I’ll admit that Frank Capra made a handful of wonderful movies. He certainly painted a nice picture of American community life that is far more reassuring than anything that Ayn Rand ever wrote. So, I am inclined to agree with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson that the Republican Party can use more Franz Capra and less Ayn Rand. But, what they could really use are some role models who haven’t been dead for twenty or thirty years. It’s even worse than that. Ayn Rand published her last novel, Atlas Shrugged, fifty-six years ago. Franz Capra’s last significant movie, A Hole in the Head, was released fifty-four years ago. Both, by the way, were made available to the public during the Eisenhower administration, prior to the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act or the women’s liberation movement or the Stonewall Riots.
I love a good Normal Rockwell painting, too, but those paintings were aspirational and idealistic. Let’s not forget that Mr. Smith went to Washington and discovered a den of corruption, or that George Bailey was almost driven to suicide by an unscrupulous banker before an angel visited him and made him realize that the world would truly be horrible if he had never lived to prevent bankers from having more control of our society.
Jimmy Stewart was a wonderful actor, but his most iconic Capra characters were fighting against a western developer’s dam-building graft scheme and a greedy, unethical banker.
I don’t think Mike Lee or Michael Gerson got the message.
Continuing to appeal to my demographic, I see. What, you mean no one knows who the fuck Franz Capra is or was beyond a small segment of Millennials who knows the name of the actor in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and how exactly that’s supposed to be relevant to us and our problems? Oh hell, let’s just keep banning birth control and bashing gays.
Sorry, Director* not actor. Time for bed.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” seems to have had two lives. The original when it was released in 1946 and a second on TV beginning in 1950s.
Originally a box office loser for RKO. Then there was this:
By the 1950s memories of the bad old days when bankers lost depositors money had faded and Mr. Potter could be seen as the exception and not the rule for bankers.
They’ve been pining for the 1950s since 1966.
I’ve thought they were pining for the 1850s.
I thought it was the 1650’s.
Nope, 1850s. That was when the slave power was at its apex. Just before the federals came along and ruined everything.
Nope. 1950s. No trucks, TV, and Coke a hundred years earlier. And while they didn’t like Brown v. Board of Ed decision, it wasn’t exactly implemented with any speed. Ah, the 1950s when all but white men were second or third class citizens, segregation was legal, inter-racial marriage was illegal, and women couldn’t get contraception or abortions.
Good point. I’m sure a lot of these guys would be willing to trade their truck for a slave, but not their TV.
A slave without a truck? You think they’d go for being carted around very slowly and not far in a wheelbarrow?
The Republican mind at this point is constantly bathing in nostalgia for a lost America and is seeking these things from the past, back when it was all better, before the problems with the ladies, and the Negroes and the gays. So choosing pieces like this actually makes sense, when you look at where the are coming from.
The more interesting thing is that they do in fact skip over all of the content and meaning from a movie like It’s a Wonderful Life. The underlying critique of American culture is a little bit Steinbeck in that movie, and it doesn’t phase them at all. Or they can ignore the fact the Ayn Rand ended up on government support to pay her medical bills before she died, smoking the cigarettes that she did not believe could cause cancer.
I think that it’s a little like Colbert’s truthines. The right wing have retreated into a constructed reality that is complete and sealed off, any time things are inconvenient or don’t match the script, it is ignored and a movie like Its a Wonderful Life becomes only a series of images and feelings.
They take the parts they like and feel about them what they want to, like the images of small town america and its war heroes and good old-fashioned american values. The critique of the Bankers and of materialism doesn’t exist for them, and if you ask them about, YOU will be the crazy one.
Are you using a German automatic spell check, Booman?
IST DAS LEBEN NICHT SCHÖN?
von
Franz Capra
Meisterliche Capra-Komödie mit viel Phantasie, liebenswürdiger Naivität und einem kräftigen Schuß sentimentaler Wehmut Eine Hymne auf Nachbarschaftsgeist und Kleinstadtvertraulichkeit die nicht zuletzt auch einen Gegenentwurf versucht zu gesellschaftlich-politischen Katerstimmung im Amerika der ersten Nachkriegsjahre.
Lee and Gerson got the message all right, from their fellow tribespeople.
The same as all the holier than thou religious bigots who think they are destined for heaven while all those bleeding heart immoral liberals are destined for hell.
Makes no sense whatsoever, but that’s what they believe.
They don’t see their fellow tribespeople as the villains, even though they are.
At the end of the day someone has to be the hard Daddy spanking the bad kids even if it pains the rich Republican daddies to have to do it. And the material compensation they reap by doing it is only fair, since all that disciplining is hard work. And that’s why they get so angry when people call them mean names that they don’t deserve.
Completely unappreciated.
Because deep down they know that it’s only for the good of the bad kids that they sacrifice. Just like George Bailey fighting Potter, only they fight the sloth of the little people. Same thing – in their minds.
Wait a sec… Are you saying that Republicans are misinterpreting something to conform with their pre-existing world view?
Unpossible!
Next you’ll be saying that they think Martin Luther King was a conservative.
One shouldn’t expect too much from our Conservatives – like asking them to have any basic understanding of literature and other forms of art.
I mean, how can one?
Ted Cruz-ader read “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor in his epic non-filibuster filibuster against PPACA, and completely missed the point of A F*CKING CHILDREN’S BOOK!!!
Ted, after the kid actually TRIED the ‘green eggs and ham,’ THE KID LIKED THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jayzoos, you people…
This is sort of like how the folks that bash GTA don’t really get that it’s satire, or that South Park has infinite levels of nuance if you are paying attention.
“It’s a wonderful life” is about an angel getting his wings, dontchya know? I’m willing to bet the majority of right wingers completely missed the moral of the story about Mr. Scrooge, err,,,I mean Mr. Potter, while focusing exclusively on the story of a hard-working joe down on his luck, who makes good in the end.
See! You WILL get screwed by the Big Guy, but never fear, the charity of your friends and neighbors will pull you up by your boot straps in the end! It’s a win-win for Mr. Potter AND Mr. Bailey!
My problem with south park is that a number or viewers don’t get the nuance, and so it ends up damaging the left.
And my problem with GTA is…. they’ve essentially become a satire of themselves. They have had nothing new to say since San Andreas.
“…damaging to the left.”
There are a few satire websites that unfortunately do the same thing. The Onion has gotten to the point of delving into the “stranger than fiction” realm, so it sometimes passes for “real” news if it suits the political aims of some in Congress, and that fellow Borowitz tries too hard as well. They aren’t doing the left any favors.
Which leads to my next point: That isn’t their purpose.
And neither is GTA’s: GTA and Rockstar’s intent is to sell their games, and sell games they are. They could give a rat’s ass about the politics.
The question becomes, should they?
OT sort of – the spambots are certainly becoming sneaky!
It doesn’t really matter how long the role models have been dead. Woody Guthrie, to take just one example, has been dead a long time too. What matters is what role models you choose and what lessons you take from them.
Of course it’s hardly necessary to cite Frank Capra in order to show that Ayn Rand is an exceptionally bad role model for Republicans and anyone else who doesn’t aspire to be a total asshole.
It is hard to find a role model that is still living though. That’s the problem. Our models or even heroes has become one because they are already gone. There are still good people out there. I guess they are just there, unseen.
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