Frank Capra and Ayn Rand aren’t often mentioned together. Yet the cheery director of Capra-corn and the dour novelist who created Objectivism have much in common. Both were immigrants who made their names in Hollywood. Both were screenwriters and employees of the film studio RKO. And during the last half of the 1940s, both created works of enduring cult appeal, Capra with It’s a Wonderful Life and Rand with The Fountainhead.
Capra and Rand were also both masters of sentimentality, a literary form that is foreign to those of us weaned on irony. The inability to appreciate sentimentality leads some critics to dismiss Rand and Capra as amusing but minor talents rather than as gifted storytellers. Yet each produced work that will outshine their more critically acclaimed peers. People will still be reading Rand’s novels long after the works of Sinclair Lewis and Norman Mailer have been forgotten. And Wonderful Life has already earned its place on the short list of great American films.
My purpose, however, is not to defend the genius of these creators but to compare two of their protagonists, The Fountainhead’s Howard Roark and Wonderful Life’s George Bailey.
To anyone familiar with both works it would seem at first glance that the two characters could not be more different. A closer look, however, reveals that they are not only similar but a variation on a common archetype.
Howard Roark, for example, is an idealistic young architect who chooses to “struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision‚” by conforming to the needs and demands of the community. In contrast, George Bailey is an idealistic young architect-wannabe who struggles in obscurity because he has chosen to conform to the needs and demands of the community rather than fulfill his artistic and personal vision. (Howard Roark is essentially what George Bailey might have become had he left for college rather than stayed in Bedford Falls.)
While both represent the artistic, ambitious, talented individual who is surrounded by stifling mediocrity, each character’s story unfolds in dramatically different fashion. Rand portrays Roark as a demigod-like hero who refuses to subordinate his self-centered ego for the wishes of society. Capra, in stark contrast, portrays Bailey as an amiable but flawed man who becomes a hero precisely because he has chosen to subordinate his self-centered ego to society.
(Ironically, Rand’s protagonist has become something of a cult figure, an ideal to aspire to, while Capra’s hero, a far darker and complex character, is considered an “everyman.” Such a misreading is laughably absurd. Howard Roarks can be found just about anywhere. Although they may not be as talented as drafting or speechifying, the self-centered libertarian fratboys found on every college campus exemplify Roarkian morality. But while Roarks are all around us the George Baileys are a much harder to find.)
Every Christmas audiences flatter themselves by believing rsarena the message of Wonderful Life is that their own lives are just as worthy, just as noble, just as wonderful‚ as the life of George Bailey. Despite the fact that they left their smalltown communities for the city, put their parents in an assisted living facility and don’t know the names of their next door neighbors, they truly believe that they are just like Capra’s hero.)
But what makes George Bailey one of the most inspiring, emotionally complex characters in film is that he continually chooses the needs of his family and community over his own self-interested ambitions and desires—and suffers immensely for his efforts.
Although sentimental, Capra’s movie is not a simplistic morality play. In the end, George is saved from ruin but the rest of life remains essentially the same. By December 26 he’ll wake to find that he’s still a frustrated artist scraping out a meager living in a drafty old house in a one-stoplight town. In fact, all that he has gained is recognition of the value of faith, friends, and community and that this is worth more than anything else he might achieve. Capra’s underlying message is thus radically subversive: it is by serving our fellow man, even to the point of subordinating our dreams and ambitions, that we achieve both true greatness and lasting happiness.
This theme makes Wonderful Life one of the most counter-cultural films in the history of cinema. Almost every movie about the individual in society—from Easy Rider to Happy Feet—is based on the premise that self-actualization is the primary purpose of existence. To a society that accepts radical individualism as the norm, a film about the individual subordinating his desires for the good of others sounds anti-American, if not downright communistic. Surely, the only reason the film has become a Christmas classic is because so few people grasp this core message.
The fans of The Fountainhead—at least those who view Roark as a moral model—are not likely to appreciate Wonderful Life. Indeed, the messages are so antithetical that only a schizophrenic personality could truly appreciate both George Bailey and Howard Roark. For even though they are surprisingly similar characters, when the spell of sentimentalism has faded the contrasts become clear.
Roark, for instance, lives to create inspiring works of architecture but cannot do so without relying on others. When society fails to appreciate his “genius” his egotistical purity leads him to engage in a massive destruction of property. By the end of The Fountainhead Roark is revealed to be an infantile, narcissistic, parasite.
Bailey, on the other hand, has all the markings of a repressed, conformist, patsy. He lives for others (a sentiment that would make Ayn Rand gag) rather than “following his bliss” or even “going Galt.” He compromises everything but his integrity. And yet he discovers that he has all that makes life worth living.
I admire the genius of Capra and Rand. Each has given the world an enticing vision of the role of the individual. But given the choice, I’d much prefer to live in a world with more George Baileys and fewer Howard Roarks.
December 3rd, 2009 | 9:15 am
Good essay, Joe. Add to the commonality of Howard Roark: the world is teeming with unappreciated genius. Recognizing this, we now reward showing up, getting along and sneering at real virtue.
December 3rd, 2009 | 9:18 am
Correct. Most people appear not to get the darkness in Capra’s film. It’s very much about creeping, suffocating darkness.
The only hope is the speck of light that the darkness cannot quite overcome. The light of Christmas does not appear as that light does on Easter or Pentecost. Rather, it is a tiny speck set against vast darkness, like a bright planet over the horizon on a clear night at sea far away from shore. It can seem, in that sense, brighter because of what it is set against. This is why the texts of the Mass of Christmas Day are the best.
As wonderful (now deceased) Jesuit once homilized, Christmas is a very adult feast, because it is the feast where we must grapple with the darkness that threatens to extinguish the Light. If we don’t grapple with that darkness, we won’t appreciate the Light as we ought.
Capra’s film, sentimental ending as it has, does get there. I too never believed it would all be OK for George Bailey or his familly after Christmas Eve. Potter would be very much with him.
December 3rd, 2009 | 9:41 am
Interesting juxtaposition.
But I think Capra, Rand, and Carter all miss the larger point. “Individualism” is not the chief sin of modernity. The chief sin is the failure to recognize that the individual as such is now the only legitimate authority — spiritual or political — in society. George Baily represents that failure and Howard Roark certainly does. So does Joe Carter, but it would require too many words to say why — other than to repeat my observation that the chief modern sin is the failure to recognize that the individual as such is now the only legitimate authority.
This reality derives not so much from Nietzche, everyone’s favorite whipping boy, but from Christ by way of James Madison — if I may be allowed to be elliptical.
Anyway, my own view is that the fall of the Soviet Union is nothing compared to the coming fall of the American New Deal state. Capra, of course, was a poet of the New Deal, although he had completely soured on modern liberalism by the time of his death.
December 3rd, 2009 | 11:23 am
He gain more than the recognition; he found that, at need, everyone else was willing to subordinate their egos to help him. One only under pressure, but nonetheless, he learned that he was not alone, that his subordination had won him a society.
December 3rd, 2009 | 11:24 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Edward Champion, First Things. First Things said: What does Ayn Rand's Howard Roark and Frank Capra's George Bailey have in common? http://bit.ly/7Y4WBS [...]
December 3rd, 2009 | 11:46 am
Perhaps The SNL skit which shows the ‘lost-ending’ of Capra’s vision best unites the two stories, demonstrating how impossible it would be to live faithfully to such a wonderful life.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4267/saturday-night-live-its-a-wonderful-life-lost-ending
December 3rd, 2009 | 12:03 pm
Howard Roark is a young man’s hero; George Bailey’s heroism increases in direct proportion to one’s age.
December 3rd, 2009 | 12:16 pm
The idea of self-realization is certainly an aspect of Christian faith but any comparison with Nietzche must end there. A Christian believer realizes him or herself, “through Him, with Him, and in Him” – a process (if freely chosen) of purification by the Holy Spirit.
December 3rd, 2009 | 12:27 pm
Re: Kafbst:
All of Rand’s heroes are “children” in one sense or another. Children make a one page or so appearance in Atlas Shrugged, and none at all that I recall in the Fountainhead.
Rand is often criticized for writing adolescent novels, and while these criticisms are more or less correct, they do tend to miss the point, since the intellectual tradition from which she springs tends to conflate adulthood and childhood with having the correct/incorrect ideas, respectively.
So, I might add, Roark is by definition a young man’s hero.
December 3rd, 2009 | 2:18 pm
I have always been uneasy about ‘Wonderful Life’ and now I know why. Who knows what good Bailey could have accomplished for himself AND the world, if he had not constrained his imagination to Bailery Acres? Resentment against achievement is a relatively new entry in the collection of American vices, but it is no less damaging to our country for the delay. The creation of value is superior to the consumer of it. Everyone can use a light bulb – very few can invent one.
As for ‘libertarian’ frat boys, please let me know the next time you spot one – as likely to find a black swan.
December 3rd, 2009 | 3:50 pm
When a run threatens the Building and Loan, just-wed Mary Bailey enters with the bankroll intended for her honeymoon and says, “How much do you need?”
When George hits rock bottom, he mumbles, in Martini’s bar, “Dear Father in Heaven, I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God.” And, of course, in response, George’s guardian angel comes and does show him the way.
I haven’t read “The Fountainhead,” but I gather that Howard Roark does not manifest these qualities of selfless service and of faith.
December 3rd, 2009 | 5:12 pm
I like your approach, although it is common to show Roark as the self-centered and Baily as the community-centered. I take the position, in my website and my books, that achievers are not so much self-centered as centered on something greaater than self, a person, family, an idea or whatever, except that, in Calhoun’s description of politics, it lessens in intensity as distance gains from the center. Take a look at my site and tell me what you think. Thanks.
Clay Barham
December 3rd, 2009 | 7:53 pm
Howard Roarks can be found just about anywhere. Although they may not be as talented as drafting or speechifying, the self-centered libertarian fratboys found on every college campus exemplify Roarkian morality. But while Roarks are all around us the George Baileys are a much harder to find.)
Rubbish
December 3rd, 2009 | 9:07 pm
I disagree. I’ll take the Howard Roark’s anyday. I wouldn’t reduce “The Fountainhead” to maudlin sentementality either. There is a huge degree of intellectualism involved.
December 3rd, 2009 | 10:42 pm
“This theme makes Wonderful Life one of the most counter-cultural films in the history of cinema…. To a society that accepts radical individualism as the norm, a film about the individual subordinating his desires for the good of others sounds anti-American, if not downright communistic. Surely, the only reason the film has become a Christmas classic is because so few people grasp this core message.”
Yes, it’s a counter-cultural film, but more so now than when it was first released. Yet it was not a hit film that year. It’s a film that has slowly gained popularity. When it was first released, it was viewed by people who had just survived the Great Depression and gone to war. Most of the soldiers weren’t famous like George Bailey’s brother. They had sacrificed without that reward. Most people understood the sacrificial nature of family life and love. Maybe this film wasn’t an entertaining escape for them, and that’s why it wasn’t a hit.
I don’t think that the whole of American culture has ever accepted “radical individualism as the norm.” Indeed, I think that from the beginning, the individualism of our culture has been balanced by commitment to family, community, and church. Didn’t De Tocqueville comment on that? Yes, radical individualism exists, but our society survives because it is not universal.
However, George Bailey is the farthest thing from “communistic” that I can imagine. He’s not sacrificing himself for the historical dialectic, for the Great Leader, or for any abstraction. He’s sacrificing himself for his family (including his father), his wife, his children, and the real people who live in his town. (He is a very Chestertonian hero, a hero of localism and subsidiarity.) His bank doesn’t get a bailout–it gets George’s own money. Banking in itself isn’t evil; it serves others by using people’s savings to lend to others in a sustainable way. Potter makes banking evil because he is evil in how he conducts banking; he reveals himself as a thief in the course of the story.
I love this film precisely because it shows that love has a cost. Love involves suffering. George suffers partly because his own brother breaks his word and doesn’t let George go to college. He faces disaster because Potter unjustly takes his money. These injustices don’t go away because of the “happy ending” of the story, as you so justly observe. That’s another reason that I love this film. Life isn’t fair, and we don’t always get the resolution that we want. How rarely we get to see complete justice in this world. But the happiness that George finds in his family and friends is a sort of foretaste of the joy that will one day be ours, if we are faithful. I think it is a “eucatastrophe” in the Tolkienian sense, a “sudden joyful turn.”
As Kafbst so truly observes, George Bailey becomes more of a hero the older we become. I see George Bailey in my father, who worked at jobs that he did not love so that we could be fed, clothed, and educated, and I see him in my husband who also works at jobs that are not his ideal because he can support his family in that way.
Maybe the reason that so many people today love the movie is not just sentiment but a sense that there is something true and serious about this film, beyond the sentiment.
December 4th, 2009 | 4:51 am
[...] It’s a Wonderful Life with Howard Roark of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. From The Fountainhead of Bedford Falls » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog: Howard Roark, for example, is an idealistic young architect who chooses to “struggle in [...]
December 4th, 2009 | 9:08 am
[...] is also, as Joe Carter writes in a very smart piece, The Fountainhead of Bedford Falls: Howard Roark, for example, is an idealistic young architect who chooses to “struggle in [...]
December 4th, 2009 | 11:47 am
[...] at First Thoughts, Joe Carter juxtaposes Frank Capra’s George Bailey (of It’s a Wonderful Life) with [...]
December 4th, 2009 | 12:06 pm
[...] around here. So, naturally, we’re crazy about Its a Wonderful Life too. Don’t miss this Joseph Carter essay about [...]
December 4th, 2009 | 12:59 pm
[...] First Thoughts | A First Things Blog [...]
December 4th, 2009 | 4:34 pm
Countercultural it may be, but communistic? I don’t think so. George Bailey sacrifices his wants for the good of others out of love — it doesn’t say that all people should join together into a massive state that subsumes all individuals. Different in just about every way. Otherwise, though, I think this an excellent article and the people who say they want more Roarcks in the world scare me a little.
I think Jeannine has it right. A lot of this movie is about the truth that life isn’t fair. The good suffer, but it’s still better to be good.
December 4th, 2009 | 6:35 pm
[...] Bailey and the protagonist, Howard Roark, of Ayn Rand’s book, The Fountainhead. In his essay, he compares the sacrifices of these two men and their purposes: While both represent the artistic, [...]
December 5th, 2009 | 12:05 am
[...] at First Thoughts , Joe Carter juxtaposes Frank Capra’s George Bailey (of It’s a Wonderful Life ) with Rand’s [...]
December 6th, 2009 | 5:43 pm
It is a profoundly subversive film, in the same way that Christ’s message is subversive.
Regardless of the political theorems we engage in, since the dawn of time humans have always been torn between our better and worst natures; George Bailey and Mr. Potter are their personifications.
If we are honest with ourselves, as much as Bedford Falls seems to delight us with its virtue and rectitude, who here hasn’t even for a time, longed to visit and indulge in Pottersville?
The message of self-sacrifice is and always will be subversive, as long as humans are confronted with the choice between surrendering our self and aggrandizing our self.
Ther is nothing instrinsically evil about commerce, anymore than there is anything evil about sexuality. Its only when robbed of the ennobling aspects of selflessness that they become destructive.
The film’s truth is that robbed of people like George Bailey and his self-sacrificing ways, Bedford Falls does in fact turn into Pottersville.
December 6th, 2009 | 8:35 pm
[...] and rediscover the spirit of Christmas. Carter, in comparing the work of Frank Capra to Ayn Rand, says: What makes George Bailey one of the most inspiring, emotionally complex characters in film is that [...]
December 6th, 2009 | 9:41 pm
[...] and rediscover the spirit of Christmas. Carter, in comparing the work of Frank Capra to Ayn Rand, says: What makes George Bailey one of the most inspiring, emotionally complex characters in film is that [...]
December 7th, 2009 | 12:43 am
[...] and rediscover the spirit of Christmas. Carter, in comparing the work of Frank Capra to Ayn Rand, says: What makes George Bailey one of the most inspiring, emotionally complex characters in film is that [...]
December 7th, 2009 | 9:13 am
My son in medical school found this entry in comments to other things he is reading. He forwarded it on to me–of ourse I had already seen it. But I was busy on Friday to comment because I had to leave town to visit my elderly father in a town north of Syracuse NY. He has Alzheimers and lives with my sister. Saturday night we watched “Its A Wonderful Life” again. Its probably the 20th time for me. I thought about the movie on the drive home Sunday. I wondered. Why is he so poor? What’s so “good” about a Building & Loan Ass’n anyway? Isn’t it just another kind of bank? [when I was young in the 70's and early 80's there was a scandal involving savings and loans--they were the greedy speculators of that time--massive bailout needed] So is he the chump because he is giving his loans away for less than market? Why isn’t the outcome like what eventually occurred with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–loans to people without the ability to pay them back. And if he’s giving it away, what sort of interest is he paying to the depositors? Much of the premise began to unravel for me.
I think the movie very well captures the frustration that George has because his dreams are for something else and he continually makes choices based upon his moral and ethical world-view. I agree that his view as a child, and young man, as to what will make him happy may not be what will actually make him happy, and that the choices are valid ones for him–but I’m not sure why those choices had to make him so poor. I often wonder what development decisions his building and loan would have gotten involved in in the post-WWII period when things began to boom–although we know that Bedford Falls–which is very specifically set in Upstate NY–in fact a strong case has been made that it is patterned after a particular community in the Finger Lakes area around Rochester (Seneca Falls–they even market themselves that way in some places) did not thrive, for macroeconomic reasons and high taxes. So the movie ends at one particular historical point in time–when everything else will change.
But the reason the movie is so successful is that no matter what choice one makes, it is a choice, so that it almost always fails to live up to the ideal that may exist in one’s head of what might have been if the other choice had been made. Everyone can relate to that emotion, to the frustrations of everyday living, to the fact that living with other people always means that you have to give in some of the time. Sure, this particular person has been selfless–if marrying the one you love is considered selfless– so he’s more heroic; but even he shows glimpses of being a little down to earth–those wonderful scenes when he grabs Uncle Billy by the collar and says-”Where’s that money, you silly, stupid old man?” Or when he’s mean to the teacher, or yells at his kids, or is sarcastic to the angel–at least I could relate to those scenes. Most of the time his heroism isn’t grand–just doing the right thing in the circumstances–who could deny his brother the opportunity to do what he’s good at? And at that point he could have shut down the building and loan–except he gets married and she wants to stay in town, and then they have a baby. So, I can still identify with the movie, and I think it has a lot of valid points, but on the economics I think its a little too black and white–which kind of lessens it for me now.
December 7th, 2009 | 11:00 am
“I agree that his view as a child, and young man, as to what will make him happy may not be what will actually make him happy, and that the choices are valid ones for him–but I’m not sure why those choices had to make him so poor.”
As Harry Bailey says at the end, George is the “richest man in town.” That is, he has friends who do not desert him when he is in trouble. Any other kind of riches is an illusion.
December 7th, 2009 | 5:48 pm
[...] and discusses these two literary figure – and comes to some interesting conclusions. The Fountainhead of Bedford Falls Posted by admin | in Events | No Comments [...]
December 22nd, 2009 | 6:07 pm
You misread Roark’s destruction of “property”. The action was not parasitic by his terms, it was an act of war. He considered his creation illegitimately seized and perverted by parasites, so he scuttled the project like any military adversary might as a strategic maneuver.
Likewise, today’s Roarks and Galts either abandon or scuttle projects they consider too gutted or poisoned by government parasitism to be allowed to survive. Creators euthanize their businesses or sell them to suckers before the government’s taxes, regulations, and mandates overtake them.
The egalitarian statists take pride in attempting to kill the golden geese, but do not understand that those entrepreneurial geese also provide eggs that average people eat…they provide jobs. Rather than wait to be killed, the creators simply lay off their employees and withdraw to retirement.
Those that think Rand’s allegories are infantile do not understand that meritocracy is required for long term human survival. It is the kindergarten philosophy of equal sharing of all goods that is infantile, and deadly if adopted by adult society.
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