Welcome back to the new thinkery. My name is David Barr and with me is always my good friend. How is pre you? How are you?
I'm doing well. How are you? Happy Christmas and happy Hanukkah. We're just going to get those glasses out.
They look good. I got it on a target lens. I mean, they're just Ray Vans. Yeah, George H.
Bush. George H. Bush. You be those H.W.
H.W. H.W. Bush. You really gave me internet.
Well, Greg, I got a funny Christmas anecdote. Well, how are you doing, Greg? First time we have like, Hi, Greg's in his shape to spear where he derives his stance and like strength and so on. And I did not hit an important milestone in the agenda today.
So I can only assume that that's related to my lack of facial hair. Now you're severe aging. What was the milestone? No luck in the, in the song?
That's right. Actually our guests tonight and I are son of buddies. Oh gosh. So I went to my daughter's school.
They had a, Chris McPherson's. They had a holiday party. They got everything's got to be holiday. Even though Santa's there, right?
So there's Santa at this place. And we wait in line for Santa and we get it and I swear to God, it's down this weird window as corridor and just stops. And there's no joke the creepiest Santa I've ever, ever seen. His eyes are like cross-eyed and like looking up in the wrong direction.
And he had his growing out of the tip of his nose, right? And way too much mooge on his face. And my daughter, my older daughter who's like aware of what's going on is rightly freaked out at the Santa's. I'm going to send you guys this picture.
You can cook. How old is she? How old is she? Penelope.
She's like just a couple months. She'll be you two in February. So she, how would have them? My three and a half.
Who doesn't understand anything. Even she freaked out. I'm sending you this picture. Maybe you've afforded it to John.
Just to show you're not lying about how crazy the Santa looks. He's like the most demented looking creature I've ever seen. I don't know. I mean, what is that?
Alex, this guy, this guy's a special needs Santa man. He can't make fun of those kind of people. What's wrong with you? I know.
That's not even the worst part. My daughter's freaking out. Okay. And he has like a little lollipop thing.
So like in the shape of like a Santa and a radio and stuff. He holds it up. And he doesn't even have like the whole voice. He's got this like scraggly, wiry voice.
And he goes, do you like suckers? I'm not kidding. I went to the teacher. I said, this is kind of a creepy Santa.
Like every kid, they walk away from the Santa. So I might share the picture on Twitter. If enough people are interested, tweet at the new thingery. Maybe donate for the sake of Santa picks and I will.
I think it's stock our stuffings. Speaking of which, it's a Merry Christmas episode, by the way, Merry Christmas to everybody, all the fans of the thingery. And we have a guest tonight. Yeah, we already lost your stuffings.
You heard me. You mean stuff your stockings. Whatever floats your boat brother, whatever tickles your pickle. What's the stockings?
I don't know. Our guest is Christmas. No, no, I guess first guest first. Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, everybody.
We have a guest tonight. My friend John Moser on a lark today. He and I were doing a little day drinking, which explains my mood. And I thought, why don't you come on the show?
I mean, it'll be a great deal of fun. And like, why who Greg? I was like, I was like, I'm going to introduce you. Greg, Texas.
Oh, I've had a hard day at work, hard day at the office. I'm sad. And then Lay Ox and I felt terrible. Oh, Greg, that's terrible.
You know, unburding your soul to us. No, no, no. But I really could use a nap right now, fellas. No, it's not terrible.
And now it just turns out you were drunk. We're under control. It was a work thing. That's right.
This is my buddy John Moser. He's the chair of the History and Public Science Department here at Ashland University. My colleague, my friend, my buddy, my pal. We do a lot together, including Sana, actually.
That's not a joke. And he actually goes on natural and Sana, which I think is round upon, but we allow it. I cover the interesting stuff of the town. That's true.
Much to my chagrin. John earned his PhD in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also did a master's in the VA here in Ohio at Ohio University. He's published a lot mostly on World War II, Great Depression stuff. He's authored four books, including Global Great Depression and Coming Up World War II.
And most of his recent work is in sort of reacting to the past past gaming. He just telephoned home just a brief bit about that. Yeah, these are role-playing games designed for you. Role-playing.
College-class. Yeah. No, I talk a little bit about them. And they're heavily based on primary sources.
So, for example, there's a game set during the French Revolution. Somebody's Lafayette, somebody's Louis XVI, somebody is Don Tall, etc., etc. They all read Rousseau's social contract. They read some meaty chunks of Berks reflections, and then they most of the students play members of the National Assembly.
And they have to try to come up with a constitution for France, and then it gets really crazy toward the end. Much like the Revolution itself. So, that's an example. I've done several games in that series.
There are lots of fun to play, lots of fun to use in the classroom, and lots of fun to design to. Yeah. What do you call that mustache thing you have there? Sort of like?
Yeah, right. This is the band-like. This is, I grew it especially. I call it Miami Santa.
No, actually, it's like Wario. It's a, I'm playing the narrator in the local production of Nutcracker, and so I thought this looked apparently Victorian. So, you don't earnestly have that, usually, all the time. I've had to go tea for years.
I just shaved down here and let it grow out this way. I may keep this. I know my wife doesn't like it, but we'll see. I'm going to grow this.
I'm going to grow this side stuff back again so we can exit. Nice. Nice. So, what are we doing right now?
I'm sure you're listening to hear a lot about my facial hair. We can go. You're supposed to pick. Yeah.
You're a facial hair. Got a lot of picks. We're doing it's a wonderful wife, Greg. Oh.
You're a Jimmy Stewart, the classic. I love that movie. Why are we doing that? Do you know how it came to be a classic?
Because people really liked it. Well, they forgot to renew the copyright or whatever. Yeah. And so, it became public domain.
And so, every TV station could show it for years. Now, that's not enough to explain why it's popular. It's actually a good movie, right? It's a really communist reason why.
It's flopped at the box office. Yeah. It's only in retrospect that it became a big deal. Yeah.
I'm watching it and then these stars start talking and these dumb voices. And it's really hard for me to see how this is classic. And of course, Jimmy Stewart is so campy. He's so punch him.
That's my analysis, folks. I just thought it was hilarious. I mean, it's such a thing. They are fun.
Because it's such a serious movie about suffering. And they're all concerned with promotion. It's like, it's like a cosmic sort of bureaucracy. That's pretty depressing.
Gotta get his wings. Yeah. Right. What should we do first?
What was this? 1946? 1947? Yeah.
It was 46. 46. Right after the end of the war. And that's pretty good.
Directed by Frank Capra. Capra, right? Right. Capra was, I mean, he was big time into making movies for the US government during the war.
He comes out of the war as one of the biggest directors in Hollywood. And he wants to produce him to the common man. There it is. That's what it is.
Yeah. It's a wonderful film. Maybe we can give an overview. Spoiler alert though.
It's a wonderful film. Good job. Yeah. I didn't even need to do that.
But it's spoiler alerts in case you haven't seen the movie over the last 80 years. Just so you know. It starts off with a bunch of people praying and worrying and lighting up the houses saying, Oh, we've got to save George Bailey. George Bailey needs our help.
And a sort of signal goes up to heaven. These angels are talking. They send down. They think save him by gathering some money.
It turns out he needs saving because he's considering killing himself. We don't know that. That's only retrospect. Right.
So the angel who's going to help him needs to hear the story. Clarence. His name is Clarence. Clarence.
Yeah. And a name Alex. Okay. Thank you.
He needs to hear Bailey's story before he goes down there. So the story starts when he's a kid. Quickly moves to when he's like maybe 17, 18, 20, maybe something like that. Oh, he's a 45 year old man playing a 17, 18 year old.
Yeah. Yeah. They put a little shoe pop. That's great.
Yeah. To clean it up. And then traces it through his life. Basically, he's a man of high ambition wants to go out.
Do big things. But by circumstance, and by his own decency is tied to helping the sort of little folks, mostly immigrants, garlic eaters as they're called and Greg's much familiar with it. Whoa. Because he calls David our resident Italian, a garlick eater all the time.
But he's helping these immigrants afford loans. They're really just, you know, they barely anything and he's helping them live the American dream. But the problem is, is that, you know, they don't have much money. These are high risk.
It's either they're renting in a slumber or they got this loan that they're often behind on payments with. And so he gets stuck in the same career as father was doing this. He's now doing it himself. And he helps to sort of build something for them.
He starts this sort of Bailey Park as housing community that's very suburban, very 1940s, 50s. And but through an accent that's not his fault, he loses $8,000. He's about to get arrested. It's not his fault.
Well, I mean, he should have fired his uncle, but okay, fine. Well, or not get trusted with $8,000. Yeah. Okay.
So he's been doing it, I think, fairly well for decades. So he can't against he. And so he realizes when he's talking with the resident sort of evil villain Potter, who is, you know, throughout his been his father's antagonist, and then in his sort of old age, George Bailey's antagonist, he finds out that, you know, the only thing he has a value is a life insurance policy. And if he were to happen to die, he would his family would get 15,000.
It would save the business and it would keep everybody from having to give sort of go over to Potter and it would save the town. But he would have to die. It's the kind of chance that heroism for a guy who never got to really be a true dazzling hero. What life insurance policy pays out the case of suicide?
None. None. So there's a hole in the plot right there. Well, maybe, I mean, I thought maybe he would just be like, he crashed his car, drunk, and then he fell on the river.
Something like that. Yeah. I don't know. But anyways, he, he, that idea is whether to work or not, you know, this would be out.
He ends up being saved by Clarence. He realized he was chosen what the world would be like without him and we'll go into the details that would have been terrible. And so he goes home, the whole town comes together, his wealthy friend, donates, offers up to $25,000 to save them. And everybody comes together.
It's a Christmas miracle. Everybody's happy singing all the links on the movie. That's it. Nobody.
No man is a failure who has friends. Yeah. Oh God, my life's a failure. We love it.
Oh, you have his friends. That's true. That's fair. All right.
So what do you guys want to talk about? I don't know. Themes or something like this. One of the first things I'll mention is that since we've done an episode on a Christmas carol, this seems to me like a particularly Americanized democratized version of a Christmas carol.
Right. Like it seems, I don't know if it was self-consciously so. It was actually, I guess the movie was based on like a short novel in the Vellars, something like this. And so I just wonder if that was intentional.
Do you guys see that as well? I mean, like, the, I mean, you mentioned that this flashback talks about his life. That's like the first half, if not like two thirds of the movie is all flashbacks and his life. So that's like the ghost of Christmas past.
I guess there's no future, but there's the ghost of passing, ghost of present. But, and then the Scrooge character seems to be, or Scrooge, it seems like George Bailey and Potter together are Scrooge. Like they've, he's disaggregated them and made them like the good side and the bad side. Potter's just simply evil.
There's no, yeah, he's never again. He gets away with the $8,000 just all in money by the way. That, yeah. Yeah.
So that's the one, that's the only truly evil, I think the evil thing that Potter does. Stills his money. Yeah, that's fair. That's, that's that's that.
It's, it's, yeah. It's, yeah, it's a criminal. Well, I just found it. But yeah, back to the game at Tillam.
It's not like gave it to him. Yeah, but in the newspaper, he set it down on his lap. Like he was picking on the handicap guy in the wheelchair. Yeah, that's not very nice.
Oh, Billy is mocking. It's mocking, Mr. Potter. Poor bastards in a wheelchair.
Come on. It's very, he's touting the victory, the great thing his nephew has done, right? Which is why he says, keep the paper, because the paper has a headline. Read, learn about all the great things we're doing.
While you're just, you know, miserable, old, like childless man, unable to, who has no love in his life. And so what's keeping him warm is $8,000. What Billy gets in the end is the $8,000 more, but also the camaraderie and the joy with this. I mean, so I think you're right about the Christmas girl thing.
I think it is a very modified version though, right? Yeah. It's certainly, it's borrowing this trope of a man who's going the wrong way, though not as wrong away as, as Scrooge's, right? Right.
And who is going the right way. And it's just showing them that, I mean, that's the, I think that's the argument, right? Like he's actually led a good life. And he just somehow become unaware of how good it is.
Anyway, sorry. Yeah. He thinks he's a failure. Right, right.
David, were you going to jump in? Not really, but I just don't understand, because the big question for me is the interplay between these divine spirits and then the human world. And so like the movie is resolved thanks in part to divine intervention. And so I was trying to square that with the title of, it's a wonderful life, but it's not a holy human life.
It seems like it's a wonderful life if you have the aid of divine spirits or something. That's pretty good. I think the point was he had a wonderful life all along. He just needed the supernatural to tell him that, right?
Yeah, sure. So that starts, he would have died needlessly. Yeah. Right.
And if they're out of his. Yeah. I mean, funny, because the title is actually the way you put it, it's funny. It's like, no, no, don't you understand George.
It is a wonderful life. He thinks his life is awful because he's in this drafty house with a staircase like then keeps coming off. And he's just like always trying to get ahead and get a little something and do something. But he doesn't realize the impact that he's had on this town.
He also says, you were wonderful several times to his wife before she is his wife. And he says it about the house at one point. I was trying to track how many times he says it. So part of it seems to be, maybe this is just heavy handed, but like, like reminding him that he actually says that his life is wonderful in several points.
But with the times, actually, seven times. No, I'm joking. I'm just trying to put it. Yeah.
Well, there are eight people who pray for him. We were saying it's $8,000. That's some money, of course, but is it that hard? I would just went to the inflation calculator.
That's like $46,000 in today's money. So that's that's that's that much money. Right. Sam Wainwright can call it.
It's $25,000. I don't know why did it call Sam to begin with, right? He's like his best friend. He'll be rich.
He does immediately catastrophizes. Yeah. Well, I think that reminds me, actually, throughout the movie, he seems to actually, I know he's a wonderful life, but like, he's, he's really angry. Like, like throughout the movie, he's angry regularly of things.
And then he gets forward, Lauren, and he's just like, he seems ungrateful whole time. Like, he wants to get out of his town. He doesn't like anybody. Like, you know, everyone sort of at the end pitches in and it's like, what's he really that nice of a guy, actually?
Like, he was, I mean, he was going to sell out to Potter, but then somehow he should say, okay, fine, I'm not going to sell out to you Potter because your kid's your hands cold. You know, like, okay, that seems like a weird reason not to take somebody up on it. But I don't know. Well, I think he's that is, does he commit a crime to trying to deposit to $8,000?
Potter? Yeah. No, I just, I just paused in storage. What do you mean?
That's his money to deposit on behalf of everyone, right? Right. Right. Okay.
I'll go Billy brings it to the back. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Okay. Can I circle back to your divine providence bit? So I don't know where you're going to go with this, but the stars have names that I didn't realize that if you look at the script or use the subtitles, they're Joseph and Franklin. And then Clarence is the third one, the new guy that comes along.
We can talk about Clarence from home. But one of the things that really struck me is you're right, David, there does seem to be this element of divine stepping in at certain points. And if you remember when he, when he's a young boy and he works at the place where there's, I don't even know what this is, but the little snatch thing that you, you strike and it lights or doesn't light and he keeps wishing for a million dollars and doesn't count to you. Yeah.
That is definitely relic from your child. Like, you know what, either John, I'm not saying you're old, but you're worldly, man. But what is that boss? It's a lighter.
Yeah. It's a bit of like your cigar there. But then what's up with the million dollar invocation? Like it goes the first time or something like that, I guess?
Yeah, because it doesn't always go. So yeah, he says, I wish I had a million dollars. He hit lights. Okay.
That's an open. Oh, good. Then they wish again, when they're walking home after the party, when they're still teenagers. And he wishes, and then she wishes, and she says, he says, what do you wish for?
And she says, I couldn't tell you it won't come true. And the next, the very next thing that happens is George's dad has had a stroke. They wish on breaking windows. Yes.
I'm sorry. They wish on breaking windows. That's right. They're vandals.
They're vandals. That's right too. But my point was going to be her wish comes true. I pray that George Bailey stays here in town.
And the very next thing that happens is the company telling his dad, she says, stroke and die or is dying. That's awful. You know, I was struck by Capra's, I don't know if this was risky at all, but his female characters, they're like, heavy sexually and you end up, even when they're kids, they're like, I like that George. Like the one whispers in his bummy.
What's wrong with all the boys? Even the image of the pool opening up and they fall into the wetness. Wow. Jeez.
And then the girl walks down the street. Just falling. David's late. Just falling.
David's late. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going back to George's character, why he's so angry because one of the themes, I think that's the persistent themes is the American dream, right?
And one is to go and do big things. And he's obviously talented, capable as father says you were born old. It's like he's made to sort of be serious from a very young age and not sort of tool around. And so off he goes and he's got this vision, but his decency, his goodness, as a sort of individual always keeps him tied to the community, right?
And the interesting thing is that you always wonder what would have happened if he had just gone off and done his thing. Now the angel shows him what would have happened if he'd never been born. Those are two very different situations. So it doesn't prove to him that it would have been better for him to stay.
He only produced him. It would have been better for him to actually live because all he did all these good things, like saving the pharmacist, saving his brother, keeping all these people. What if he had gone on, made a lot of money and then helped the people of Bedford Falls out. But I think this is actually a really deep-seated theme because all of these immigrants coming in, the context is after World War I and then it's leading up to World War II, right?
And then it's occurring during World War II and then immediately they're after, right? So I'm thinking of from when he's like 20 on to like he's in his 40s or something like that. And all of these immigrants are coming in and he's helping them live the American dream or begin to live the American dream at the sacrifice of his own... Got in the native.
I'm with you. Yeah, another... He's not a native. He's not a native.
He's an Irish immigrant, right? His uncle is singing Irish songs in a bro, right? So he's like from the late 19th century immigrants, probably second generation, American born, maybe even first. But I think his father and uncle were born there and they've kind of gotten established.
And now they're running this small business trying to get these other people established. And you have to think in the wake of World War I and then especially with World War II, he's in a way sort of... They're dealing with the sort of offcast of European war, like people who are a destitute. And so I think in the background of this is the sort of tension between helping others get established and the meager means that are there, right?
And this vision of the future that's him establishing these suburban communities and sort of losing this old small-town field in Bedford Falls versus him just going off and building the infrastructure for the nation at large. And it seems like you need both types of people, right? Like his brother goes off and does heroic things. His friend goes off and establishes this new industry that contains the world, the plastics companies from soybeans, right?
Meanwhile, he's the one who's doing the anonymous work of helping these immigrants get homes. And he doesn't realize that he's part of something bigger. So this is really interesting kind of global political as well as sort of American sort of narrative, I think, in the background of the film, as he struggles with his part in America's sort of transformation. But I also, I think, demonstrate the delicate balancing act that a healthy polity has to observe when they mobilize their human types, because if everybody is atop the minds of a globalist, then our small towns can fall into psychological disrepair of other kinds, just with the repacity of wanting to build and squeeze small people out.
It's not clear to me why there are all these immigrants in a town like Bedford Falls. It makes you want to know the economy of the place. You know, you would have found lots of Italians in major cities, but this looks like a classic, I imagine it's probably upstate New York. But you know, likely there was a lot of drugs and prostitution.
And if I know my people well, that's all it takes to attract the Italians. Yeah. I think it, I think in a way, it's a kind of synecdoche for me. Oh, that's a big old world out.
It's the time it's been connected for the whole country. It's not word me, Alex. What's that word mean, city boy? It's a connected New York?
No, it's very that joke. Oh, literally just made that joke. Oh, my bad. A synecdoche is up is a part of a whole that stands in for the whole.
Right. I'm Michael Cosmo. So anyways, but it is a kind of microcosm. Let me use a phrase you understand.
Little thing, like big thing. Is that helpful? It sure does. But it is a kind of, and so there's kind of, when he sees what this town would have looked like, had he never been born and Potter kind of runs unimpeded and gets to sort of do what he wants, it basically turns into a town with like dancing halls and slums, right?
And which I don't understand why that detergent, that sounds like a final place to me. But it's sort of two visions of what can happen. Like either at like great cost and personal sacrifice, you help these people get out land on their feet, right? Or you turn this into like, you know, tenement housing with broken families and people drinking and no sense of community.
They're all kind of caustic towards one another and there's allusions to the mob, right? So, you know, who's better off in Pottersville? Nick. Nick has his own bar.
He's not just he's not Martini's lackey. And of course, Nick gets the best line in the film. I'll shoot two pixies, go through the door out the window. Wait, this is Martini wax, right?
Whatever, yeah, no, Martini was Martini going to the mill or something. I don't know. Do you think that the better news, you say to the guy? The guy who calls him like a dandy is like, I don't want you to add character or something.
No, no, he says, all right. I can put this all this online. Listen, we serve hot drinks for men who want to get drunk fast. I don't need any characters to get the joint atmosphere.
Oh, I was gonna try to make a serious one of us. Yeah, I see him really pain that remind us with kids is when that the drunk pharmacist was hitting him on the ear that was the most difficult scene of the entire film to watch the child suffering. He's like, why are you? He's just somebody trying to do good and help.
And then this this this drunk man and I know he apologizes and feels bad. If he feels bad, is because we're safe to go on the lawsuit. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. There's just reminds me of the violence of what Greg would do to us when he was a grad student. So it must be flashback. Yeah, but you didn't do anything good.
Like prevent me from murdering the girl. Did you? Yeah. Why didn't you?
No, I was going to ask you to grab his girl. Yeah. What? Nothing.
So I think we covered it, right? Right. Do the, uh, a Schenectady joke. I guess I was asking about, I was going to ask you about the better, never to important that better, never to have been born line.
Isn't that Greek tragedy? Is this like really Americanized as far as it's trying to abstract on tragedy? Like it's showing you actually like it really is Americanized. Like he's denying the premise of Greek tragedy.
Like no, the world is better with you. Like he's, he's thinking I'm better off dead. No, it's actually better if I've never even been born. He's that's what he says.
It gets clearance. The idea of showing him what life would be like without him. So it just seems non-tragic at all. And I guess in keeping with that non-tragic theme, Clarence's angel is interested in probably the greatest American comic of the whole time, Mark Twain, right?
So he seems to be an angel after Tom Sawyer has been written, but before Huck Finn has been written because he says at one point, wait until his next comedy comes out. I heard he's even better or something like this, or it's supposed to be better or something like this. I kept trying to make sense of that Tom Sawyer bit, but I just couldn't do it. I mean, except, except what I said, this is meant to be a comedy in the ancient sense of the term.
It's a happy ending. Do you hear, or is anybody on the call? I know Alex is really this. Anybody on our recording recall Twain's space writings?
I didn't look that up. I meant to look that up. His writings from outer space. He has these short stories.
He's been yes on space travel. And the one I'm going to heaven, if you remember. One I need to mention that too. Yes, Ken, no such and such goes to heaven.
We did that over these, but we should do that. Yeah, I forgot to consult that story to see if there are little any nods, either with the names or parallel stories. Right. That's just something for a listener to look up.
One question. John, did you inform us that an illustrious, illustrious professor whom we won't name has a piece on this movie? Yeah, Patrick Denine has an essay from I think 2012, six years ago. And what's that hot big brain take his do you recall?
He sees George Bailey as something of a villain, because he's building houses. It's a very strange argument that instead of having people living in town where they can sit on front porches and have a sense of community, he's building soulless, suburban, probably ranch style homes all made of tiki tacky and they all look the same. And yeah, so he has in his own way, he has destroyed the charm of Bedford Falls. His is a more moral kind of modernism compared to Potter, but it is modernism just the same.
And that's the problem. I mean, I found that take a little rich because, right, I mean, first of all, it's clear that these people are coming, right? The question is where do you put them? America's changing light of what's going on.
And two, much like George Bailey, I assume that Patrick Denine is of Irish descent, right? So I mean, there are waves of immigration, right? And then you have to do something with these people, right? Unless he wants to say these people, Alex?
Yeah, yeah. Garlic eating, gargleading like, you know, gold chain wearing tracks, wow, you know, relative David Barr for Pitsity for crime, especially after World War II, there's a massive housing shortage. So what are the five things I always find most plausible at the movies? It assumes that everything would be in the absence of George Bailey, Potter would run everything like there is no third possibility.
Like there's a market, people want homes, someone's going to provide those, going to provide those those if people don't want to live in Potter's slums. There's there's a $20 bill laying on the sidewalk for somebody to pick up. Good point. No, I do think that one of the points is that it's incredibly risky, right?
To do something other than what Potter's doing, right? Like to offer them even these like tiny homes, you know, at and give them loans for them is it's not clear that they're going to be able to make their payments and they often often don't. And they, I mean, the business almost collapses. I think there's something very interesting there about Bailey's kind of heroism that he himself doesn't recognize.
And it says something I think a little bit about about leadership of a community that often it's it's not this brilliant out in front like everybody thinks it's like being, you know, maybe like Abraham Lincoln or something like that. But it might just be sort of Abraham Lincoln and one of key scenes, sorry, going that's true. Yeah. And it's in the and then also in his office, he has this quote from his father was the quote, right?
Oh, shoot, I don't know. I'll stop my head. I asked you to remember it. He, he but everybody thinks it's like being out there really in noble doing flashy things, building big bridges.
These are the things that George wants to do or getting the congressional medal of honor. But sometimes you're proving people's lives just mean sort of giving them risky loans. So here's the quote, all you can take with you is that what you have given away, right? Right.
So it requires a Christian metaphor. Well, can we talk about the comedy tragedy thing Greg that you showed up, we moved past it, but I thought you did develop it. Because at first sight, it looks like it's going to be a tragedy. And anyways, it might even really dark stuff like he's writing suicide, he's drunk driving, he's there's child child beating as David mentioned, right?
That's a really dark one. He's giving homes to Italian people moving in. He screams in his own kids. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Why? Who would yell at their kids?
Yeah. Yeah. Not me. Then he does his own psychotic turn and go on.
I said, what? What happens to Potter in the film? At the end? Nothing.
Yeah. He went wherever there was a Saturday in our live sketch. Oh, I totally forgot about that. Data Carvey playing a play in the world of George Bailey.
And they said this is the alternate ending. And they go on down. And they go to the car. They drag him out of his wheelchair and it turns out he can walk all the time.
They proceed to beat the crap out of him. Oh, man, I got to see that. Yeah, it's really good. We're going to talk about the comments.
I just wanted to know the thoughts on that because I do think also, I don't think it's for tragedy, right? Because it goes together with the idea that it's an Americanized version of Christmas Carol. We're not a people that believe in tragedy. Yeah.
But at Christmas Carol, which has, I mean, we talked about this. It's a comedy too. Yeah. But on the surface, it's a kind of nice redemption story.
Right. Right. Whereas this one, it's very strange. The miracle is, you know, meaning.
With a sort of amount of money, right? And also the angel getting a promotion, right? And it turns out there's two ways to get $1,000. Be a good person and sacrifice your whole life, or just be greedy old Potter.
Like, I don't know why we get that money. In fact, Potter has far more money than that, right? So I don't know. There's something comic and there's kind of a dark tone as well.
So it's hard because it's on the one hand tragedy, right? It's risk of suicide on the other hand comedy, right? Because everything works out happily in the end. And there's a lot of funny moments on the other hand.
Tragedy because the miracle is kind of pathetic, right? And it's sort of everybody's kind of stuck in a kind of bourgeois sort of set of concerns. And then on the other hand, comic, because it's very hard. I think there's many layers to the comic and tragic aspects of the film.
I think that's right. Yeah. I got one of the thing I like to talk about. There's the second Christmas episode we've done, 30 Christmas episodes we've done.
Excuse me. And I'll just mention that we haven't talked about Christianity at all. Because this is a movie that's ostensibly like a Christmas classic, and there's very little Christianity in it. George Bailey admits to not being a praying man.
And yet, as David alluded to a little bit ago, there's this seemingly divine providence that takes care of him. I mean, there's very little, by the way, Christianity. I guess don't care about that. David was mocking me for even bringing it up.
Am I wrong? I mean, like, isn't it? He gets me down Catholic here and he gets queasy every bring up the Lord. I don't know, but Greg, why does Capra have to tackle that?
Obviously doesn't, but it seems like there seems like then the setting of Christmas as arbitrary as it is in die heart or something like that. I mean, what's particularly Christian about it? It's Christmas Eve, I guess when he's going to come to suicide, is that right? It's like 10 p.m.
or something. I mean, maybe it's just the reluctance. I mean, it's as an image of like a Christian world, right? On both the human and the divine level, right?
It seems very like un-Christian, right? And the set of concerns motivating the angels and motivating the human beings, right? Yeah. And then yeah, you just threw that line in the chat, right?
All you can take with you is that which you've given away is because you can't take money with you. Right. Right. So, all you can take away with you is your charity.
So there's a reference to this, right? So, one idea though, Greg, is if they had specified his faith or made him a faithful man, the movie may not have this universal and appeal. So he says that good man simply. Sorry, what was that John?
This is the late 1940s. I mean, it's highly ecumenical. Faith is important, but the content of that faith is not, right? And of course, in the 1950s, there's Will Herbert writing Catholic Protestant Jew, that the details don't matter.
Eisenhower talking about the value of religion and going to church, even though he doesn't go to church personally. Yeah, I think there's a lot of that in America during this period. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah.
I mean, is it is there something just deeply un-Christian about these citizens, right? All just trying to get ahead, ambitious, this morally monuments to their own inventors. Is there something you could say deeply, I'm just going to piss off a lot of people, whatever. Is there something deeply un-Christian about this sort of American self-reliance, right?
In a way, I don't know, I'm just speculating about about this. And then even when they get to the cosmic function, it all just comes down to like, you know, again, these like get ahead ambitious values of money and promotion and things like that, right? Well, I mean, Bailey is ambitious, but at every turn when forced to choose between his ambition and doing quote unquote the right thing, he chooses the latter. I mean, who is really purely motivated by greed and ambition, aside from Potter, who's the one we're supposed to hate?
Yeah. I guess his brother's a little bit of a turd for like running off and... He was a war hero for crying out. Sorry, sorry, right?
I just was before he was a warrior. That's right. That's right. He was before he was a war hero.
He went off getting married, got a job, left his brother. He's like, oh, I'll be back in drive. Oh, yeah. That's what I meant.
That's what I meant. He went because the money that was going to be spent on Georgia's college education went to his brother. Right. He went off to college and yeah, got a better job.
And what about the other guy? His buddy, who's in 25? Yeah, Wayne Wright. Yeah.
Well, right? He's the great angel in the end who coughs up the money unless we're expected to believe that the people who were gathered at that house, you know, passing around the basket came up with 8,000. I find that hard to believe. Right.
Yeah. Same way. Right. So the billionaire industrialist who saves the day.
And he gives him a ticket out early on, right? And this is despite the fact that he takes his girl from him, right? Right. Well, he's got the girl on the side for what it's worth.