RSSA Leftist’s Less than Wonderful Life
Gene Lalor | December 26, 2010
It’s ”really the most terrifying Hollywood film ever made, a tale of hunger, greed and a troubled America.”
Only a misanthropic, jaded contributor to Salon.com, or to one of that website’s twisted sister sites, could interpret Frank Capra’s classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life” in such a fashion as columnist Rich Cohen does.
Sadly, some people get up every morning in America and spend a good part of their day, if not their entire day, not in giving thanks for having been born in and for having prospered in our great land but in thinking up ways to denigrate “their” country, to undermine its values and traditions, or to simply poke holes in good things.
While conferring needlessly gratuitous compliments upon the late renouned director Frank Capra as “an Italian immigrant who . . . lived through the Depression, then through the rise of terrible ideologies,” Cohen concludes that Capra ”knew how bad things could get. He knew, too, that the United States was not immune and this knowledge spiked his love with the worst kind of fear. The result was that special melancholy, blue shot through with black, that runs through his films, the best of which are parables that operate on various levels, some of which were probably unknown to Capra himself:” http://tiny.cc/aoj8o
The supremely arrogant Cohen knows what that ignorant Italian immigrant couldn’t possibly grasp: In Cohen’s warped view, Capra’s philosophy and films were attributable to the fact that he “loved America [but only] because America saved him.” Capra had no appreciation of his adopted country, no patriotism, no innate sense of rectitude and morality, just a debt of gratitude to America.
To Cohen, the protagonist of “IAWL”, George Bailey, isn’t really saved at all. As Cohen writes at the end of his trash piece, Bailey was living in the tawdry Pottersville all along and never did live in the wholesome Bedford Falls and Cohen admits he relates to the Pottersville tawdriness.
That’s why, to the omniscient Cohen, in the last scene, “George looks at his friends with terror. He’s happy to be alive, but he’s disillusioned, wised up in just the worst way. He finally knows the world as it really is, what his friends are capable of, the dark potential coiled in each of them . . . It’s the sort of vision that makes a person go insane.”
Having viewed and discussed in class “IAWL” more times than I care to admit and, granting that the film can be more than a tad overbearing, even soporific in its moralizing after a few dozen viewings or so, to characterize it as “really the most terrifying Hollywood film ever made, a tale of hunger, greed and a troubled America” is to reveal far more about Cohen than it does about the movie.
Cohen’s bases for attacking ”IAWL” so miss the mark, miss Capra’s point so entirely that it’s hard to believe he has even seen the movie. They suggest that his remarks are more likely predicated on similar thoughts expressed by his fellow self-hating, America-hating leftists who see ”IAWL” as essentially the story of “The good man driven insane,” a fate Cohen might envision for himself given his overriding negativity and hopelessness of his soul.
Anticipating criticism, he insists that he “did not miss the point. The story of the George Bailey who is honored and saved remains. It’s the explicit message of the final scene: A man with friends is never poor. But another, deeper message is there, too–it’s Capra wailing at that secret register picked up by bats and dogs, saying, ‘Help, help, America is in trouble!’ “
Capra wailing? Picked up by bats and dogs, whatever that means? For that matter, what the hell does “blue shot through with black” mean? Some kind of color symbolism the meaning of which is known only to Rich Cohen and to his fellow elitists?
America may indeed be in trouble today but in 1946 when ”IAWL” hit the silver screen we had just emerged from the deepest trouble the nation had ever experienced, World War Two. We were battered but not shattered, unlike George Bailey who had gotten the short end of any number of sticks. However, his rescue by Angel Second Class Clarence Odbody was no fluke and George’s realization that life was good after all didn’t involve any wailing or any of Cohen’s bizarre bats and dogs. George came to realize that, if not always wonderful, life sure beat Rich Cohen’s perceptions.
Rich Cohen is an obnoxious, presumptuous, pompous horse’s ass extrapolating his personal, sick impression of America in his interpretation of Bedford Falls/Pottersville as a metaphor for the nation.
I guess we should pity rather than castigate such people, people who live in a country, suck it dry, yet despise it and spend their time ripping it but I’ll save my pity for the legally insane and terminally ill.
Unlike George Bailey, Cohen and his ilk deserve that their guardian angels just let them drown in their own venom. Life in America may not be wonderful all the time but it sure isn’t anywhere as miserable as Cohen depicts it nor as miserable as the sorry existence he must lead.
When a little Zuzu-bell rings showing Rich Cohen has earned his angel wings I might change my mind but I’m not holding my breath on that.
Contributor's website: http://www.genelalor.com/
Content posted by users from other sites is posted for commentary and news purposes under fair use and each author is responsible for their own postings and a particular posting should not be construed as being endorsed by this site or its owner.
Leave a Reply
Loading ...Recommended Reading:
