(post)script: Post-Wonderful

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Aspiring filmmakers and screenwriters can learn more about their online courses at tischpro.smashcut.com/subtext. Most (post)script episodes are paywalled. To get them all, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Food with Former New York Times food journalist and bestselling author Mark Bittman; and Movie Therapy, in which Siskel & Ebert meets Dear Abby. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:00 Erin: Welcome to Postscript, the subtext after show where we talk about things related and unrelated to the week's episode. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. 0:07 Wes: And this is Wes Alwan. So we just got done talking about It's a Wonderful Life. Well, I guess we didn't just get done. We're gonna do a little bit more talking about it and specifically about Clarence 0:21 Erin: and the Martinis and maybe a little Uncle Billy too. 0:24 Wes: And Uncle Billy, how do you feel about the. An Italian family being called the Martini? 0:30 Erin: First of all, Love it. 0:31 Wes: And owning a bar to boot. 0:33 Erin: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's part of the tradition of last names, telling you what you have to do. 0:38 Wes: And it sets up an important joke in the film. I hope it's not only just for 0:41 Erin: that, but yeah, the Martini family is really like. So it was so important, I think to me as a kid and I think it was really self conscious choice on Capra's part to put basically like a version of his own family into Bailey park, you know, and to have Potter be also like an anti Italian bigot too. 1:01 Wes: Right. 1:02 Erin: He says that George is. Does he want to play nursemaid to a bunch of garlic eaters or something like that? Yeah, there's a real significance to the fact that Bailey park has people in it that would not ordinarily be allowed in these types of, you know, single family home communities. 1:18 Wes: Yeah, we get several nods towards the importance of immigrants. Right? 1:22 Erin: Yeah, absolutely. And I love all those little kids piling into the back of the car with a goat. That is so, so typical. You know, my grandparents themselves, after they were married, they lived for a few years in the upstairs unit of a multi family house where downstairs lived my grandmother's Italian speaking parents in New Haven. But then they saved up their money and they moved into kind of like the equivalent of Bailey park, this post war residential neighborhood of single family homes just outside New Haven, where they raised their kids and where my grandmother still lives. And, and Wes, you've been to that house, very, very small house. And it's just great to see that and to know that Capra too, like as, as an immigrant and as like part of this very American tradition is including immigrants as part of that vision of a ideal small town life. 2:11 Wes: Which is cool and it's interesting. You know, you're talking about the business versus personal and the commerce and professional life and work versus familial and the communal. And in this case, you know, immigrants play a role in both of those. Right. So for Potter, it's just people to exploit. There doesn't seem to be a lot of thought by him about their social role. You know, he's sort of casually racist towards them. And I think he also, you know, he makes a reference to a discontented, lazy rabble at a certain point, which I take to be just like the worky working class. And he contrasts that to a thrifty working class, I guess. So that's his ideal. But for him, the existence of that social stratum, it's just there for him to be an object of his predation, let's say. And then there's the role of immigration and growth. Right. In the expansion of the United States, including its economic expansion. Very important to that. But also they play an important factor in the development of the social fabric. They're not just incidental to it or, as someone like Potter might think, some kind of detriment to it. Right. 3:22 Erin: And I think part of the implication of his statement about that thrifty working class thing is the idea that if you give them homes that are too nice, then they're not going to bother working as hard. So he wants to keep them in poor living conditions maybe to, you know, maybe there's a little bit of social Darwinism inherent in that, that they'll want to work harder to improve their station. And, you know, I kind of wonder if Potter is supposed to be. You know, there's that part where Potter sort of taunts George, who's come into his office to ask for the $8,000 that Potter has stolen. I wonder about Potter as a figure, if we're supposed to take him as a literal person or if he's really just too mean and ridiculous to be anything but a symbol of, like, fate or generalized forces of evil. But anyway, that scene is interesting to me because he says to George, you once called me warped, frustrated old man, something like that. And he says, well, you're a warped, frustrated young man. And I do think there's supposed to, inherent in Potter himself, yet another alternate reality thread there for what George might have become. Maybe is he supposed to be the sort of inner psychology of George or what George might be if George really put his entrepreneurial skills to work? Because here we have a man who's put up a lot of buildings and done, on a small scale, done a lot of things that George had the ambition to do. 4:43 Wes: So you're thinking about Potter as a reflection of a different possible future George Bailey. Is that the. 4:50 Erin: Yeah. Or maybe even the devil on George's shoulders or shoulder. The one shoulder. 4:57 Wes: Right. Well, he offers him a Job. Right. At one point, that is, I did the currency conversion equivalent of 3 or $400,000 a year in today's money. Wow. Very hard to resist. 5:09 Erin: Well, also, I wonder if the idea of joining forces with Potter is necessarily so negative. I mean, it is in the configuration of this film. So it is the possibility that he couldn't join forces and integrate a little bit more compassion and a little bit more of his own ideals into the way that Potter's structure works. 5:31 Wes: Change the system from within. 5:32 Erin: Well, exactly. And also, this idea of Potter as being. It's a curious one because Potter is so mean that it's like he's beyond conversion. You know, he's obviously a Scrooge figure, but a Scrooge who does not become converted. And so as the. The soul thrown into the outer darkness. I think that's a little chilling. You know, I mean, I want to see. I'm not a total softie or anything, but I would like to see Mr. Potter experience a conversion. I don't know. Maybe I'm asking too much. 6:03 Wes: Isn't that what the devil says to Jesus in the desert? Join me. You can change the system from within. 6:10 Erin: Yes. Yes, it is. That's right. 6:12 Wes: And Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker. 6:15 Erin: No, you're right. It's. It's. 6:16 Wes: I'm. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. But. But, yeah, no, I get that. I mean, I was just making that joke because that's part of the temptation, right? 6:24 Erin: Well, no, I think there's something to that. 6:26 Wes: Yeah. 6:27 Erin: That it's impossible to change the system from within according to that formulation. If we take. 6:32 Wes: Right. 6:32 Erin: Potter as being a devil figure or it's. 6:35 Wes: I think maybe the danger is that you. And it's a very realistic danger, is it you will simply get corrupted by it. You will start to speak that language and get integrated into that culture so that the good that George Bailey might be able to do in that position will get undermined because it will transform him as a person. Do the sort of thing that you were bringing up before, which has created different possible future for him. Create a different variation on. On George Bailey. 7:08 Erin: Right. 7:09 Wes: I think we all face this problem because we are all worried about making a living for most of us. Right. We're worried about making a living. And we are always engaged in this rationalization to one degree or another. You know, to what extent do I need to sell out? And it's not just about making a living. It's about being part of an institution. It's about being a part of a community, right? So. But that always comes with constraints and it comes with influences. So, for instance, if I become a professional philosopher, for instance, right. If I'm tied to the academy and my bread and butter has something to do with publishing and delivering presentations at conferences, can I actually do the thing that I want to? This was a dilemma once upon a time. For me, it's not anymore. But can I do the thing that I really want to do, which is to be completely authentic, right. Which. Which seems to mean being completely free and not tied to the expectations of others and not tied to the criteria of professionalization and, you know, and scholarship and all those things which seem to just sort of chip away at originality and creativity. So we have to make these decisions about being tied to institutions and the necessity to make money and all of that stuff, and the conflict between that and who we might be if we can remain free of those influences. And again, it's even more complicated because we need those influences, as I pointed out. We need obligations and expectations and the recognition of others and their demands in order to do our work on a day when we might not feel like doing it. The other aspect of the immigration story in the Martinis is just the. That aspirational component, right? Because the communal, for the martinis means several different things. There's the communion bread they bring with them. There's a community into which they're being integrated. So that, in a way, the conflict between aspiration and community is different. Right. In some ways, aspiration lines up with community. I'm moving to America. I'm becoming part of this place. So that that sort of integration is freedom. I don't know if you were thinking about any of that with the Martinis. 9:27 Erin: The mere fact of being welcomed into Bailey park represents the realization of an ambition, right? 9:34 Wes: Yeah. 9:35 Erin: And still being able to be oneself. What I love, too, about that sequence is the fact that they are still, you know, they're still coming with the goat. They're still, you know, they're still getting a blessing where they're crossing themselves with bread and the wine, right. So that it doesn't involve having to sacrifice their values, but they can be integrated as themselves into this idealized community and not have to do the things that a lot of people had to do, which is to try to quash that part of their identities in order to integrate properly. The thing I was thinking about Potter, too, which might lead us to Clarence, is this idea that Potter is kind of like a supervillain, which is another. His extreme meanness and his, his slyness is a super villainy. And I think it's funny that. And very, very appropriate that on the other side we have, you know, the dumbest angel of all the. 10:28 Wes: Of all the angels. 10:31 Erin: I think that's also true. 10:33 Wes: The dumbest name, Clarence. 10:35 Erin: Oh, he's so. 10:36 Wes: Hey, I say that as someone. 10:37 Erin: Wait a minute. 10:39 Wes: Yes, I'm allowed. I'm allowed to say that. 10:42 Erin: That's right. 10:43 Wes: Clarence, myself. 10:44 Erin: Yeah, right. 10:45 Wes: Who goes, obviously, by a different name. 10:49 Erin: Sweet Henry Travers. I think the stupidity of the angel, the stupidity of goodness is really important here. You know, it's a common theme of the childlike faith or the holy fool too. But I love the part where Nick kicks them out of the bar in the alternate reality. And then we see him playing with his cash register and saying, like, get me, I'm giving out wings. You know, making it. Making the bell ring. There's something in that that strikes me as being really important. It's like the movie's self awareness of the kind of sentimentality of the bell ringing and the kind of, I guess how easy it is to make fun of goodness and to make fun of innocence. 11:36 Wes: I think he calls them pixies, right? 11:39 Erin: Yeah. 11:39 Wes: And I don't know if there was. If the insinuation was that they're gay as well, but at the very least that they are not manly. And there's a connection between not being manly and being unrealistic, let's say, or prone to silly fantasies or something like that. And that that in itself is tied to goodness. So if we're good, we're not tough and we're not realistic, right. 12:03 Erin: That moment is just, you know, aha. You know, Nick has found the loophole in faith. You know, that's everything that everybody want to. Wants to point out, right. About, you know, gee, isn't it stupid to believe in religion? You know, the. Look how silly it all is. Of course, that's the point. Or part of the point anyway. So I, Yeah, I just, I love that moment. But Clarence turns out to be, you know, it turns out like a stupid, stupid angel is better than a super smart devil. 12:31 Wes: Right? We get deceived by our intelligence, right. It's not our. In an ethical sense, we get duped not because we are too dumb, but because we're not dumb enough in some sense, because we're too smart. And this goes again towards the whole God thing that we were so smart that we can rely only on ourselves and only on our own intelligence for guidance rather than something that is outside of Us. And what looks dumb about someone inside the religious moment to someone outside it is just that they would rely on something that. For which there is no rational explanation or no obvious material motive or something like that. It's dumb in the sense that it is. It reaches towards a inexplicable foundation. And what's inexplicable is we find ourselves dumbfounded in the face of what's inexplicable. 13:29 Erin: Right. The one thing I wanted to say, too, is just how terrible the ending message is that he writes in the book. The idea that as long as you have friends. You wrote it kind of undercuts the strength of that final scene for me. 13:44 Wes: Yeah. What are the words exactly? 13:46 Erin: Remember, no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings. Love, Clarence. Yeah, I think that really misses the mark. 13:54 Wes: Well, I was wondering actually, this earlier. I forgot to bring it up, but what do you do? We don't have to discuss it now because we're ending. But if you tell the story about someone who's not George Bailey. Right. How do you tell it about one of the other schlubs in the film where they don't exist? Can you tell the same sort of story about the detrimental effects of there not being there? Does one have to be a George Bailey to be so important to the social fabric? 14:24 Erin: Right. And that's a really good question. I think that George's personal popularity can't be the message at the end. Right. Because it's still. Having a lot of friends is still not part of what this is about because it's still implying some kind of worldly. You know, I take the ending to be kind of, you know, on the one hand, literal, on the other hand symbolic, where he's being able to see the rewards, the heavenly rewards of what he's been able to accomplish on Earth. And that is just a result of good deeds. It's not how many friends you have. I just, you know, I worry in the. The Christmas months, especially where people feel very lonely, to then have a movie where you're told that as long as you have a lot of friends, you'll be okay. That's tough for me. It's tough for me to reconcile just 15:06 Wes: thinking about the scenario in which it's Gower or someone else who's right at the bridge ready to throw themselves off. And the argument that one might make is that there's a lot that's just. It's not just a matter specifically of Bailey's good deeds, but it's. It's Really a matter of contingency, because he's. He's a linchpin. Not just in the sense that, oh, he's the guy with the most friends in town and the guy who's most important morally to the town or something like that, or, you know, in terms of good deeds, but that if you remove him, this. That might not happen, but it's. It's always possible that you interfere with a lot of other forces for good. So, for example, his brother. He saves his brother, so that his brother saves a whole troop carrier. 15:54 Erin: Right, right. 15:55 Wes: And the troop carrier would not have been saved if it weren't for him. And, you know. Yes. So it's a good deed. He saves his brother, but it's also. It's a matter of happenstance that his brother ended up in the water. And. And likewise, he wasn't there to save Gower from going to prison. So that the charitable reading here is it's not just that what's important is not just the fact that Gower goes to prison as kind of the. The endpoint, but Gower's influence on the town is lost as well. So that Gower is also a good person with good effects. And that order, and that the whole order can get unbalanced by simply subtracting someone from it. And it could be anyone because they are already integrated into the community. Right. They already have an important role in the community. And that when people do disappear abruptly, it causes problems. And we have rituals, we have ways of, you know, the mourning people is not just about, you know, about our personal grief, but mourning people is about repairing the rent and the social fabric, so to speak. But if they are simply abruptly subtracted with no real transitional moment, or let's say, ability to process it or reflect on it, had this kind of dystopian result, let's say, which is what we get with Bailey, But I'm suggesting we might get it with less significant people. 17:15 Erin: Yeah, well, I hope that's true. I really like your idea that one of the most significant implications of George's non existence is the idea that the whole transport of soldiers dies as being your idea of it as being really incidental or accidental, because I think that's really important, that there's this idea that we're being worked through in ways that we don't even realize, that we don't recognize. So the idea that maybe Ernie the cab driver had picked somebody up and given them a free ride or gotten to them at the right time to prevent, you know, a whole catastrophic series of events happening might also be just as significant and the ways in which we're being used, I mean that in the. In a good way used in a good way for carrying out interventions of fate in ways that we are not ourselves aware of. 18:08 Wes: Oh, right. 18:10 Erin: Really beautiful element of this. 18:12 Wes: Yeah, yeah, good point. It's a. Don't interfere with fate or try even as we found out from our Oedipus episode just make things worse. 18:21 Erin: Right. But maybe we're all little versions of our own Clarences in ways that we don't know and we may not be directly sent down from a flickering Joseph star to come in and to have that effect because maybe we don't need that kind of direct intervention so literally enacted but maybe sometimes we're acting out those interventions in ways that. That we will not find out until we die, if ever. 18:44 Wes: Yeah. Okay. Well I like that. Great, thank you and Merry Christmas again. 18:51 Erin: Merry Christmas.