6. It's a Wonderful Life

🎥 Join us for a heartwarming Christmas episode as we dive into the timeless classic, 'It's a Wonderful Life' by Frank Capra. 

"Remember, no man is a failure who has friends." In this festive discussion, we explore themes of community, success, happiness, and the influence of the entertainment machine on our lives.

Be part of the conversation as we connect the theories of Adorno and Horkheimer to one of the most beloved Christmas movies ever made. Embrace the holiday spirit with insights and reflections on the enduring messages of this cinematic gem! 

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Transcript

Welcome to the Monochrome Picture Show. This is episode six. Today we will be talking about It's a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra and released in 1946. best Christmas films of all time, if not the best Christmas film ever made. It follows George Bailey, a man who is overwhelmed by his familial obligations and a sense of responsibility towards his community. After misplacing $8,000, a large sum, in 1945, he finds himself at the end of his rope and his guardian angel is sent down to show him what life would have been like if he had never been born. A fun piece of trivia for this film, it is one of Steven Spielberg's favorite movies. So for this episode we'll be looking at a number of different topics. Firstly, its depiction of a Christmas and its legacy as a Christmas movie. We're also going to be taking a look at the American Dream and the ideology it espouses over the course of two hours. And we're also going to be taking a look at film and culture theorists Adorno and they talk about the entertainment industry and how this can be applied to Capra's vision of an idealized America. All right, perfect. So what did you think about its depiction of Christmas in the holiday season? It's a Wonderful Life is a film that always makes me cry every time I watch it. And that is because it portrays very genuine values. For example, community, family, what you actually need in life to be happy. there's this juxtaposition between the need of money and the need of just enough. Like more friends and a family that loves you and just a community around you, which is a theme that you can find basically every Frank Capra's film. Yeah. So the depiction of Christmas is not necessarily a very contemporary one. So there's no, for example, gifts and big decorations and things like that, but it's more about what Christmas means. What did you think of it? Yeah, I thought that it's a very sentimental depiction of Christmas time. You know, there aren't really any bickering families, which is often the case around Christmas time. It's purely people coming together and helping each other, which is very heartfelt and it's sentimental. But as well as that, there's also quite a strong undercurrent of Christian morals. that is attached to the Christmas tradition in Frank Capra's film because it's all about helping your neighbor isn't it because George Bailey puts his life on hold numerous times for the people of Bedford Falls you know he doesn't go away to explore the world he doesn't go to university he doesn't even go on his honeymoon he takes all the cash that he saved for him to take his need. And I think that even though that scene isn't set at Christmas time, that idea of the Christian moral of helping your neighbour and do onto others what you would want done onto yourself, it's really strong in the film. Yeah, I agree. This idea of the others before you. Like he's a hero, he's the hero of the film because he puts his entire life on hold. to help others, his brother, his father and then just simply the community. And eventually, I mean, this comes back to him. Yeah, it does. But it takes a while to come back to him. I think it's never really acknowledged how heavy was his sacrifice throughout his life, up to that Christmas moment. Yeah. Yeah, I always found this view of the hero to be deeply linked with, as you said, just Christian ideology. Yeah, because there's nothing necessarily special or superior about him as a hero. He's not a genius. He's not a super strong hero. He is just a morally And that's kind of his arc. He's like, I will always do the good thing, which isn't much of an arc, until he can't take it anymore, I suppose. And then he almost loses hope and everything, which is also what I think you can find a lot of that, you know, really etched into the Christmas tradition is the idea of hope and hoping that things will work out all right. Yes. Yeah, I agree. There's also the line that you noticed. actually this and this is under the portrait of his father there was the line what was the line that was under him? Yes under his father's portrait there's the line all you can take with you is that which you've given away right which brings us back to this idea of putting your community before you or you can relate it to karma a little bit in the sense that like you do well and good stuff actually rather you act for the greater good and then stuff will come back to you yeah but it's also pretty catholic yeah of course so it's like a transgenerational thing of him continuing the work of his father who was exactly the same at a certain point in the film there's the line he always put others before him, which is not a great thing. Yeah, and he also clarifies in that same sentence that he wasn't a good businessman. So he distinguishes between the two actions. You can either be a good businessman or you can put yourself first. Or you can put your community first. Yeah. This would be interesting to look at from the perspective of the American dream. Right. Yeah, our second topic. What do you think of it? Like, how do you think this relates? So this aspect of being selfless. relates to the American dream. I think it's interesting because a large part of the American dream revolves around the idea of the individual. That as a concept is really entrenched into the American ideal. It's the whole thing of if you work hard enough, you can make a million dollars. And actually, he says that a number of times throughout the film, George Bailey does. You know, remember he goes up to that little device and he presses down on it. I think in the film I wish I had a million dollars and that is the American dream you know if you work hard enough. I think that's an aspect of luck because he has that weird I don't know if it's a lighter or what yeah in the chemist shop and he bets with himself like I wish I had a million dollars and just taps it down yeah and if there's a small flame in it then it means yes I guess no flame, I guess it means no. It's like those, I don't know, if I can throw the paper in the basket then I'm gonna get very rich and shit like that. One thing that we have to take into account is that neither of us is part or has a background within the American society. Yes. So we don't know about these things firsthand, but it's our... Our absorption of these ideals through media. Yeah, exactly, exactly. We are just observing how something is portrayed and what we know about it. And we are just reflecting on what we know about it through a film. experience of it. No, of course not. Those were both European. But throughout the course of the film it does emphasize the importance of the individual which is interesting because it's a film that has a really strong message about the power of community. Mm-hmm. In doing so, it highlights the importance of the individual and their acts within that community. So there is still a little bit of, you know, the power of community even in that depiction. Yeah. He saves numerous lives in his community, not just his brother, but also a boy who is about to be poisoned, as well as the life of the pharmacist who would have ended up in jail for 20 years. He always puts himself last. He takes the bullet for his Uncle Billy when he misplaces the $8,000. He brings a plastics factory to the town and basically provides everybody in the town with a job. The power of the individual really has a Dickensian quality. Yeah, exactly. It's about the idea that they say that each man's life touches so many other lives. That's kind of what I mean. Even though it's about the power of the individual, it's about the power the individual has within their community to make something better than themselves. Because throughout the entire film, his attempts to do something bigger and better. than just Bedford Falls are thwarted. And it's shown at the end of the film that was for the best because look at what he got to have as a result of doing what was good. And a wider, more globalized approach to the world is more seen in terms of selfishness whereas having a provincial, smaller worldview dedicating yourself to your community is celebrated as being morally upright. Yeah. Yes, I agree with what you're saying. I do think this fits nicely within the American Dream. It's the importance of the individual, but the importance of the individual is connected to his importance within a community. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So this is portrayed perfectly because by beginning of the film, he has all his dreams, he wants to be an explorer and this actually makes me quite sad for him because there's so much left out that he could have done, that he could have been and instead it just yeah, he has a nice life in the end because the town is really nice, everyone loves him, he falls in love and has a family. Yeah, which are all nice things. They are really all nice values that are not secular per se. There's a little bit of Christian ideology, even in things that have nothing to do with Christian ideology per se. They are not portrayed as Catholic per se but they are just kind of like fed to you. Frank Capra was a very strong Catholic, I'm not sure if we mentioned that at the beginning of the episode. I think, well we mentioned it now. about the story having Dickinson qualities. Yeah. 100%. The structure of the story is the same structure as a Christmas carol. Yeah. From one point of view. Oh yeah. But it's not... And I remember we were talking about this yesterday while we were watching it. In a Christmas carol, Ebenezer Scrooge, not middle-class. No. But rich man with no heart gets the chance to look at his and ultimately becomes a better person which is the bottom line of a lot of Dickens work. George Bailey already starts as a good person, he is a good person from the go-to, he's a good kid, yet when he starts being discouraged he gets the chance to look at his life from a different perspective which doesn't make him a better person because he already was a good person, right, but the value of his life. And a sacrifice. Yeah. So the structure is the same, it's just from a different... like the protagonist has different characteristics but per se that theme it's always the use of time as means to understand one's life and its outcomes because in Dickens as well in A Christmas Carol the third he gets to see all the bad outcomes of his actions. Like Timmy, is he called Timmy? Timmy, yeah, Tiny Timmy. Tiny Timmy. My main point of reference is the Muppets version. Right, yeah, Muppets Christmas Carol. A Muppets Christmas Carol. Great film. It's a beautiful masterpiece. Michael Caine just knocks it out of the park as Ebeneezer's Groot. Yeah, and there's Gonzo playing Dickens. I think that if you had told the film perspective. It is a Christmas Carol but it's the exact same film. All you needed was to have the night where he's visited by the three the angels of Christmas. The spirits. The spirits of Christmas past, present and future and then it's exactly Christmas Carol it's just the same story told from Cratchit's perspective. Is it Cratchit? Well it's with the frog. So it's the same story or rather the same kind of story but from Cratchit's perspective. And as well as that it has the Dickensian caricatures so for example there's the miserly Scrooge and there's the good George Bailey but in this story Potter doesn't get his redemption arc because it's not about him so to speak. Exactly it's not about him. point of view just changes because if in Dickens time stories were more for a specific slice of the population now with Capra the working class is the focus, always work. It's always the man against the institution and the good man against the institution. Which is interesting actually because you could read the film as kind of a symbolic victory of the little man against big You know, because Potter represents the monopolization of business in America and George Bailey represents small family-run businesses that kind of get swallowed up by big corporations. And it seems like Capra doesn't want these family-run businesses or the working class to lose hope because even at the beginning of the film we have the dialogue between Clarence, the angel and and Clarence says what's wrong with him is he sick and he says no worse he's discouraged and it's the idea that well we don't want our working class to lose hope and that's a message that is found at the beginning of the film all the way to the end because he does the right thing and he's rewarded for it yeah that's brilliant should we have a look at Dora and One thing that I wanted to touch upon, just briefly, it's one subplot if you will, or just one little aspect that I wasn't necessarily super jazzed about. It's the depiction of the alternative life or the alternative reality of the wife without him. Which... Yeah, that's just... okay, it's just a slight... Little insert. Yeah. would be like without him if he never existed. His brother died because no one saved him. The city for some reason is called Potters, it's even called Potterville. The pharmacist has been sent to prison because he poisoned the kid, not on purpose but still. And the wife who in the main reality is portrayed as this really, not I don't want to say independent, but definitely active character, positive character. strong, intelligent, witty, charming, a positive character, like someone you would really enjoy having in your life. Yeah. In the reality where he doesn't exist, she is completely different. Yeah. Like works in a library, has glasses. Clarence calls her an old maid. An old maid, exactly. Despite the fact she's probably the same age as she would have been 20s. Yeah. By the way, both actors are visibly older than their characters, but that doesn't matter because it was the 40s and everyone did that. Well Donna Reed was actually only 24 when they made the film. Yeah, but she was supposed to be 18. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's more the fact that she looks like she could be 30. That's true. The fact that without his existence, different and less charming in air quotes that I'm making with my hands right now. It's just... Without really clarifying why. Without clarifying why I would say it's a bit of a patriarchal discourse in which personality and lives of women somehow depend on their male companions. That's not true. Thank God it's not the 40s anymore. Okay I just wanted to clarify that because Real explanation on why her life not her life, but her personality would have been any different Just because he didn't exist. He is not in charge of her personality or her development in any way Yeah, yeah one last thing just the last thing Getting the chance of looking at your life from a different perspective I think the overall point of view what makes a life worth living is simply being there. Okay so for our last third and last theme we wanted to have a look at Adorno and Horkheimer mm-hmm so Adorno and Horkheimer were two theorists who had a look at culture in the 1930s as well as media and cinema they had a bit of a bleaker perspective to Frank Capra's vision. Frank Capra is very idealized, it's very heartfelt and wholesome. Whereas Dornow and Horkheimer, they saw, after escaping Nazi Germany, they saw the propaganda that was present in a lot of American film and television. In particular, they saw these films as the manifestation of oppression. The way in these films was that they reasoned these films were a part of an entertainment industry which was a capitalist machine and that messages are conveyed in these artworks in order to encourage the working class to consume and buy or more than that accept their oppression from the rich elite. In this sense they, O'Donnell and Harkheimer, reasoned that if a working-class man goes in to see a film about another working-class man suffering and toiling, going day after day through the drudgery of life, but coming out on top, it will result in a catharsis where he can see himself in this exact same position and it will quell any desire for a revolution that he might have in real life. because he's seen it on screen. He doesn't need to get up and actually fight for something better or what he deserves because he has witnessed on screen a man succeeding and fulfilling his desire of achieving the American dream. And in this sense, he, Adorno, Theodore Adorno himself wrote an academic essay about Donald Duck, which isn't something that you might expect, but he found reason to believe that people who go in and witness Donald Duck and his suffering that befalls him. They see themselves in Donald Duck's shoes, the idea of the working man suffering and getting beat on by the bourgeoisie, and in doing so they find peace in their suffering, even a sense of humour in it, because they see it as beautiful suffering and even that their suffering is noble. And in this sense Adorno and Horkheimer might have said that It's a Wonderful Life could be read in similar terms, because throughout the entirety who's fighting against big business in Potter. He is always depicted as unkind, ruthless, the bad guy. The poor sufferer is depicted as kind-hearted and of course you want to empathize with George Bailey and identify with him more than Potter. And in that sense it's a film that would appeal to the working man which is what What Better Falls is. It's a town of the working class and at every home is that at the end of the day money is not important it's about community and it's about hard work and doing what's right. For example when George Bailey challenges Potter about his father he says he died a much richer man than you will ever be because he had friends and family to which Potter dismisses as sentimental hogwash he says even at the very beginning of the film when God and an angel are talking about which angel they should send to help they're thinking hmm who should we send and God says what about Clarence and the other angel says what Clarence he has the IQ of a rabbit and God says yes but he has the faith of a child and it's the idea it promulgates the idea that being stupid and faithful is better than being intelligent and cynical which is an idea that let's say a an elite an evil elite class would want to send to a working rise up and have a revolution. I just wanted to say that it's a little bit bleak. It is bleak. It is very bleak actually. But we'll get to that. What else did you want to say? Well, Dornheim and Horkheimer also talk about in their essay called The Entertainment Industry. How is the essay called? The Entertainment Industry. That we have all the means to provide for the sick, poor, but we don't. Which indicates more a fault in our psychology and a sickness in our minds more so than it does a sickness in society and that's something that George Beatty actually touches on when he says to Mr. Potter, now what are you going to do with all this money? You can never spend it all instead of giving it away to help people. You just want to weave your webs and he says you're nothing more than a scurvy little spider, which I think comes back to the very Christian depiction of Bedford Falls because in the great cosmic scheme of things. Mr Potter is nothing more but a scurvy little spider. It's empowering from a point of view of standing up against the man. Like the man is in the institution, but in the end of the day, if you look at it through the ideas of Adorno and Oerheimer, it's just smoke and mirrors. It's catharsis, no? watching someone else, a fictional someone else fighting against the institution takes away the need for you to fight against the institution. And okay, this is not a political podcast, this is a film podcast. So I never know where to position myself with these kind of stances even though I agree to some extent. Right. I mean with Adorno and Oerheimer. Yeah. entertainment also has the function of a palliative or as a ankylary in a sense just something that defocuses you from the real problem and cures the symptom. Right. So I agree with that but I also want to take into account other points of view because in the end of the day the issue that I have with Adorno and O'Connor is points of view, it's a very personal issue, it's a very personal a very definitive point of view because you can't escape from that. Right. Because it's just the entertainment machine. Right. It's just everywhere. It's in everything we consume. Even this podcast will be part of the entertainment machine. And my issue with that is that you and I, in our small world, don't make this content to defocus people from something else, from the biggest issue. We just make it because it's an act of. Right. And we enjoy making it. So in a sense we act outside of the entertainment machine but still within the entertainment machine inherently because podcasts are part of multimedia and entertainment. And as well as that I think perhaps Frank Capra would have seen himself as somebody who was just making something that was in his heart because he said himself this was the favorite it was at least his favorite film. So perhaps the door-knoll of Horakimer would claim that Fianna Capra was a large cog in a wheel and the wheel being entertainment industry and the culture creating machine that oppressed the masses and held up the elite class. But it's quite a statement and it's quite a hypothesis that you can't really prove because I mean I'm sure for Frank Capra comes from an immigrant family himself and you know this film is very personal to him. The Martini family in this film are based on his own family and when they came to America. It is a film that is an idealized depiction of America. In that sense it's kind of seen as a depiction of what America could be, at least in Frank Capra's perspective. of this. So they're called, this is what Ian Freer, he's a film historian, has written about Frank Capra. He said Capra's fantasies of goodwill made him one of the two most famous and successful directors in the world. At the time of his death, Freer maintains that his legacy was intact as he had created feel-good entertainments before the phrase was invented David Lynch and from television soap operas to greeting card sentiments is simply too huge to calculate. Wow. And I don't think that Capra created that, this vision with any kind of malicious or malevolent or sinister purpose. I don't think there's anything ominous behind his intentions. It was simply a story could be like, which falls in line with the American dream as well. It does fall in line with that. But okay, so what we're saying now then is that the world depicted in It's a Wonderful Life, it's of course it's a fictional depiction, but it's also an idealized depiction. So it's not accurate of what the 40s in the US were like. Probably not. When I watch It's a Wonderful Life, it makes me cry for many different reasons. It's a very heartfelt film. It talks about a struggle that everyone can empathize with to some extent. Another aspect that makes me sad is the fact that kind of community, that kind of friendship, that kind of people to some extent, they seem to not exist in our reality. it raises in me a bit of like a golden age syndrome. Right. It's in like all the good old days. Yeah. It used to be so great even though I have an idea because I'm not American and I have... I didn't... I wasn't there in the 40s. Yeah. I didn't exist yet. Yeah. So what can you do to watch the film without falling in the trap of the golden age syndrome? Is it the golden age or the golden era? I think you understand what you mean. Yeah, but in any way, what can you do to watch the film and not feel sad about a time that is not there anymore? Well, I think what you can do is you can take the morals and the message from the film, which isn't impossibly idealized. It's not like the message of help those around you, tend your own garden, do what you can for others and it will come back to you. that is impossible nor do I think that it is overly optimistic to expect that kind of thing to happen to you. There is goodness in almost everyone and there's a lot of good in the world so I don't necessarily think that it would be too sentimental or too saccharine a thing to say that you can take that message from the film and still feel happy about it and the fact that that's what makes you rich. Which is true. Yes, it is true. Perhaps it's not as simple as that in our lives nowadays. Because, let's just face it, the world became more complicated, more complex, more layered. There's a higher speed. Almost 80 years ago now. Exactly. That was almost 80 years ago. So I agree with you in the sense that the values that the film portrays can still be taken as accurate and as important. and as meaningful. Yeah. At the same time I think... We can take those ideas from it but we have to think about it self-reflectively. Okay. I think one thing I'd say is that the film ultimately is incredibly inspirational and touching and no matter what lens you try and read it through, it's still a very motivational and inspirational film. George, the richest man in town. Thank you for listening to the Monochrome Pictureship. We hope you enjoyed this episode and we hope you have a lovely Christmas.