SocraticGadfly: Labor Day: lies about "It's a Wonderful Life" and deconstructing Cort Greene

September 02, 2024

Labor Day: lies about "It's a Wonderful Life" and deconstructing Cort Greene

Per my third-party update last week? I seemed to have lassoed a true-blue Trot, one who still worships at the altar of the moribund Socialist Workers Party — edit: the Zionist genocide supporting moribund Socialist Workers Party — and seemed to be trying to practice "entryism" on me.

Didn't even come close. Part of why, in addition to the lies and nuttery (and recognizing the entryism), was the virulence. Holy fucking shit.

But, after I cut them off from further commenting?

I thought: Let's do teh Google. And found gold on Hucksterman. (Ignoring a Trot helping perpetuate capitalism, of course.)

That post I link is "public," so no confidences broken. Cort's sister-in-law or whomever posts a link to "30 Fascinating Things You Didn't Know About 'It's a Wonderful Life.'"

And, he responds, also public:

A working class movie about Christmas. My favorite quotes from the movie are "Youth is wasted on the wrong people" and "Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. And when he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

Ooops!

IAWL is NOWHERE NEAR a "working class movie" if you pull back the wizard's green curtain. And, if it is, it's New Deal FDR Democrat working class, not Trot revolution working class.

Here's the reality.

A. It's saccharine, almost "opiate of the masses" saccharine. And, per this Salon piece that inspired my first critique of IAWL, it's that saccharine that's the whole problem.

Also from my first critique, per this other Salon piece? Real working-class Americans would have hated Bedford Falls. Maybe Greene's Trot leadership would have loved it, preaching indoctrination sermons every night, but in reality? Hell no.

THIS quote from that link:

The gauzy Currier-and-Ives veil Capra drapes over Bedford Falls has prevented viewers from grasping what a tiresome and, frankly, toxic environment it is. When Marx penned his immortal words about "the idiocy of rural life," he probably had Bedford Falls in mind.

Nails it.

Per all of that? Capra's deck stacking? Either end the movie 20 minutes earlier with George's suicide or run it an hour longer with middle-class George facing more of that idiocy, and frustration, of rural life. 

Good night, Cort. (And, although it was Indian spammers who led me to moderate comments here, you've certainly added a whole new reason.)

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