I have spent the past two weeks holed up at
home. When you live in a resort town
whose principal industry is catering to well-heeled skiers and snowboarders,
Christmas is the season for some of us to hunker down.
It hasn’t helped that it has snowed pretty
steadily; no sooner would one storm pass through then another followed. Out of curiosity I’ve been monitoring road conditions
on the state highway department’s website.
(I say “out of curiosity” because ordinarily I do so for my own safety
since I drive over mountain passes to get to work.) Despite the heavy snow and whiteout
conditions, the flatlanders were undaunted.
Over the past few days the highway patrol has been metering traffic coming
up from the foothills due to congestion.
I have ventured out exactly once since the college winter hiatus began. I was out of
liquor. True to form the supermarket was
packed with families in bulky ski outfits.
After waiting fifteen minutes in the checkout line, I was finally able
to set my items down on the conveyer.
The lady in front of me made note of my purchases—a liter of bourbon, a
liter of scotch, and two bottles of a sleep aid. Smiling, she gave me a knowing look and said,
“Family, huh?”
“Yeah, family.”
Actually, no.
In fact I’ve been dodging voicemails all week from my relatives, whom I make a
point of keeping at arm’s length. If they
were your relatives you would, too.
Needless to say, I’m not much for
Christmas. I am not a guy who decks the
halls. You won’t find a tree or a single
holiday decoration in my house. I
despise the crass commercialism of the season.
My only concession this year was to send checks to my two sons. Let ‘em do their own shopping.
There is one exception to my antipathy. There are certain films which are must-see
viewing for me this time of year. My absolute favorite is
Scrooge, the adaptation of A Christmas Carol starring Alastair
Sim. Somehow I missed that one this year. Not to worry, there are two more titles which
hold a similarly warm place in my heart.
The first is the venerable It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s kind of strange that I would have an
affinity for this kind of movie. Fantasy
stories don’t really appeal to me. The
dialogue is unbelievably corny, even for a Frank Capra film. And even as a kid I found the idea of angels,
let alone guardian angels, absurd.
No matter, I was sure to catch NBC’s
customary Christmas Eve airing. (It’s a Wonderful Life is in the public
domain which means it’s freely available online. But somehow it just feels right to watch it on TV every December 24th.) As I watched, I tried to figure out just what
it was I liked about the movie. I still
don’t have one definitive answer but I think I can pin down a few things.
Capra excelled at encapsulating classic
Americana. Bedford Falls was nothing
like the small town I grew up in. The
neighbors were much friendlier and considerate than mine. People in the movie behaved as if they lived
in a community and looked out for
each other. And what small town boy wouldn’t
have wanted to marry a girl like Mary Hatch?
(Or Donna Reed, for that matter?)
Notwithstanding the idyllic nature of the town, however, I could certainly identify with protagonist George Bailey
and his yearning to escape and see the world.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of It’s a Wonderful Life is the David and
Goliath story of George and the Bailey family’s tiny building and loan consistently
thwarting the designs of wealthy banker Mr. Henry Potter. George was the epitome of the stammering,
sincere Everyman character James Stewart perfected. Likewise, Potter was typical of the crabby
old men Lionel Barrymore played toward the end of his career. (The wheelchair Potter occupied was a
necessity for Barrymore, who suffered from crippling arthritis.)
The symbolism of the contest of wills between
the two men is subversive in the contemporary cultural context. Potter is just the kind of individual held up
as an exemplar for today’s economic elites.
A “job creator” who treats his employees as disposable vassals, Potter
is devoid of sentimentality. His resort
to common theft to bring down his rival would nowadays be seen as a minor
peccadillo. On the other hand, George
would be held up as a poor businessman because he puts people ahead of
profit. To portray Potter as the bad guy
sets American cultural values—our actual values, not the ones we purport to
hold—on their ear.
Stripped of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo and its
over-idealized take on small town America, It’s
a Wonderful Life is an anachronism with the right message for our age. That’s why I like it so much.
My second must-see classic is a movie I’m
actually old enough to have seen in a theater during its first run. I was dragged unwillingly to see A Christmas Story as a high schooler
during a custodial visitation weekend with my father and stepmother. I was expecting a stinker, given my dad’s taste
in cinema. (He particularly loved Burt Reynolds' movies from the ‘70s and ‘80s, each of which was essentially a protracted car chase scene.) Any movie we saw also had to have a plot and
character development simple enough for my stepmother to follow. (After seeing Sophie’s Choice, she complained of not understanding what it was
about. I don’t know why dad married her,
but it certainly wasn’t for her smarts.)
Having set my expectations low, I ended up
being bowled over by A Christmas Story. It definitely helped that it was adapted from
several of Jean Shepherd’s short stories about his Indiana childhood. I’d just discovered Shep, having been
recommended to me by my English teacher, and I was already familiar with the
adaptations of the Ralph Parker stories aired on PBS’s American Playhouse back when the network
still offered a respectable volume of quality programming. (Note: Endless rebroadcasts of Downton Abbey are not an acceptable
substitute.)
More time would pass before I learned of
Shepherd’s career as a proto-hipster with a late night radio show in 1950s New
York City. Jean Shepherd’s Night People was a freeform program which garnered
a cult following among college students.
Shep would speak to his listeners as if they were discerning cultural coconspirators
against what he called “creeping Meatballism;” that is, the pervasiveness of
the prosaic tastes of the square “day people.”
Shepherd’s audience was a loyal one.
John Cassavetes’ first feature, Shadows
(1959), was financed in part by contributions from the “Night People”—an early
example of crowdfunding. Shepherd also
liked to tweak his audience’s noses now and then. After discussing a racy, albeit nonexistent
novel titled I, Libertine, on his
show there were so many inquiries about where the book could be bought that
Shepherd upped the ante by hastily writing an actual novel under the nom de plume Frederick R. Ewing. Shep’s photo, captioned as author Ewing,
adorned the dustjacket.
It is most unlikely that a program like Night People would be commercially
viable today. Even Shepherd made the
migration to public broadcasting in the 1970s.
However, much of the entertainment content on public radio, such as This American Life, The Radio Reader, or The Moth
Radio Hour, tend to speak to the interests and concerns of liberal suburbanites. It’s all good programming, but it doesn’t
take many chances. Meatballism
triumphant.
But, back to A Christmas Story. Shep is
at his best here, playing it straight. Directed
by Bob Clark, whose best known other movie was Porky’s, A Christmas Story is
a paean to childhood wonder and anticipation.
Set circa 1940 in northern Indiana, nine year old Ralphie Parker (Peter
Billingsley) lives with his father, The Old Man (Darren McGavin), his mom
(Melinda Dillon), and his whiny younger brother Randy (Ian Petrella). The voiceover narration is provided by
Ralphie as an Adult (Shep Himself).
The plot is episodic. The A-plot chronicles Ralphie’s dogged quest
to receive a Red Ryder BB gun as a present.
At every turn, Ralphie is discouraged with the warning, “You’ll shoot
your eye out!” by everyone from Mom to his teacher to the department store Santa. But family comedies must have happy endings,
and we learn at the end that The Old Man came through for Ralphie with a
surprise extra gift Christmas morning.
A
Christmas Story works because it’s relatable,
showcasing Shepherd’s talent for wringing humor from the most ordinary
childhood and family experiences.
(Paradoxically, Shep wasn’t much of a family man. He was married four times that we know of,
and he never bothered with his children again after he left them and their
mother.) Everything from Ralphie’s
friendship with Flick and Schwartz (recurring characters in the Ralph stories)
to dealing with bullies Scut Farkus and Grover Dill to the discovery your
favorite programs are just vehicles to sell stuff are all familiar
notwithstanding the retro setting of the film.
The B-plots are gems in themselves. The Old Man wins a “major award” for solving
crossword puzzles, which turns out to be a lamp in the shape of a woman’s leg
clad in a fishnet stocking with a lampshade as a skirt. Mom disapproves and the major award is shattered
when it “accidentally” falls to the floor.
Ralphie sends off for a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring which turns out
to decode nothing but radio ads for Ovaltine.
Ralphie rats out his pal Schwartz when he utters the F-word after a
mishap helping The Old Man change a flat tire.
Christmas dinner is ruined when the neighboring Bumpus hounds enter the
Parker kitchen and tear apart the unattended turkey.
I don’t think I really expected A Christmas Story to become a holiday
perennial, but it’s easy to understand why it’s stood the test of time. It’s certainly the best known of Jean
Shepherd’s works among the general public.
And it’s a damned shame his other
writings and broadcast work have kind of fallen into obscurity since Shep died
in 1999. But then, Shepherd never held
himself out as an artist for the masses.
The definition of hipness is fluid and ever changing. So there is the probability that Shepherd’s
humor doesn’t translate well anymore.
I have my fingers crossed for a revival
notwithstanding. And in the meantime, we’ll
always have A Christmas Story. Particularly when TBS airs it repeatedly every
Christmas Day.
© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar
