During the Christmas break, Patrick Deneen published a bill of indictment against George Bailey here at FT. The defendant stands accused of destroying Bedford Falls and its tradition-bound, permanence-seeking culture with his soulless suburbs. My brief for the defense appears over on TPD this morning. I emphasize the way entrepreneurs like George re-infuse morality into our culture by building new, morally ordered social structures after the old ones get taken over by cynics like Mr. Potter.
I emphasize especially the link between economic modernization and the family. If George’s suburbs stand for anything, they stand for the liberation of the household as a self-governing unit. I identify a number of moral principles that marriage and entrepreneurship share in common; I’m particularly proud of this passage:
Like marriage, entrepreneurship is essentially self-giving and generous. George is very much a typical entrepreneur in his desire to make the world a better place, and his disdain for people who prioritize making money. Fans of Ayn Rand will find nothing to like in George, just as they find nothing to like in most real entrepreneurs. (That’s why they need Rand’s fictional heroes as a substitute; the real entrepreneurs usually disappoint them.)
It’s telling that you could plausibly interpret Mr. Potter either as a Randian egoist or as one of the power brokers of the New Deal progressive project. Socialism and Randianism are basically the same worldview, differing only over the secondary question of the role of government. Entrepreneurship is the rejoinder to their materialism.
Also, here’s a First Thoughts exclusive – a paragraph that had to be cut from the TPD article for lack of space:
One of Deneen’s points requires a separate comment. Deneen’s fanciful suggestion that Bailey Park is built atop a graveyard presupposes a level of artistic subtlety that would be difficult to attribute even to the most avant-garde of 1940s filmmakers. Attributing such subtlety to Frank Capra—of all people!—is beyond implausible. No doubt Capra chose a graveyard for the scene where George is unable to locate Bailey Park because he wanted stress the desolation and deathlike atmosphere of the
social world without the life-giving generative power of George’s entrepreneurship. If he gave any thought to this question at all, he undoubtedly expected us to assume there was no graveyard there in the original timeline.
As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
January 7th, 2013 | 11:08 am
” If he gave any thought to this question at all, he undoubtedly expected us to assume there was no graveyard there in the original timeline.”
This is what I assume as well. Capra used some obvious short hand to send his message (poor unmarried Mary, what with her ugly glasses, mousy bun, drab coat and boring job at the library… “Look what I saved you from” says my husband every Christmastime).
George and Clarence violated the Temporal Prime Directive and tinkered with the time line. That always means that things aren’t necessarily what they could have been, or should have be. Or will be.
January 7th, 2013 | 11:56 am
Hold on, I’m getting a ruling from the judges…
For mentioning the Temporal Prime Directive in the opening post, you win this comment thread. Congratulations!
January 7th, 2013 | 12:31 pm
That’s what I always assumed about the Potter’s Field — it was unused, undeveloped land in George’s childhood, but instead it being filled with rows of the prettiest little houses you’ve ever seen (with a couple of decent rooms and a bath), it *became* a graveyard over the ensuing 20 years. Deneen’s suggestion that BB&L built over an existing graveyard seemed to be a non sequitur.
And let us not forget that it was not obviously George who built on the graveyard — Ernie Bishop was living in “a shack in Potter’s Field.” The desecration came with the Potterization of the community, not with the Baileyization.
I never did quite figure out from Deneen’s article how shady dance halls and people living in shacks in the graveyard were representative of a better civic culture than a safe, prosperous town that functioned happily with one normally visible cop, composed partially of people who lived in a new development on the edge of town. Somehow this is because a guy with an old tree lived there — did the construction of Bailey Park mean that he couldn’t live in his old house with the old tree downtown anymore? It does not compute.
January 7th, 2013 | 12:32 pm
Sorry for the sloppy editing. The cop was not of course composed of people who lived on the edge of town — that was the community.
January 7th, 2013 | 12:38 pm
I may be particularly sensitive to this because I grew up in something like a “Bailey Park” — a postwar neighborhood on the edge of a small town with a thriving downtown. This was not a “suburb” of the kind that resulted in people staying out of the downtown — it was a ten minute walk/two minute drive to downtown, where most people still did most of their business and worshiping. Bailey Park is not depicted as Levittown or Columbia MD, a totally constructed entity detached from any existing community; it appears to have been just a housing development. In his desire to find a focal point for some legitimate criticisms of suburbanization, I think Mr. Deneen misconstrued what Bailey Park represented.
January 7th, 2013 | 1:35 pm
Amen. Deneen’s article is the epitome of riding a hobby horse. The connection between “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the horse he was riding (or flogging) was the slimmest of slender reeds.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact