Xmas Flix

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 24^th.)  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