The Pain of Anonymity in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)

Though sometimes accused of a sentimentality dubbed “Capracorn,” Frank Capra’s films are clear-eyed about the suffering of the everyman. A quintessential director of the Great Depression and World War II eras, Capra expressed better than most the desperation at the heart of a young country’s ambitions. And as a chronicler of his age’s disillusionment and alienation, he joined an American cultural landscape stretching back to Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain. How is George Bailey, a purveyor of the American dream, representative of the anonymyzing terror of 20th century society? And how might Christmas, rather than providing merely the heart-warming scaffolding for Capra’s tale, form an integral part of his message? Wes & Erin discuss the 1946 holiday classic, “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. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, 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 Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. 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 0:12 Erin: Though sometimes accused of a sentimentality dubbed Capracorn, Frank Capra's films are clear eyed about the suffering of the everyman. A quintessential director of the Great Depression and World War II eras, Capra expressed better than most the desperation at the heart of a young country's ambitions. And as a chronicler of his age's disillusionment and alienation, he joined an American cultural landscape stretching back to Hawthorne, Melville and Twain. How is George Bailey, a purveyor of the American dream, representative of the anonymizing terror of 20th century society? And how might Christmas, rather than providing merely the heartwarming scaffolding for Capra's tale, form an integral part of his message? Today on a special Christmas episode of Subtext, we're discussing the 1946 holiday classic it's a Wonderful Life. This is Erin O'Luanaigh and this is Wes Alwan and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, It's a Wonderful Life. Do you have a yearly tradition or did anyone in your family have a yearly tradition of watching this movie at Christmas time? Or what was your experience of it growing up? 1:19 Wes: Well, I'm embarrassed to say that no, there wasn't a tradition. The movie that I watched every year at Christmas was the wizard of Oz. 1:29 Erin: Oh, that's right. 1:29 Wes: And there may have been others, but it wasn't It's a Wonderful Life. And I may not have seen this for the first time until college. And once again, my friend, the jazz pianist, the late, great John Lebecque, is probably responsible for getting me to watch this. 1:46 Erin: I watched it all the time as a kid and to the point where now my family, I think, probably won't watch it with me anymore because I had to watch it every Christmas or else I would get. I would think that it would. It was not Christmas, would not be up to the standard without watching this. But I do remember, like, the one time that I really remember watching it as an event was I watched it in college with a bunch of friends. We went to, like the classroom building and somebody brought in a DVD and we watched it on the big screen that sort of like comes down at the front of the lecture hall, you know, which sounds not very nice, but it was actually wonderful. There was a big gang of us in there watching it. And then I remember in the ending, scene one, this was just so magical. I don't know why this stands out to me except for this reason, the ending when George comes back to the real reality. And it starts snowing again. It started snowing outside. It was one or two days before the end of term and it started snowing very, very heavily. These big, big flakes that kind of looked like fake snow, you know, the fake snow of the movie. And it ended. And I remember we just, we walked out in this sort of like daze at night and it was snowing and we just were like dancing through the snow. And it was a perfect. So that was my best memory of this. But I think that George as a character, George Bailey, is it common to identify with him on like a very deep level? Because he's one of the few movie characters that I think I really truly identify with. Is that true for you too? Is he the everyman in that way? 3:18 Wes: That's what you identify with, the everyman quality? 3:21 Erin: I guess not. I think George for me is like part reality maybe and part aspirational. I think that maybe what was once every man about him, the characteristics of like living in small town America, basically all the things that George hates, right. Those are now kind of enviable. And so I wish for that kind of a world, I guess I wish for a world in which a town that's the equivalent of a cheers bar, you know, where everybody knows your name. I know that that comes with pitfalls and gossip and stuff like that, but I've always longed to belong to that kind of a community. I'm lucky in having a kind of a Bedford Falls type place to go home to. Not in terms of that character of the town or the close knit community, but in the pre war sense of a st geographical location in America to which my family has been tied consistently since they left Italy. So I have that, but I don't have that communal environment. And that's something I've always really wanted. But I think insofar as George is frustrated and he has all of these thwarted ambitions, maybe it's an oldest child thing, but I think I really understand some of George's frustrations and thwarted ambitions. Though few of my ambitions have been thwarted, I think there's that that tug towards home that George kind of represents, which is very responsible and about taking care of the larger family. 4:35 Wes: It's interesting that you're focusing on the thwarted ambition aspect of this because it's one of the things that I was took most note of. And I don't think it's the way probably people typically think about It's a Wonderful Life. Right. I don't think what occurs to people when they hear that title Is. Oh, you know, there's an interesting reflection here on a conflict between someone who wants to go out and do big things, you know, lasso the moon and at least, you know, get away from a small town. Right. And between the values of being part of his community and really, you know, if that whole counterfactual towards the end of the movie is correct in a way, a kind of linchpin of the social fabric there, for whatever reason. And we can talk about why, you know, what qualities and him might lead him to be that sort of person. But. Yeah, so he's, you know, there's a conflict between aspiration and community, between freedom and domesticity, between work and love that plays out here. And in a way, he feels trapped in Bedford Falls. Right. But I just wanted to go back to your question about identification with George Bailey, because I can't really think about that character apart from Jimmy Stewart and his whole shtick, let's say, or his personality. 5:59 Erin: Shtick is a loaded word. 6:01 Wes: I know, I'm sorry. It was a little. But, no, it's a little pejorative, maybe. But, you know, his Jimmy Stewartness kind of intrudes to a great degree. And so what is that exactly? I mean, there's a kind of boyishness about him, and there's plenty of goodwill and heart, but maybe at times a little bit of benign cantankerousness, you know. 6:25 Erin: No, I'm glad you brought this up, because actually, I don't think that there's much about him that is benign. I think this is one of the complexities of him as an actor. I think that he can definitely do that cantankerous thing, and it is benign in this film, but there's also this volcanic, underneath the surface danger lurking there. It was exploited, I think, in certain films later on in his career, starting in the movie Rope. Hitchcock really saw in him someone who could be the main character in Vertigo, you know, a little bit unstable. There's a quivering quality to him that makes him. It's bizarre because it's kind of like his idealism. It's like flickering flame or something like that that gives him this vitality and energy. But then there's also the implication with that that that flame might be fanned into something outside of his control and outside of our control. I think there's a little bit of danger there. So I think that the. You know, my defense of the film in the intro about this idea that sentimentality is something typically associated with Capra. I think that this is a terribly unsentimental film. I mean, people at the time didn't like it because it was too depressing. And I do think that it works because Jimmy Stewart is showing signs of that later career danger. You know, I mean, he's. He does seem really unstable. And, you know, when he yells at his kids, that's a really believable moment. I mean, we've all been in that level of frustration before where you feel 7:55 Wes: like you're gonna snap, but you start abusing children. Of course. 7:58 Erin: Of course. Yeah. Not enough violence in this film for my. I'm just kidding anyway. No, but you know, that. That kind of like feeling like everything's falling apart, you're gonna snap, whatever. And he does snap. And it's scary, I think. 8:12 Wes: Yeah. So there's an edge. And I forget if we discussed this in our Rear Window episode. In fact, I had forgotten that we had already done a movie with. 8:23 Erin: That's right. That's right. 8:24 Wes: Jimmy Stewart. 8:25 Erin: Those were the days. 8:26 Wes: We've been doing the podcast long enough now that I can start forgetting about which episodes we've done. But anyway, yeah, we may have discussed this a bit and I may. I don't think I get as much of an edge from Jimmy Stewart. You know, that's what I was calling the benign cantankerousness. So maybe it's not. Maybe it doesn't seem as benign to everyone or I don't get a sense of dangerousness. Although it is a good point. That scene where he's being mean to his family is hard to watch and it's convincing and it's. You know, I can't help but think of him in a way as a kind of harmless guy. 9:04 Erin: Yeah, I think he is in most films, but I think this is just part of his complexity. Maybe. Or maybe I'm giving him a little too much credit, but. Credit for being Mr. Danger? Yeah. So this episode is going to be released on December 20, which is shortly before the first ever time that we ever recorded an episode of this podcast. So we're now at two years in. I just wanted to say that. Yeah, we're on the brink of our two year recording anniversary, which I celebrate as our actual anniversary. 9:33 Wes: Right. 9:33 Erin: So it is. So this is great. I love. 9:36 Wes: I feel like we should break into Auld Lang Syne now. 9:39 Erin: I know, I know. We're the richest men in town. Oh, damn it, I'm gonna cry. 9:44 Wes: Rich in recordings. 9:45 Erin: That's right. No man can be thought a failure if he has podcasts. 9:50 Wes: I was about to say that. 9:53 Erin: No. Oh, gosh. Hilarious. So, anyway, back to the regularly scheduled programming. 10:00 Wes: So we were trying to get at Jimmy Stewart and the character of George Bailey at least, and the extent to which he's a. Has some sort of edge or darkness or is just kind of a affable, kind hearted everyman. But we are also pointing to the central conflict between ambition, wanting to go out and do something, and then serving this role in his community. 10:27 Erin: Yeah. So I think that another element of fantasy that I'm thinking about here in terms of my own personal identification is not just to have the community, but also, you know, this, this linchpin quality that you're talking about. It's very inspiring to think that if someone is removed from the larger social fabric that there will be negative ramifications of that and not positive ones. So I think that's part of the fantasy for me too, about one's place in the world. And I was reflecting quite a bit and thinking about this film, about how common that societal removal theme is in American literature. It's really significant. For instance, I was trying to think, you know, why is Clarence lugging around Tom Sawyer? And of course there's the famous scene in Tom Sawyer where he fakes his own death and watches his funeral. There are other instances in American literature, short stories and things like that that maybe we'll, we'll cover later of people removing themselves from society and seeing the effect that they have. There's. I know I've referenced this before and we should definitely cover it at some. But there's that Hawthorne short story, Wakefield. Maybe I've gotten at it from so many angles now that it wouldn't be worth doing a separate episode on it. But it's very suggestive to me of this kind of theme in which this guy just decides, you know, he's mischievous, whatever, he just decides to up and leave his wife, just walk out of his house, put on a disguise and live in a house around the corner as a stranger for 20 years to spy on his wife. I was first introduced to this story in grad school in my mfa and then I used it to teach my students a little, A little unit on American Short Stories because I was so affected by it. And I would frequently bring in It's a Wonderful Life in order to explain this, because I think it's part of this idea that it's like being a cookie cutter or something. You have to remove yourself from society somehow in order to see the size of the hole that you've left. And so I think that's part of this for some reason, Americans are interested in this. And I think it's because of this idea of ambition and wanting to make an impact on the world and, and various other anxieties which I think are becoming prominent in the 20th century at this time. 12:37 Wes: Yeah, that's really interesting. I think it's hard to actually see ourselves at all. Right. And we try to see ourselves by way of our social effects, by way of our experience or our fantasies or presuppositions about how others are experiencing us, how others are thinking of us. And ambition, of course, enters into that because it's very focused on, I want to build. What does he say? I want to build the longest bridge. Yeah, but of course it's something, it's a task we can't ever fully accomplish to get outside ourselves. And the suggestion here is that if we could run a kind of experiment, one experiment is just to thought about this sometimes. What would I learn from. If someone had secretly videotaped me for very significant moments in my life? What, what horrifying things would I learn about myself? Well, I mean, originally it's, you know, what useful things would I learn about myself and how could I change because of that? But it's also, for me, it's kind of a horrifying thought experiment. It's like reading someone else's diary. Right. Or hearing gossip about you or, or something like that. I've. I've never, I've always worried that I just, I don't have the fortitude to withstand that kind of self scrutiny. Right. Despite my interest in psychoanalysis and all that stuff. So here's what I'm trying to get at is that we can hide from ourselves socially. Part of being integrated socially is the way in which it enhances our capacity to hide from ourselves. Because of course, people aren't just running around telling us exactly what they think of us unless they're drunk. Right. 14:24 Erin: It's true. 14:25 Wes: And so we can, we can hide from ourselves socially. But of course, it would be truly revealing to be able to perform this sort of experiment. And I think experiment in the full sense of the word, since it's a kind of counterfactual where you say, okay, what happens if I subtract myself from the social environment, the social fabric, and I'm using the word fabric there, right. Because it's. Because of all these different causal dependencies, how would things have changed? In this movie we get a very dramatic version of that. Right. So things really go to pot or to Potter. 15:01 Erin: To Potter, yeah. 15:03 Wes: Without the presence of George Bailey And I can't. In my own case, I can't imagine. It's difficult for me to imagine it would be similar. Right. 15:11 Erin: But it's for any of us. 15:13 Wes: For any of us. Right. So we could. There's no attempt at realism there. Right. Even Mary is an old maid. 15:21 Erin: That's the funniest part of the whole 15:23 Wes: movie, is the horror of horrors. A librarian. 15:27 Erin: She's about to close up the library, 15:32 Wes: and then she's sort of like suit 15:33 Erin: and glasses, walking around like clutching a rape whistle. 15:37 Wes: Right, right. What a terrible fate. The library is sort of the worst possible thing that could happen. 15:45 Erin: Parks and Rec. Vision of the library. 15:48 Wes: Yeah. 15:48 Erin: Just to get back to what you're saying about this idea of the camera watching us. I find that so intriguing. And the idea that we can, you know, more often than not, we're hiding from ourselves. I wonder if, you know, I've thought of that camera thing too, of seeing myself in certain situations more often, I think as a. Maybe as like a neutral document of what really happened or even just as a desire to have, like, one's memory backed up on hard drive, to want to remember certain things in their entirety. But I think that that too is maybe. I wonder if people before the age of cameras had that thought, you know, I wonder if when there was no way to record anything, if people were thinking, you know, oh, I wish I could have. I'm sure people were saying, I wish I could remember this forever. But I think that this idea of a camera watching you is so interesting because the camera is part of the culprit. I think in this whole story, I'm associating George's desire to leave Bedford Falls, maybe unfairly and maybe a little bit too simply, with a desire for fame. And I think that the desire for fame intruding on small town life is kind of the dilemma here. Sam Wainwright gets fame and fortune and gets out. Potter is a celebrity in his own community. But I think this explores the different ways that one can be thought of as a celebrity. And maybe that's what's appealing to me about this too, is this idea that George is the linchpin. He is his own celebrity in this community. Right. And maybe that's kind of what we all want, is to be thought of as, like, this essential figure, whatever scale it is that you're in, whether it be a small town or conquering New York or an entire continent or something like that, we all have this longing, I think, for recognition. It's what George wants on a huge scale. And then Discovers, I think that he has still, but just on a much humbler scale and that that has to be enough. 17:38 Wes: You're pointing to something interesting about the component of aspiration or desire for fame in this, which is that it's kind of cuts two ways. You know, one is the aspiration to serve his community and to get married and to do all those sorts of things. And the other is just. It's about pure freedom to travel. Right? That's his big. That's his big thing in the beginning. And to escape the small town, to be free to not have a wife. You know, we sort of wonder in the movie why he seems so kind of clueless or weird with. With Mary. And of course, eventually we learn, you know, he's actually conflicted, he doesn't want to be tied. And those are just, you know, those are concerns that we all. We all face at some point. They get enhanced in a world where there's. You're in a small town existence, but you have the modern mobility and you have a modern system of communications, right, in which you're exposed to many, many different sorts of possibilities. So you don't simply, you don't know only the small town environment, in a way, you know, the big city, you know, many, many more possibilities for life than you would otherwise have known if mass communications weren't around. So in a way, I guess I'm trying to point to the fact that it's a. Is it just a conflict between aspiration and love or is it, in a way a conflict within aspiration? Maybe it's both. 19:08 Erin: I find it so interesting too that George, also the possibility of another apparatus for travel is closed to him that few previous generations had, which is a world war. That's one way, one classical way to achieve a notoriety, to achieve glory. And also it's literally a free trip to Europe or the South Pacific. And so even that, or to heaven, you never know. Right, right, right. No, but even that is not available to him. And so all of these small town figures, I love that sequence of all of these Bert and Ernie and everybody, you know, everybody gets to be a hero in their war story. And poor George, because he saved his brother and has a bum ear, which, that in itself is really interesting too, like that. I wonder if that bad ear symbolically marks him as being almost prematurely aged, you know, like an old man before his time. Because it's like he skipped over that period of exploration and he immediately fills his father's shoes and skips over that typical time that people would have for adventure. And instead he must be saddled with really these concerns of old age, which is like holding down the fort, making sure the business doesn't go under, not being able to go to college, not being able to explore any other type of money making enterprise. 20:41 Wes: Yeah, that's interesting because I think it is part of what we were trying to get at with the George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart identity. Maybe an old soulness. I don't know if you agree with that. And I was kind of, when I watched this, I was looking for that and the actor who was playing the young George Bailey, I'm like, huh, I wonder if they found a kid or if they were able to craft this in a way where that shows where it's not just, you know, a generic boy. And I thought they got at that a little bit. 21:13 Erin: I think they really did. I think that this is a bold claim, but I think that Capra is probably the best director of children ever. These kids are. They're so adult. And the. I love any scenes with kids, whether they be, you know, George and young Violet and Mary or George's own children. I love, for instance, when, you know, when George first comes home after they've lost the $8,000, sits down in an armchair and his little, I think it's Tommy is the little boy. You know, he pulls him up onto his lap and Tommy has that Santa mask over his face and he starts like growling at his father. You know, it's just exactly the kind of weird thing that a three year old would do, you know, growl with a Santa mask on. And then when he's putting the tinsel on George's head. And it's so smart about kids and the way that they, they work. And the scene in the drugstore when he's sort of majorly talking down to Mary and pretending to be an explorer. And there's some very adult dynamics happening there for these little kids. Violet and Mary already seem to be in competition for George and there's animosity and a kind of perceived looseness of Violet and the fact that she likes every boy. And George too has not expressed a desire to be away from girls, but rather he's progressed to this idea of harems and three or four wives as an attractive possibility. 22:34 Wes: Yeah, I had the same thought. And of course the scene is designed to give us that thought, but the very adult like behavior of the children in that drugstore scene, and Violet and Mary, but young Mary in particular, her facial expressions. This may sound dumb, but I was wondering if a child actor or actress could pull that sort of thing off today if it was a product of the times that someone could be such a little adult. I know that sounds weird because precociousness, of course is a common thing in movies, but it just captures something unique here. 23:07 Erin: Part of that is the innocence of the culture on the one hand, but it's also the. Which allows that to work and not have it be like creepy or weird. But on the other hand, I think it's a product of the whole sweep of the film. The timeline of the film. The starting time is 1919. So we have the end of World War I, we have, you know, the Great Depression and then another world war. This is part of the cultural landscape that has caused this greatest generation to become the greatest generation, which is all of the adversity that they had to deal with. And maybe that contributed to this premature aging on the one hand, but also a real inherent innocence in the culture on the other. And I think it's something I see too personified in George, the idea that, you know, he has to take responsibility. He's not uncommon for that time. He's a 12 year old, work behind the counter of a drugstore telling people they should have more coconut on their ice cream is in that position of power and delivering poison to people. So that little adult quality is also something I think that the Little Rascals truck in frequently. They're of course way younger than these kids. But I think that sort of like 30s harshness combined with a culture that isn't going to view these children as being unduly sexualized in any way. Unfortunately, I think now we don't live in that kind of safe culture anymore. 24:26 Wes: Yeah, you know, one of the Little Rascals is actually in this movie. 24:30 Erin: Alfalfa. Yeah, that's right. 24:32 Wes: Okay. 24:33 Erin: He's in a lot of these movies. 24:36 Wes: You're bringing to mind here the role of necessity, right? Necessity is referring, I mean, first and foremost to all the things that we have to do simply to sustain ourselves. Right. Our material existence, we. We need money. At some point, George, right, thinks he. He finds out the hard way that he needs more than his idealism. He needs, he needs money as well. So necessity in terms of sustaining ourselves as physical beings in the world, being able to put food on the table, all that stuff. But also necessity in terms of the kind of causal web in which we necessarily find ourselves are. Are being a product of influences, including social influence, influences around us and our. Are playing a role and of course in influencing others. Those Senses of necessity are. You called them to mind for me, because they in. They're enhanced. The farther back in time we go, the more those forces are enhanced, in a way. And they require people to grow up quicker and to get married quicker. Right. Because technology is more in its infancy and the more technological advancements we get, the less subject to necessity. In a way, we are for better and for worse when we indulge our tendency to aspiration and to fantasizing about ideals or to living by certain ideals. Part of that involves, I think, the desire to escape from necessity. So the way it's put in the film is that I think at some point, is it George or George's father who says, this is no place for any man unless they're willing to crawl to Potter, which is an interesting image. Right. Given that Potter is in a wheelchair and so that the idea seems to be that Potter is envious and he basically wants to put everyone in a position where they have to depend on him even to be, you know, to do basic things and to be mobile. Yeah. The idea of crawling to Potter, I think, is a sort of. It's an exaggeration or it's a hyperbolic representation of our relationship to necessity or the way that relationship might seem, or the burden of that. But necessity is also built into our relationships. Right. So we depend on other people. There's dependency. There's all the things that come with being part of a community or a family. So those two things kind of run against each other. So I'd like to take a moment to talk about our sponsor for this episode, NYU Tisch. 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The registration deadline is January 7th, so act now by going to tishpro.smashcut.com subtext that's t I s c h p r o smashcut s m a s h c u t.com subtext okay, back to the show. 29:11 Erin: In the case of Mr. Gower, for instance, the intervention of George to make sure that that kid with diphtheria isn't poisoned, which is really interesting. I looked up diphtheria because it's something I've always heard, but I didn't exactly know what it, what it is. But it's diphtheria comes from a bacteria that basically makes poison in the body. So Gower is ironically sort of treating poison with poison here. So the accident of putting the poison in the capsules, because Mr. Gower has a son who, you know, speaking of times in which people died faster, you know, who's apparently been cut down in the prime of his life by the flu. So we also have the intrusion of the flu epidemic. So George's intervention there, which, you know, Mr. Gower, basically, he's about to let his personal pain sort of destabilize his career. 30:02 Wes: Well, in fairness to him, he did have three other prescriptions for poison that day and the habit of filling. 30:08 Erin: Sorry, Right, right. Yeah, that's a question we might ask. But you know, obviously there's something interesting going on there too. You know, maybe subconscious desire to injure others because he's injured or whatever. But you know, there's this idea of his career becoming destabilized because of a private pain. You know, so this is his career world, his work world. George even steps up and feels a responsibility there. Of course, I mean, if any of us knew that someone was accidentally putting poison, they wouldn't deliver it to somebody. But anyway, the responsibility then that George is imbued with as a young boy, even to Mr. Gower, of course, later, this is also going to be part of the apparatus of his own career as an adult, which is to get other people out of trouble. But this Gower thing is interesting because it's a professional thing. I mean, it's personal, but it's also his job at the same time. And so George's intervention is not just personal, but he's saving this guy's professional reputation. I don't know what relationship this has to this idea of necessity that you're trying to get at. And of course, as I've already said, anyone would intervene in that instance, but I just find it interesting that it's expressed on these professional grounds rather than personal. You know, he's not going and helping Mr. Gower in a private capacity. There's some connection here to one's job, Capital J and one's job. This is something I was thinking about in terms of our responsibility to each other because George has this job which is already basically playing a charitable role in the community. Right. When he takes his father's job in the Building and Loan, there's kind of this expectation that George is always going to be poor. So there's a kind of altruism at the heart of George's job which would, in other communities, perhaps what he's doing would be picked up maybe by the church or by certain explicitly charitable enterprises within the town. And assuming that this operates like any other town in the 1940s, those institutions are probably picking up some of this slack. 32:16 Wes: Right. 32:16 Erin: But basically he's like a non profit, you know, he's basically a one man charitable institution. Plus Uncle Billy, who's I think, more of a detriment than a help to him. 32:27 Wes: Right. I was gonna say, like many nonprofits, someone like Uncle Billy is handling the money. 32:31 Erin: Right, right. And with the help of his trusty Raven. But yeah. So I don't know where I'm going with this, except that there's this interesting collapsing. There's helping people and being charitable in one's private capacity. And then usually in American life, there's a separation and then there's the way in which you support yourself, you make money and you do what you need to do to support your family. And so in George, these things are collapsed from the very beginning with this idea of Mr. Gower's business being in jeopardy and George helps him out of his business. That's what I'm trying to say. And then later this becomes literalized when George takes over his father's role. Or not literalized, but it becomes central to his existence. 33:13 Wes: Yeah. So in the case of Gower, there's sort of the intrusion of personal pain, as you pointed out, personal misfortune on professional competence. Right. And there's obviously Some tension in the movie between professional competence and then basic human decency. Goodwill and goodwill. Right. But of course, it's not like you can simply abandon professional competence. There's not always going to be a way for the community to bail you out if someone makes an Uncle Billy level mistake. You know, ideally we want to live in a, in a place where human decency does give us a kind of safety net, to put it that way. But that doesn't mean we can abandon professional competence. Right. It doesn't mean that, that we don't need someone who is not going to put the poison pills. 34:05 Erin: Right, right. 34:05 Wes: The prescription bottle, despite the clearly labeled poison big poison bottle from which he's taking the pills. Of course, maybe not storing the poison in the pharmacy in the first place is also a good idea, but yeah, so what's, you know, and again, this is a sort of basic individual dilemma because what's required for our professional competence is to some extent, it is something in. We do have to draw on something impersonal in a way. This is kind of the whole it's, you know, it's just business, it's not personal thing in the Godfather. 34:42 Erin: Right, right, right. 34:43 Wes: We had to be capable of putting on our business hat because if we didn't, we might be involved in assassinating our enemies. Right. Or might degenerate into something like the mafia, or we might just simply be more mundanely incapable of performing our certain basic daily tasks and our professions or our work in general, it makes demands on us that allow us to transcend personal misfortune and pain or just being in a bad mood, having a bad day. Hey, I have to actually record this podcast. I have to prepare for it. But absent those responsibilities, I might just be wasting time not doing anything at all, not doing anything productive at all. And that doesn't mean that I would be communing with the community, so to speak. It doesn't mean I would be integrating myself more fully into the social fabric. So that's just to say that there is something about the professional that's important to the social fabric and has a role in integrating one into it because it's, it's somehow related to obligation. And the ethical isn't just about altruism in the sense of good heartedness, community level giving, but it's also about some more basic and also more impersonal sense of, of obligation. 36:16 Erin: Right? Yeah. And I think that this, this ties into George maybe being ambivalent about his own aspirations because I think very often he derails them. I'm thinking of the time when he's on his. He's about to leave on his honeymoon with Mary and she tells him, let's just keep going. And he stays. There's a suggestion of the superhuman in George in terms of the ways in which he goes beyond personal responsibility into this realm of the impersonal responsibility. I think this crossing happens also in Gower's Drugstore. I love when young George sees the advertisement. Ask dad. He knows. It's a curiously loaded image. Child takes instruction from an ad as a means of moral education or as a means of getting advice. Whoever is running that ad, that product or whatever for cigars or whatever it might be, I didn't take a good enough look. Are they running a charitable enterprise by putting up these signs, helping people make the right decision? Of course. Then, you know, George runs to his father and fails to get his father's attention and his father's advice and then is derailed by the compulsion to defend his father from Mr. Potter's verbal attacks. And his father doesn't have time to give his son advice because the father's business is consuming so much of his time. And this conflict with Potter is actually preventing the father from giving his child the attention that the child needs. So it's very thorny, I think. 37:43 Wes: Yeah. Our work takes us away. You know, I was thinking of this when you were talking about the ways in which this whole concept of removal from the world. What if I were removed? What would happen? And of course that removal is a real thing more dramatically. Right. People go to prison. But more mundanely, we are removed all the time from our relationships or from intimacy by these other workday concerns, by being busy. 38:09 Erin: Right. 38:09 Wes: And so I was saying, you know, the busyness and the professional or that in some sense they are integrative into the community in a way, but they are also, you know, as you're pointing out, they also take us. They remove us from it. Right. And so it's thorny in the sense that it somehow does both at once. 38:25 Erin: Right. And in the, in the scene where they, where George gives away his own honeymoon fund to the residents of the town because of the run on the bank. You know, I just think about that guy who needs his 200 some odd dollars and who signed, who signed a, you know, an agreement with the bank. 38:43 Wes: So painful to me. I'm, I, I feel so. There are many points in this movie where I feel so Potter esque in my attitude. I'm just like, screw them. Like, go on your honeymoon. 38:53 Erin: Right, Right. 38:54 Wes: Listen to Mary, don't get out of the car. 38:56 Erin: Exactly. 38:57 Wes: You know, it's like a horror film, you know, don't go into that room. Don't get out of the car. 39:01 Erin: Right. It adds insult to injury, I think, because here we have George giving away his money to keep a business afloat. And also we have this guy who's then allowed to break his contract, his agreement with the bank and get out his full funds merely. So what? So that George won't lose one customer to Potter. I think there's curiously a lot of ego in the generosity of giving someone $200 just to make sure that they stay on with you. Anyway. It's frustrating because it's a legal agreement and it's like there are no rules in Bedford Falls, you know? 39:35 Wes: Exactly. 39:35 Erin: Nothing is above this personal charitable interaction, even a signed legal document. 39:42 Wes: So. Right, yeah. So this is the question of the extent to which the social fabric depends on the kindness of strangers, on the, on people being good hearted at critical moments such that if you subtract someone. Right. Everything falls apart. The social fabric is just that tenuous. Or the extent to which it's about systems and structures and about rules, about the proper social contract, about laws. Those are two different conceptions of the foundation of social order. And of course, both are at work. And to what extent do we privilege the one or the other? How are in it. They conflict? You know, those are the difficult questions. Of course, in, in this movie, I, you know, in my notes I wrote. In another very Potteresque moment I wrote at the end. So the social investment pays off, Right? 40:35 Erin: Right. 40:36 Wes: All the social investments he's made during the movie, everyone comes and, and he gets interest on those. And not just in terms of everyone's goodwill and, and in terms of communality, but in, you know, in the, in the very necessity oriented material factor, you know, money. Right. And then I was reminded of a different conception of justice. You've probably seen the Saturday Night Live 41:01 Erin: skit, right, where he gets the crap beaten out of him. 41:04 Wes: Yeah. Figure out that Potter stole the money and they all go beat the hell out of him. While, you know, while singing Auld Lang Syne At some point they get like the actual. The guy playing Potter, who is what, Jon Lovitz? Yeah, Jon Lovitz. Right. He disappears behind the desk and they bring out a dummy. 41:24 Erin: Yeah, it's pretty good. 41:25 Wes: Beating it with clubs. This is the ending many of us wanted to see. But yeah, the social investment pays off and we forget entirely about Potter. He's eclipsed by that. But there's an element of cynicism to seeing it that way, to seeing it as transactional. But the hope, of course, is just that actual human relationships play some role in keeping society together. And not just these impersonal forces and contracts and people's professional relationships and all that. And as you pointed out near the beginning of the episode, these are the things that we start to lose as we. As society becomes more urban and technologically advanced and more connected, ironically, right by technology, the more disconnected things get personally. So you can see this as a nostalgia for a social fabric that is more tightly knit, maybe. 42:21 Erin: Yeah. And I think that this is the threat of anonymity that hangs over the entire film. So the way that George's business is structured is predicated on not just these personal relationships, but this idea that he can loan somebody some money in the run on the bank scene and keep a mental ledger in his head. I'm pretty sure somebody's recording it too. But, you know, the idea that he can trust somebody to pay you back because everyone knows who you are and they know where you live, and so and so's money is in so and so's house and their money is in your house. And. And so these personal relationships are predicated on this idea that everyone knows you, they trust you, they know you intimately enough, but you understand that you are going to make good on your promises or whatever. Or if not, they know where to find you. This is the real terror of the alternate universe scene is this idea that no one knows you. So what does George want? He wants to go to the big city. He wants to make a name for himself in an urban environment. He wants to go lots of places and be a traveler and maybe be this unknown. Maybe there's a kind of like a hobo fantasy about this riding the rails or whatever. Common traveler fantasies in which one is anonymous and in which one passes through like a ghost through various towns and cities and countries. And so when he finally achieves that, in a way, by never having been born and he becomes a proper nomad without a home and with this kind of anonymity of the big city or of the modern world, that I think is the nightmare, right? That's the loudness of Pottersville, too. That's part of it. What is Potterville characterized by? I think besides the neon signs? I think it's the sounds, the sound of crowds, loud music, and thus of city life's anonymous ability to just absorb you into a larger body and not recognize you as being the person whose money is in My particular, you know, is in my garage or something. So that's the terror. I think of George in this scene, you know, asking his mother, don't you know me? And then there's also an interesting moment where Burt says that he doesn't live in Bailey Park. He lives in a shack in Potter's Field. And I was like, oh, right. You know, Potter's Field is where the unknown are buried. And then Bailey park is itself a cemetery. Right, where George's own brother is buried. So there's a kind of, you know, the scales are out of balance here, where Bailey park is where the possibility for personal relationships are dead and Potter's Field is where anonymous people are living. 45:01 Wes: Interesting. You have me thinking of two things. One is that earlier in the episode, some of your comments made me think of Sherwood Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio. Those short stories and the conflict between small town life and big city life and their benefits and detriments to both. But you were talking about the dark side of anonymity and travel and an urban scene. And then the dark side of the small town is just the sense in which it's a kind of a panopticon. Right? So you could. You could give a more cynical reading to why it is people might behave themselves more in that environment, which is just that, you know, it's not just that everyone knows your name, everyone knows what you're up to, or, you know, you're trapped in some sort of web of gossip and you're worried a lot about what the neighbors are saying. So that's the dilemma. It's between being unseen and being maybe seen too much. And then how does one navigate that? And then in a small town, it's not just about being seen too much, but it's about a more restrictive set of values. So that if you are, in Sherwood Anderson's terms, a grotesque or someone. These days, I think the word marginalized would be used. But if you're someone who's not part of an in group, let's say, then you really get a poor deal. So that's one thing I was thinking. And then the other is just that, you know, what is it that happens to the town when Bailey is removed from it? And I was thinking, you know, maybe. Maybe the town is, in a way itself anonymized so that what are the different scenes that we get without in which George doesn't exist? We see a kind of moral degradation and Martini's place has become Nick's. And when Gower comes in, he's just a homeless drunk now, it's not just that George wasn't there to save him from that fate, and, you know, he's been to jail apparently for 20 years, but it's also that the people in the town are meaner and people in the town treat each other more as strangers. And not just as strangers in a. You know, there could be a positive sense to stranger. Right. You know, as someone that towards whom you're hospitable or who at least has basic human rights. But here people are treated as others, you know, as strangers in the sense of others. And the only communality that people seem to have happens in bars or through revelry, through dancing. You know, we get lots of scenes of that sort of stuff, but with a tinge of kind of moral degradation. So we get anonymity and we get fake relatedness instead of real relatedness. 47:52 Erin: Yeah. This is the Internet world. Right. The commonality comes just in the sort of piling on of trolls. That scene with Mr. Gower coming into the bar is one of the five or six times that I consistently cry every time I watch this film. You know, but it's, you know, there's a disassociation, as I think, you know, you already. You've already said of being able to see Mr. Gower not as a human being, but just as an object of other people's scorn. And I see that moment when he gets sprayed in the face with the seltzer water as being a really interesting metaphor for what happens to people on the Internet when you don't see them as a full person and people just go after them. 48:27 Wes: Yep. 48:27 Erin: Yeah, it's tough. 48:28 Wes: And he's, you know, the justification. Right. Is that, well, he's a criminal and he's a drunk. And so it's moral judgment Right. At work. And it's supposed to be without knowing 48:37 Erin: the full story of anything that had happened. 48:40 Wes: Right? Yeah. And those judgments are supposed to have an ordering effect on a community. Right. And can we do without them completely? Not at least at a legal level. But the idea is that if they're not tempered by compassion, then we're in trouble. 48:53 Erin: Right. And that kind of judgment is what we would normally associate with the suffocation, as you were suggesting, of small town life. And we do see that kind of negative part of people knowing each other too well a little bit. I like when George's mother calls up Mary to let her know that George is coming to the house even though he walks in the other direction. Right. That's a little infuriating for him, understandably. And I think we also see this with Violet's reputation, which in Pottersville just becomes her, I guess, being a prostitute and being loaded into a cop car during a raid. But obviously she's suffering under the moral judgment of the town. And I see her ultimately as deciding not to leave at the end, as maybe a willingness to be seen, a willingness to try and sustain the gaze of the town. And I don't know if that's a triumph in the end or not. I mean, I kind of wish her the opportunity to start over and maybe go to a place where she doesn't have this kind of backstory weighing her down. But there is this suggestion that if she's going to stay there, then she's going to try to make good and live by their rules and try to keep herself in line. And that is a little bit. But, you know, that's tough. 50:02 Wes: I think she'd have to change her name as well. I mean, if you. 50:04 Erin: Right. 50:05 Wes: If you called Violet, I think you're pretty much doomed to live out. That's certain. 50:12 Erin: Maybe tone down her hair color script. Anyway, I see her as being maybe the victim of the town, but I feel sorry for her. 50:22 Wes: But. 50:23 Erin: Yeah. So Violet's sort of willingness to be seen for what she is maybe also is a good thing, because she's no longer ashamed of other people's judgment. And I think that by the end of the film, George is no longer ashamed of being a small town guy living a small life, because ultimately he's not anonymous in his own world. And that anonymity that I'm suggesting is like the actual nightmare element of the nightmare world is something that I think that Christmas also, as a theme, fights against. So I think that the idea that this takes place at Christmas is not part of this heartwarming, but ultimately incidental backdrop. I don't think it's something that Capra chose just because it would add to the sentiment of the overall story. I think that there's something here in Clarence, in having a supernatural being come down and enact a direct intervention in George's life, I think that's part of this incarnational theology of Christmas. And I don't want to proselytize or anything, but I think in terms of the philosophy behind the incarnation, I think it's very much in keeping with the themes going on here, and it provides a kind of solution for George's problem, both literally in terms of Clarence's intervention in the story, but also in terms of what incarnational theology means for the significance of all of our lives. So the incarnation being this idea that God, while being fully God, sends down his Son, Christ, who is also fully man born, grows up in the humblest of circumstances. But that humble station is irrevocably dignified by virtue of the Incarnation. So, for instance, to have a body as a human being cannot possibly be thought fundamentally bad or dirty in a post incarnational world, because God had a body, right? Nor, nor can the fact that you might have a menial job or a lowly position in the world. But this idea that no matter how humble you are, no matter how much of a loser or an anonymous person you are, right, you have inherent dignity, you're created in the image and likeness of God. And that God sort of evened out that analogy more or less by making himself in the image and likeness of us. It's not quite true, and a little on the heretical side, but I'll take poetic license. This actually solves the problem of human ambition insofar as worldly glory is concerned, because just the ability to live a good and just life, regardless of one's circumstances, is paramount. Not to say that if you are given certain gifts or ambitions, you should just throw them away. Far from it. But I think it kind of puts the eyes of the world and the desire for recognition on a large scale in perspective. So in a modernity in which we believe that the only thing that gives your life value and meaning is maybe to be an Instagram celebrity, this incarnational theology, and I think the idea of the film and is that you don't have to be an Instagram celebrity. You could just live a humble life and try to be a good neighbor, and ultimately that is what gives your life reward and status. 53:27 Wes: I think part of the solution here is that it's far easier to get wrapped up in the importance of our own success and ambition and our own glorification, if there's nothing else to glorify. 53:43 Erin: Absolutely. 53:43 Wes: If we don't defer to some higher authority and say, yes, the absolute is something outside of me and I depend on it, and I am not, I can't be that for myself. So in other words, you know, we've. It's much easier to fall into the trap of megalomania and grandiosity if we don't at some level believe, whether it's through religion or through some other. Maybe there's a psychological. You could give a purely psychological description of this, but, you know, unless we believe in something that is bigger than us and stands outside of us, and is the only thing that needs to be all good or all great. We don't have to supply that ourselves. 54:22 Erin: Absolutely. Any structure of meaning in any religion really is. Is key there. 54:26 Wes: Yeah. And part of the rebellion against necessity, of course, is, you know, that that in a way is Satan's rebellion. I think Milton does a very good job in Paradise Lost of painting this picture. Satan's big problem is just that he's not number one. And that being number one, it's not just a contingency. Right. Because the whole idea of being number one is inherently paradoxical. It's self contradictory because there's absolute being as the foundation is necessarily number one. And when we try to be number one, it's absurd. And so it's the premise of lots of sitcoms. Right. Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers are just the person who reaches at this sort of arrogation of necessity and circumstance or rebels against it and looks ridiculous doing it. There's an element of that in Paradise Lost. It's actually very funny. 55:18 Erin: I think in the postscript we'll talk a little bit more about Clarence and Clarence's role. I know I want to talk about the martinis a little bit and yeah, we'll continue the conversation. 55:27 Wes: All right, well, Merry Christmas. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com AirwaveMedia.com.