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It's Still a Wonderful Life
By Paul Greenberg
To many Americans, the Christmas season wouldn't be complete without at least a few scenes from "It's a Wonderful Life." The movie wasn't a box-office hit when it was released just after the Second World War, but it's acquired quite a following since -- and even some critical acclaim.
Years ago I read a brief analysis of "It's a Wonderful Life" by a professor of American Studies at
Me, I cry for the professor. Not that I haven't shed a few tears myself while watching "It's a Wonderful Life" over the years. But not for the professor's reasons. To me, nothing in the movie seems as sad as the professor's analysis of it.
The movie makes marrying your high school sweetheart seem any number of things, including comedy, but never tragedy.
Never getting to Europe does not strike me as the kind of experience that qualifies for tragedy, possibly because I grew up as the child of immigrants who were born in Europe -- and they could scarcely think of a worse fate than having to return there. To them, not coming to America would have been the tragedy.
Surely only an American swimming in blessings would consider marrying your high school sweetheart, which is what I did, some kind of tragedy.
To me, the movie's message is that
Can the professor, like so many Americans, have been using "tragic" as just a synonym for sad?
Only a richly blessed people would confuse everything from fender-benders to bankruptcy a tragedy.
On these shores, tragedy in its original, legitimate Greek sense -- that is, the inevitable fall of a noble character because of a fatal flaw, usually hubris -- has an artificial air about it. While in Europe, where the classic concept of tragedy originated, it seems to come naturally.
If there is a moral to
The values of Bedford Falls are those our professional intellectuals are almost obliged to see through. Sometimes they are so busy seeing through those values that they don't see them at all. Or they confuse the happy with the sad, the lonely with the interconnected, and, strangest of all, the triumphant with the tragic. Just as
Equally undiscerning are those who would idealize small towns; they don't see the potential Pottersville inside every Bedford Falls. Just one man, like
The most unsettling aspect of the popularity of "It's a Wonderful Life" is the realization that nostalgia for certain values tends to set in just as they are disappearing. Happily, nostalgia can bring them back, too. We're free. We can choose how to live.
If the professor's view of
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Article: Copyright © Tribune Media Services
Opinion: "It's Still a Wonderful Life | Opinion"