a jaundiced essay on Christmas movies, including It's a Wonderful Life:
Don't get me wrong: I like Wonderful Life--the dance contest, the romance, the seductive mystery of Violet Bick. But isn't there something a little oppressive about it? To me, a former small-town kid, it's a tragedy, about a man whose dreams are beaten down by his needy, parochial, busybody neighbors. I want to yell at the screen, "You go on that honeymoon, George Bailey! Tell that cabdriver to floor it and never look back!"
Today's New York Times one-ups me with a brilliant piece (by a Wonderful Life lover) detailing the movie's truly dark vision:
Soon enough, though, the darkness sets in. George's brother, Harry (Todd Karns), almost drowns in a childhood accident; Mr. Gower, a pharmacist, nearly poisons a sick child; and then George, a head taller than everyone else, becomes the pathetic older sibling creepily hanging around Harry's high school graduation party. That night George humiliates his future wife, Mary (Donna Reed), by forcing her to hide behind a bush naked, and the evening ends with his father's sudden death.
Disappointments pile up. George can't go to college because of his obligation to run the Bailey Building and Loan, and instead sends Harry. But Harry returns a slick, self-obsessed jerk, cannily getting out of his responsibility to help with the family business, by marrying a woman whose dad gives him a job. George again treats Mary cruelly, this time by chewing her out and bringing her to tears before kissing her. It is hard to understand precisely what she sees in him.
Author Wendell Jamieson also notes that in real life, George Bailey probably would have had to do prison time even after paying back the missing $8,000, and that by having been born—and eventually preserving Bedford Falls' manufacturing-based economy—he probably doomed his hometown to decades of future industrial decline, which would have been prevented had it gone the Pottersville route of investing in the gambling and "entertainment" businesses. Merry Christmas!
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1
And people wonder why many people hate the New York Times.
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Seriously, what a fundamentally flawed, obviously biased, and blatantly incorrect piece. I mean, I appreciate that we all can have different viewpoints and opinions after viewing a piece of art like It's a Wonderful Life, but Jamieson's piece is practically a Scrooge-like slanted screed against cherished values like forgiveness, sacrifice, giving unto others, love of family, patriotism, and loyalty.
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I rarely, if ever, have been more angered by an article, and an author's completely oblivious (or downright willful) overlooking of the opposing view -- one cherished and respected, quite frankly, by the vast majority of people who are not as misanthropic as Mr. Jamieson appears to be. -
2
@Chaddogg: Couldn't disagree more. I have always hated IAWL and have never understood the "timeless classic"ness of it. George Bailey has that awful combination of whiny martyrdom with self-centeredness. It needs to be taken down a notch or two.
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3
"Self-centeredness"? This is a guy that (1) held his family together thru the death of his father, (2) provided for his mother, (3) sacrificed so that his younger brother could go to college, (4) stood up, as a boy, to his employer and prevented him from accidentally killing someone, (5)eschewed the easy dollar and the easy way out by not selling to Potter, who he knew would never allow hard-working people to buy homes, (6)kept a savings and loan operating thru the Great Depression....
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I mean, WHERE in all that is the self-centeredness? In fact, the point of the movie was that George Bailey was the LEAST self-centered person alive, and because of that, he had gained a gift more precious than money -- friends, family, respect, and honor -- so that when he faced a tough time, they could come together to save him. Is George at times whiny? Yes -- but the point of the movie was to show him that AT THAT TIME his priorities were wrong. Money (or him not being there) wouldn't have solved a single thing, and would have made him miserable, because he KNEW how the town, his friends, Mary, etc. all turned out if he had not been the generous, responsible, sacrificing, hard-working person he had been. -
4
If anyone's interested, for further discussion--don't ask how I found this--here's a blog post contrasting George Bailey and The Fountainhead's Howard Roark:
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http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/004145.html
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Why is it that architecture is the universal career symbol for extreme individualism, anyway? Most architects I know find for better or worse they have to work extremely collaboratively. Maybe I should direct this to Richard Lacayo at Looking Around. -
5
Maybe I'm being hard on George Bailey, but when you spend the rest of your life resenting the people you gave up your dreams for to the point that you are contemplating suicide, you're not really being selfless. I'm just not thrilled with how he treated the people close to him when the chips were down.
Nope, it'll take the Muppet Christmas Carol to bring warmth into my icy-cold heart.
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6
My main experience with It's A Wonderful Life, aside from disjointed portions, was with it on mute while playing Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" (along the lines of the Dark Side of Oz phenom, with less success). It's probably one of the most depressing experiences I've had, in terms of emotional poignancy, because it combines George's miserable childhood and life (aside from the ending, of course) with music about intense cynicism and longing, a longing that is present in the film but really gets accentuated with the music.
I think Lulu Lulu's referring more to the liberal "look at me driving a hybrid" self-centeredness, where doing the right thing leads to sanctimony and pride. I think it might be a tad off, but I think it's also wrong to deny that there are selfish motives in "doing the right thing" (avoiding guilt, the self-satisfaction of matyrdom, etc). However, I'd say that George doesn't really seem to experience much positive from doing the right thing, though. One night, perhaps, in thousands, but as one of those articles mentioned, on Dec. 26 it's going to go back to the way things were Dec. 24 . So... Merry Christmas?
@James: I really want to ask you how you found that. It was quite an interesting post indeed.
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7
@deepfrieddm: OK, it actually wasn't as mysterious as all that. I was wondering if Frank Capra ever intended George Bailey and IAWL as any kind of rejoinder to The Fountainhead. So I Googled it, and came across that post.
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8
Late to the party here. But I tend to disagree with the jaundiced cynics above, and see Bailey as a willing (if sometimes depressive or emotional) regular guy/local hero. It's hard for *any* idealist to shelve their personal ambitions for the common good. Did my own blog about his "maturity", over here: http://markingtime4now.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/modern-maturity-aka-george-bailey-lassos-life/
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