Posted on 12/29/2018 7:33:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There seems to be a blooming holiday tradition in certain circles to attack “It’s a Wonderful Life.” This year we have Michael Graham in the Boston Herald taking up the ill-considered assault on Frank Capra’s masterpiece.
Graham argues both that “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a bad film on a technical level and that its message is bad. His reason for saying it’s a bad film hinges on a claim that the plot makes no sense (“makes about as much sense as Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez explaining the defense budget” are Graham’s exact words) because Clarence didn’t simply tell George where his missing $8,000 went.
That’s his entire critique of the film from a technical perspective. The idea that the missing money is merely a catalyst for deeper matters amply established throughout the film, and that these issues of regret, self-loathing, and blindness might be considered more important to an angel sent from God, apparently didn’t occur to Graham. As we shall see, this is part and parcel of his whole perspective.
Having dismissed “It’s a Wonderful Life” on a technical level with a single ill-informed paragraph, he proceeds to tackle the film’s message. Graham’s position is that George’s life is “pretty awful” because he endures a lot of suffering, is unable to go to college or even on his honeymoon, and “his kids wear second-hand clothes and get sick from the cold…because George can’t afford nice things for his family.” Graham then claims the film’s vindication of George’s life “fails” because “his life still stinks. He’s not, in fact, rich or even financially secure…and on top of that, Potter gets to keep the eight grand!”
Thus, apparently, Graham’s definition of a good life is one in which we are “rich, or even financially secure,” able to do what we like, able to avoid suffering as much as possible, and perhaps one in which evil people are punished as well. He then rather absurdly goes on to claim that “It’s a Wonderful Life” represents socialist, New Deal-style economics, and that it was intended for “the workers at a Soviet collective circa 1949,” with the message “who cares that you have no shoes? Back to the factory for Mother Russia.”
Ironically, Graham’s view of the good life as defined primarily by material security and wellbeing is far closer to a socialist perspective than anything in the film. The foundational idea of Marxism is that the world is purely material, and therefore creating material security and equality for the most people is the highest good.
Judging by this op-ed, Graham would agree, but only dispute with a Marxist whether socialism or capitalism creates the most good for the most people. One thing with which a Marxist would never agree is that a man’s happiness is far more dependent on family, community, virtue, and so on than by his material well being.
This is a fundamental flaw in modern discourse for both conservatives and liberals: we focus so much on material issues, trying to work out a system that will make, as Graham says, “the best world for the most people,” that we don’t stop to ask what we mean by “the best world” or a “good life.” Both sides are making the exact same mistake even as they draw different conclusions: both accept the same basic philosophy, but disagree on its application.
Aristotle recognized this mistake 2,000 years ago, and so has every competent philosopher since. Yes, we need a certain baseline of material wellbeing to live, but that is not what makes a good life. A good life means living well— individual virtue, familial and communal harmony, meaningful occupation, and religious worship are the main points.
This harmonizes with Christianity, which added the elevation of self-sacrificial love as both the supreme individual virtue and a means to guard that material baseline of wellbeing and communal harmony. But a man doesn’t need to be rich or even “financially secure” (in truth such security is mostly illusionary anyway) in order to have a wonderful life.
This is traditional, Christian morality, and once upon a time it was this that was set in opposition to Marxism (as well as to the “Darwinist” form of capitalism espoused by Potter). This is the philosophy of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and indeed of all Capra’s films. It’s also the philosophy that conservatives ought to be advocating. Our focus on economic and material matters obscures our fundamental philosophical dispute with leftism, and it is precisely on the point that immaterial matters are far more important to a man’s life than his material wellbeing or social status.
Something Graham and others who describe the film as “socialist” seem to miss is that the Building and Loan is not a government organization supporting people in idleness, but a business offering loans to working men funded by the voluntary support of their neighbors. Charity is not socialism, and I beg conservatives to stop parroting the socialist lie that it is.
The message of the film is that a “wonderful life” is one spent in service to others, sacrificing oneself to help those in need. This, as the film demonstrates, not only makes their lives better, but strengthens and sustains the entire community. Men who are able to live with dignity, raise families, and operate businesses in peace create a community in which it is good to live, which in turn improves everyone’s lives, producing “a good life for the most people.” One wonderful life creates more wonderful lives.
Pottersville, meanwhile, is an image of the world selfish greed creates. That’s not the same thing as the kind of entrepreneurship that leads George’s friend Sam to become a millionaire plastics manufacturer, or that supports the likes of Mr. Martini in his small restaurant. It’s one where people’s interactions with each other are purely commercial, or else laced with suspicion and hostility.
The point isn’t that wealth or business is bad. The point is that making it the chief occupation and guiding hand of life leads to a dark and joyless world, and that the proper way to counteract it is through love, charity, and self-sacrifice. The contrasting goal is not an ordered, planned society, but a community of people pursuing their own lives in freedom and choosing to help each other along out of friendship and compassion.
George Bailey is “the richest man in town” because he has an abundance of what really matters: a loving family, loyal friends, a happy and healthy community, and meaningful work. And he has all of that because he chose time and again to sacrifice his desires for others. That’s the opposite of a socialist message— it is a Christian one, and we ought to be proclaiming it.
I watched a “the making of” video on IAWL on Youtube...it said that Frank Capra got mail for years about Potter keeping the money and not be called out for it.
The story was about a man realizing what he has, and how the world would have been very different without him in it.
It was not a crime novel about an old grouch stealing 8,000 dollars.
Liberals are going to find something wrong with everything...but I say, “let them pout”...I still enjoy IAWL every year.
It’s a “story”, not a DOCUMENTARY.
Just watched this beautiful movie after many years. Frank Capra was a wonderful filmmaker and James Stewart gives the performance of a lifetime. There are so many idiots out there writing and talking about films who are so ignorant. The appalling Never Trumper and film critic John Podhoretz just tweeted that he never found Laurel and Hardy funny. Someone who thinks that shouldn’t be let anywhere near film criticism - which used to be a respectable genre of writing.
Inciteful comments.
“If it represents American traditions as “good”, ATTACK IT!” must be a required course for today’s national press corpse.
I enjoyed the alternate ending played by the SNL gang. Then too, The Hebrew Hammer tells it all.
>>He then rather absurdly goes on to claim that “It’s a Wonderful Life” represents socialist, New Deal-style economics, and that it was intended for “the workers at a Soviet collective circa 1949,” with the message “who cares that you have no shoes? Back to the factory for Mother Russia.”
Frank Capra was a lifelong Republican who never voted for FDR (and there were plenty of FDR campaigns)
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/03/books/it-wasn-t-such-a-wonderful-life.html
It Wasn’t Such a Wonderful Life
By BARRY GEWENMAY 3, 1992
...Audiences flocked to see “Capraesque” movies like “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “Meet John Doe” — parables of ordinary people forced to stand up against the greed and corruption of the rich and powerful. Those dramatic comedies, with their depictions of hardship, their “common man” heroes (usually Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper) and their celebrations of small-town virtues, gave expression to a country struggling to climb out of the Depression; they have, ever since their release, been identified with Roosevelt and the New Deal. Yet it is one of the great surprises of Joseph McBride’s masterly, comprehensive and frequently surprising biography, “Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success,” that the man who seemed to put the spirit of the New Deal on the screen was, in reality, a closet reactionary and a dogged Roosevelt hater...
...In part, the misperception was due to Capra’s writers, who generally ranged from New Deal Democrats to card-carrying Communists. One of Capra’s great strengths as a director in the 1930’s was his ability to work with anyone who had something to contribute to his pictures, even those who were far to his left. He was also enough of a popular entertainer to cater to his audiences; he understood that during the Depression the most hissable villains were grasping bankers and businessmen.
But ultimately the misunderstanding over Capra’s politics seems to be a case of people seeing what they wanted to see. In his analysis of “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” Mr. McBride points out that the Gary Cooper character, far from being some sort of socialist or New Deal liberal, was, if anything, an “enlightened plutocrat” whose philosophy of voluntary giving was little different from that of Republican businessmen opposed to the New Deal; and he shrewdly notes that while Deeds got into trouble for trying to distribute most of the $20 million he inherited to desperate farmers, he was still planning to keep $2 million for himself...
In the real world, the bank examiner would not have cared if they made up the lost deposit. They would be on the hook for having a drunk handling their money. Sure, George Bailey would not Toto prison, but the S&L would be in trouble.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God
Well, to be fair, there is a bit of a socialist idea behind the Building-and-Loan. The FHLB was founded in 1932 to subsidize home loans. I doubt that most S&Ls could have made it without the subsidies.
But does that make it socialist or communist? We could debate that all day - to no avail.
Their collective self-loathing, hatred, vitriol, anger, vulgarity and constant need to put down everything good in America can only explained by their warped mental outlook on life in general.
How they get up in the morning and can stand to look at themselves in the mirror is beyond me.
IAWL is a holiday classic and their need to tear it down reflects badly on them and not the movie.
Well, aren’t you a joy boy.
I’ve watched this movie a bunch of times - love it - and never once thought about Potter keeping the money. Never crossed my mind actually.
It would have destroyed the message to have gone down that sub plot. Punishing Potter would have been a distraction from George finding out he is the richest man in town.
It’s nothing more than a diatribe against capitalism.
Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s a number of screen play writers were either Communist and/or Socialist. Those themes were woven into a number of movies.
One in particular that I remember was a film with Van Heflin and Barbara Stanwyck called “B.F.’s Daughter”, Heflin’s character was a Progressive Anti-Capitalist.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is in a sense Anti-Capitalist. My problem with the film is just about all the characters are stereotypes, especially Potter’s.
The Bailey’s are without a doubt the most inept business people I have ever seen. They go to the extreme in trying to put people first yet they cut their own throats by not using any excepted business sense.
Why would anyone have someone as irresponsible as Uncle Billy as the company comptroller? He was an alcoholic as well as incompetent.
In any event there is enough subtle Socialism woven into the script to question it’s true purpose.
It’s a stupid sappy movie and it’s my favorite!
Yes. Yes I am.
I still like the movie. I just laugh at different parts.
Agreed. If it’s not socialist, it’s anti-capitalist. The effect is the same.
One thing we lose sight of about the thirties (yes, the movie was made in the forties, but the Depression was still on everyone's mind) is the idea that big scale capitalism had failed.
Many people thought that if free enterprise was to endure (and many people thought it wouldn't, or shouldn't) it would have to continue on a smaller scale, closer to actual producers and consumers. So distributivism was in the air. As was the "back to the land" movement.
There were many co-operatives and mutual companies -- experiments that weren't thought of as socialist alternatives to markets and free enterprise, but as populist alternatives to big business. Savings and loan associations were a part of that.
I’m not commenting on your remark but reading these movie threads are always depressing. There is a reason conservatives lost the culture wars. You can see on FR whenever the arts are discussed.
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