Christmas Classics and the Illusion of Progress
On Feminism, Film, and Flying Buttresses
Welcome new readers! We will return to regularly scheduled pediatrics programming true to our motto (AAP Delenda Est) soon enough; please forgive a few diversions this Christmas season. Hope you will enjoy this one. If there are any topics you would like addressed in the new year, please feel free to add them in the comments. As always, please share, post, and subscribe!
Say what you want about the barbarian hordes, they probably didn’t harbor many illusions about their civilizational superiority. If you’re a Goth or Vandal living in a hovel without running water a stone’s throw from the ruins of a towering Roman aqueduct, chances are some part of you is aware that things aren’t living up to their full potential.
A few notes, in this 21st century age of progress, on the illusions we harbor, as revealed this Christmas season:
Landscapes, Then and Now
We took the kids to see The Nutcracker. They had a blast. Yet we couldn’t help but wonder if something was missing from their theater-going experience. This is what they saw as we got out of the parking garage:
Compare to what a child would have seen walking up to the world premiere of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece in St. Petersburg, a little over a hundred years ago:
It’s not the Paris Opera House, but it’s not bad. Speaking of the Paris Opera, if you find yourself in need of a potty break at intermission, here is what you see:
That’s not some ancient building project of Louis XIV, by the way; it’s not even two hundred years old. Your great grandpa might have been able to watch it go up.
I’m not expecting the lobby of our local fine arts establishment to be a breathtaking architectural masterpiece, but is there some wiggle room between that and wall-to-wall carpeting?
You might object that kids are too young to know anything about architecture, and it’s true they certainly don’t know what they’re missing. But they are missing something. One of the best things you can do for your brood is to cultivate their natural capacity for wonder, it may be what helps save them in the end. If wonder were sparked by generic, industrially produced white ceiling tiles, then our children would have nothing to worry about; there will be no shortage of such ceilings in their lives. Unfair though it may be to carpet wholesalers, wonder is cultivated by exposure to beauty, and the lack of the beautiful in our built landscape will be felt in our, and our children’s, lives.
One final architectural comparison. What is Christmas without church? The closest church to our house – not our church, to be clear – literally looks like an industrial warehouse. I do not know the building’s history, but I would not be surprised if it was a former big box store that the congregation bought, replacing the IKEA lettering with biblical signage. Again, this is 21st century America, the supposedly wealthiest nation that ever existed, and the congregants all have cars, air conditioning, smartphones, dishwashers, and innumerable other outward signs of previously unimaginable prosperity. Meanwhile, a bunch of illiterate, mud soaked, pestilential peasants routinely spent their Sundays here:
I am not making any commentary on whether prayers are only heard when filtered through stained glass, or if the Holy Spirit visits a church in the basement of the mall; God is present wherever we gather in His Name. All I am saying is that beauty matters, more than we know, and there seems to be a lot less of it around, architecturally speaking, than there used to be. Beauty doesn’t have to be Gothic, by the way; it can be very simple. Think of a Quaker meeting house, or of the Amish, who worship in their homes. Yet observe the Amish closely and you may notice that they do not typically spend the rest of the week driving expensive cars on massive highway systems, working in skyscrapers, clothed in the latest Armani fashions, or choreographing TikTok dance routines. The simplicity they cultivate in worship seems genuine, as it is reflected in the rest of their days. We have something altogether different: if you live a deeply un-simple life, awash in material abundance, unhesitatingly adopting the most up-to-date technological innovations, watching the latest multi-million-dollar blockbusters, and then you go and worship in a repurposed Best Buy because “church doesn’t have to be fancy,” forgive me if I question your commitment to asceticism. Is it possible our churches are kinda ugly not because that fits our deeply held religious attitudes, but because we are incapable of building beautiful ones anymore?
What does all this have to do with my theme of progress? Well, it goes without saying that we all think we’re so advanced compared to our ancestors. As far as people wanting to “make America great again” or that sort of thing, they have in mind the very recent past, say the 1990s, or 80s – perhaps, in a true radical, the 50s. It would be hard to find someone wanting to go back to the 1550s, or the 1050s! Yet if an alien visitor came by to judge our relative advancement, and you showed it the typical church attended by a medieval French peasant, in a split-screen with the typical church attended by most people in America’s wealthiest cities in the 21st century, well, the progress we’ve made wouldn’t be so self-evident. The alien would likely look upon us much the same way we look at the barbarian living in Roman ruins. Trying to save face, you’d explain how TikTok works, and that flying saucer would take flight and never return…
A Wonderful Life
Perhaps, like me, you’re going to rewatch It’s A Wonderful Life this Christmas season. To most viewers, as to George Bailey by film’s end, Bedford Falls seems idyllic compared the dystopian alternate reality of Pottersville. Yet, as Professor Esolen reminds us, Pottersville’s GDP likely dwarfs anything in Bailey’s world. Bedford Falls doesn’t even have a SuperTarget! It has become a Christmas tradition among certain fiscally-minded ‘conservatives’ to use this economic growth to make the case for Mr. Potter’s true heroism, while certain libertine-minded ‘liberals’ are equally enthusiastic about Pottersville’s nightlife. As this unsurprisingly foul-mouthed Esquire writer put it, “We don't get to see too much of Pottersville, but in the brief glimpses director Frank Capra shows us, it looks like a place I'd like to go.”
Esquire has gotten its wish. We no longer need Clarence to show us Pottersville; we live there. Here, recently uncovered, could be a deleted scene from Capra’s masterpiece:
Packed theaters for Drag Queen Christmas is peak Pottersville; it is Pottersville ne plus ultra. Many of those bringing their kids to Drag Queen Christmas shows across the country may also watch It’s a Wonderful Life this year. Caught up in the story, they root for George Bailey to return to Bedford Falls, and recoil alongside him at life in a hell like Pottersville – completely oblivious to the reality of their daily existence in Pottersville!
Imagine setting out to make It’s A Wonderful Life today. The hometown, the one George Bailey starts the movie off in, would not be Bedford Falls, it would be Pottersville – for that is our hometown. The alternate reality Clarence unveils would have to be far, far worse than Capra’s, something akin to Pompeii as the lava started to rise – for what else could make our hero long to return?
Once again, let’s let the alien judge. Show it scenes from Bedford Falls side by side with scenes from Pottersville – whether from Capra’s film or our own lives. The progress we keep telling ourselves we have experienced will once again be far from evident to uncorrupted eyes…
Distaff Legends of the Silver Screen
Eventually all old movies will be banned; their portrayal of the past reveals too much about the present. Let’s make the most of them while we can. Keeping with the topic of classic Christmas movies, if you are partial to a yearly viewing of Christmas in Connecticut or Miracle on 34th Street, you may be familiar with Barbara Stanwyck and Maureen O’Hara. If you haven’t made their cinematic acquaintance, I urge you to correct the flaw. The Lady Eve is one of the all-time great romantic comedies, Double Indemnity the foundational film noir; Stanwyck steals them both. O’Hara was in too many masterpieces to list, including my favorite movie of all time, The Quiet Man.
Stanwyck and O’Hara, however, are but a fraction of the legendary actresses who graced Hollywood in the 30s and 40s. All of these women portrayed charismatic, intelligent, independent characters who gave as good as they got; they were the furthest thing possible from two-dimensional, interchangeable eye candy. A partial list, from memory: Myrna Loy, Greer Garson, Irene Dunne, Deborah Kerr, Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Greta Garbo, Jean Arthur, Lauren Bacall, Claudette Colbert, Judy Garland, Vivien Leigh, June Allyson, Gene Tierney, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell. If you have any favorites I missed, please add them below.
With all due respect to the handful of charismatic female stars in my lifetime who avoided objectification (think Sandra Bullock or Meg Ryan), the modern list is notably shorter. The catalogue of more… prurient performances, however, is significant: think of all the Bond girls, like Denise Richards, or teen boy favorites like Megan Fox, the Jessicas (Biel and Alba), or whatever soon-to-be-forgotten starlet got featured in whichever soon-to-be-forgotten sex comedy/horror movie/beach pic/superbowl commercial.
What does this have to do with our theme today? Well, let us return one final time to our alien friend. Teach it basic feminist principles: women are not objects to be sexualized, made subject to the male gaze, used for their bodies then discarded, told to look pretty and be quiet, but instead strong and independent personalities, equals to men, to be valued for their intelligence and character, for their strength, their humor, their wisdom. Now screen some movies for that alien: pick a few from the past, say Mrs Miniver or His Girl Friday or Hobson’s Choice, and contrast that to some latter-day blockbuster, like Transformers or whatever movies the Jessicas were in. Ask the alien which was the truly progressive feminist age and which treated women like cheap tissue paper. Yet again, progress will be far from obvious.
Progress at Christmastime
The barbarians living in Rome’s ruins may not have harbored illusions about their own civilizational prowess, but they didn’t have smartphones. Don’t let such technological marvels blind you to the reality of our not-so-progressive age. I’ve tried to suggest that some things might matter more than GDP. CDP, for one – Cathedral Domestic Product – that is, our civilization’s ability to construct awe-inspiring works of beauty. Yet we’ve also seen that even little Bedford Falls, without any buttresses flying about, still seems worlds ahead of our Pottersville existence where it counts. And before I can be accused of wanting to turn back the clock on social progress, we concluded with a compelling cinematic clue that women might not be as liberated from objectification as they once were. Put it all together, and what do you get? Well, one can never go wrong quoting C.S. Lewis, so here goes:
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”
If your traditional Christmas activities, like mine, make you question how much we’ve improved this last century, let alone in the years since the first Christmas, you’re not alone. But take heart. It is never too late to turn around. You might not bring the whole world with you, but if you point your family, your friends, your community in the right direction – like George Bailey did – then you will have made true progress indeed. Where to start? This Christmas season we are reminded that the three wise men turned their backs on Jerusalem, that bustling city of power and riches, to head towards a lowly manger. It’s not yet too late to become a genuine progressive: walk back to that right road and follow that star.
Thank you for reading. May God bless you and keep you this Christmas season, and may you and yours have a truly wonderful new year.