Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life portrays the decent life of a small-town American, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), an everyman who saves his community from an evil Scrooge—Henry F. Potter (Lionel Barrymore)—and who only comes to realize his accomplishments by witnessing what terrors might have occurred had he never lived. George Bailey represents all that is good and decent about America: a family man beloved by his community for his kindness and generosity.
Yet, if there is an oft-undiscerned dark side of America even amid the light, the film quite ably captures that aspect as well—and contrary to popular belief, it is found not solely in the malevolence of Mr. Potter. One sees a dark side represented by George Bailey himself: the optimist, the adventurer, the builder, the man who persistently hates the town that gives him sustenance, who craves nothing else but to get out of Bedford Falls and remake the world. Given its long-standing reputation as a nostalgic look at small-town life in the pre-war period, it is almost shocking to suggest that the film is one of the most potent, if unconscious critiques ever made of the American dream. For George Bailey, in fact, destroys the town that saves him.
Viewers adore It’s a Wonderful Life in part because it portrays what Americans feel they have lost. Among the film’s first scenes is the portrayal of an idyllic Bedford Falls covered in freshly fallen snow, people strolling on sidewalks, a few cars meandering slowly along the streets, numerous small stores stretching down each side of the tree-lined streets. Mr. Gower’s drug store is a place to meet neighbors over a soda or an ice cream. Martini’s bar is somewhere everybody knows your name, a place to spend a few minutes with friends after work before one walks home. It is a picture of an America increasingly unseen: wounded first by Woolworth, then Kmart, then Walmart; mercilessly bled by the automobile; drained of life by subdivisions, interstates, and the suburbs.
George Bailey hates this town. Even as a child, he wanted to escape its limiting clutches, ideally to visit the distant and exotic locales vividly pictured in National Geographic. As he grows, his ambitions change in a significant direction: he craves “to build things, design new buildings, plan modern cities.” The modern city of his dreams is imagined in direct contrast to the enclosure of Bedford Falls: it is to be open, fast, glittering, kaleidoscopic. He craves “to shake off the dust of this crummy little town” to build “airfields, skyscrapers one hundred stories tall, bridges a mile long.”
George represents the vision of post-war America: the ambition to alter the landscape so as to accommodate modern life, to uproot nature and replace it with monuments of human accomplishment, to re-engineer life for mobility and swiftness, one unencumbered by permanence, one no longer limited to a moderate and comprehensible human scale.
George’s great dreams are thwarted by innumerable circumstances of fate and accident and he remains in Bedford Falls. Most of the film portrays a re-telling of various episodes of George’s life for the benefit of a guardian angel—Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers)—who is sent down to earth to attempt to save George during his greatest test.
While George’s grandiose designs are thwarted, he does not cease to be ambitious, and does not abandon the dream of transforming America, even if his field of dreams is narrowed. Rather, his ambitions are channeled into the only available avenue that life and his position now offer: he creates not airfields nor skyscrapers nor modern cities, but remakes Bedford Falls itself.
He creates “Bailey Park,” a modern subdivision of single-family houses, thus allowing hundreds of citizens of Bedford Falls to escape the greedy and malignant clutches of Mr. Potter, who gouges these families in the inferior rental slums of “Pottersville.” George’s efforts are portrayed as altogether praiseworthy, and our instincts to side with him against the brutal and heartless greed of Potter are not misplaced. However, it is worth contrasting “Bailey Park” not only to “Pottersville”—to which it is clearly superior—but also to downtown Bedford Falls, where it does not compare as favorably.
Bedford Falls has an intimate town center and houses with front porches where people leisurely sit and greet passersby. It is a town with a deep sense of place and history. When George’s car crashes into a tree, the owner berates him for the gash he has made: “My great-grandfather planted this tree,” he says. He is the fourth generation to live in his house, and the tree’s presence serves as a living link to his ancestors, a symbol of the stories told about the dead to the living and to the unborn.
The front porch plays an important role in the film: Numerous scenes take place in the intermediate space between home and street. In a discerning essay titled “From Porch to Patio,” Richard H. Thomas notes that the front porch—built especially in order to provide an outdoor space that could be used to cool off during the summer—also served a host of social functions as well: a place of “trivial greetings,” a spot from which an owner could invite a passerby to stop for conversation in an informal setting, a space where courting could take place within earshot of parents, or the elderly could take in the sights and sounds of passing life around them. The porch “facilitated and symbolized a set of social relationships and the strong bond of community feeling which people during the nineteenth century supposed was the way God intended life to be lived.”
By contrast, Bailey Park has no trees, no sidewalks, no porches, but instead wide streets and large yards with garages. Compared to Bedford Falls, the development is pedestrian-hostile, and its daily rhythm will feel devoid of human presence, with the automobile instead displacing the ambulating passerbys. The residents of this modern development are presumably hidden behind the doors of their houses, or, if outside, relaxing in back patios. One doubts that anyone will live in these houses for four generations, much less one. The absence of informal human interaction in Bailey Park stands in gross contrast to the vibrancy of Bedford Falls.
George Bailey’s experiment in progressive living represents a fundamental break from the way of life in Bedford Falls, from a stable and interactive community to a more nuclear and private collection of households who will find in Bailey Park shelter but little else in common.
We learn something more sinister about Bailey Park toward the end of the film. George contemplates suicide after his Uncle has misplaced $8,000 and George comes under a cloud of suspicion. Inspired by George’s lament that it would have been better had he never lived, Clarence grants his wish—he shows what life in Bedford Falls would have been like without the existence of George Bailey. Attempting to comprehend what has happened, George attempts to retrace his steps. He recalls that this awful transformation first occurred when he was at Martini’s bar, and decides to seek out Martini at home. As portrayed earlier in the film, Martini is one of the beneficiaries of George’s assistance when he is able to purchase a home in Bailey Park; however, in the alternate reality without George, the subdivision is never built. Still refusing to believe what has transpired, George makes his way through the forest where Bailey Park would have been, but instead ends in front of the town’s old cemetery outside town. Facing the old gravestones, Clarence asks, “Are you sure Martini’s house is here?” George is dumbfounded: “Yes, it should be.”
The conclusion is so unthinkable that most viewers don’t notice what George acknowledges: Bailey Park has been built atop the old cemetery. Not only does George raze the trees, but he commits an act of sacrilege. He obliterates a sacred symbol of Bedford Fall’s connection with the past, the grave markers of the town’s ancestors. George Bailey’s vision of a modern America eliminates his links with his forebears, covers up the evidence of death, supplies people instead with private retreats of secluded isolation, and all at the expense of an intimate community, in life and in death.
In one of the most moving scenes on film, George’s neighbors, friends, and family come flocking to his house, each contributing what little they can to make up the sum of money George is wrongly suspected of embezzling until a pile of money builds in front of George. Trust runs deep in such a stable community of long-standing relationships: as Uncle Billy exclaims amid the rush of contributors, “they didn’t ask any questions, George. They just heard you were in trouble, and they came from every direction.” George is saved from prison and obloquy, and Clarence earns the wings he has been awaiting.
Despite the charm of the ending, a nagging question lingers, especially when we consider that many of the neighbors who come to George’s rescue are ones who now live in Bailey Park. If the tight-knit community of Bedford Falls makes it possible for George to have built up long-standing trust and commitment with his neighbors over the years, such that they unquestioningly give him money despite the suspicion of embezzlement, will those people who have only known life in Bailey Park be likely to do the same for a neighbor who has hit upon hard times? What of the children of those families in Bailey Park, or George’s children as they move away from the small-town life of Bedford Falls? How much of our current financial crisis was in fact a result of the fundamental unfamiliarity between lenders and borrowers in today’s post-Bailey Park society?
A deep irony pervades It’s a Wonderful Life at the moment of it joyous conclusion: As the developer of an antiseptic suburban subdivision, George Bailey is saved through the kinds of relationships nourished in his town that will be undermined and even precluded in the atomic community he builds as an adult. It is his world that we inhabit today, and our nostalgia for the film should not blind us to the fact that we are not the better for his actions.
Patrick Deneen is David A. Potenziani Memorial Associate Professor of Constitutional Studies. This article is drawn from a longer essay in Perspectives on Political Science, March 2002. His previous “On the Square” articles can be found here.
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Comments:
In the scene that immediately follows, Potter's rent collector (Reineman), calls Potter's attention to the growth of Bailey Park. He shows him two maps, and references the location of Bailey Park by identifying the "old cemetery" with "a half dozen houses stuck here and there" behind the cemetery. In the next map the development has grown, and it's clearly BEHIND the location of the cemetery.
Finally, as to his "nagging question" concerning the ending. It's an odd one. Deneen wonders if the people who live in Bailey Park will come to each others aid if the need arises in the future. He says that they only help him because he has roots in the larger community of Bedford Falls. Somehow, in Deneen's reading of the script, Bailey Park, is no longer a part of Bedford Falls. Somehow, the working-class people who live there, even though they have enough of a connection to each other--and the Bedford Falls which they are a part--to help George, are doomed to lose that sense of connection over time because of where they live. Oh my. If only they’d been better off.
But for the reasons detailed by the commenters above (and then some) this is an enormous swing and a miss of an article. It's an incredible example of reading one's own predispositions into a work of art (in this case a movie) in a way that misinterprets and totally twists the point of the art involved.
I regularly read and sometimes comment at The Front Porch Republic - but as sympathetic as I am to the general concerns that are held and expressed there - this is a frustration that I have with some of the writers (and commenters) there. Every problem in the world doesn't come back to suburban individualism and postwar consumerism. That's not all there is to blame. I guess if all you have is a hammer (so to speak) everything does look like a nail...
Andy, Deneen said (and the movie shows) that George razed the trees, so when he says that Bailey Park has no trees, let's be generous and grant him that the development has no established trees which is arguably an indication of a lack of regard for tradition and place. And yes, there are porches, but there aren't PORCHES (see above) or streets that create a public communal space. That's like saying a British military officer who wears a ceremonial gorget is wearing a suit of armor. It's a small suit of armor, but it's there after all. The argument is that the built environment encourages residents to retreat into themselves and their private lives. (See Tocqueville)
Maybe you're right about the cemetery. I can't remember and I don't have time to look into it.
You may also be right that Deneen is reaching a bit with his nagging question. But he's looking backwards from the present. In many places, the outcome he fears has come to pass to some degree or another.
Deneen and the other "Front Porchers" may often overreach - the guys over at Postmodern Conservative will tell you all about it - but I'm surprised that more conservatives aren't open to the idea that how we manage our space and built environment reflects our values and priorities (unless of course they're libertarians).
But I think the best take was Family Guy where the lout Peter was shown in his alternative universe a world where almost everyone was better off! I think that might get at the heart of the movie with the angel's last message to George, no man is poor if he has friends. Bailey is rich because he is good to people so people are good to him when he needs help. The point is not so much that George's work is in itself good (although on balance it is). The changes that happen in Bedford Falls are changes that happen throughout history, they have their positives and negatives. But the movie isn't about urban planning, it's about a man's life.
In that way you could make It's a Wonderful Life set in a big city just as easily as a small town. The mechanics of the story would have to be different. No doubt 50 years later the citizens of Bedford Falls are unlikely to take out equity loans on their houses to save the local S&L from bad speculative loans to cattle ranchers in Texas.
John Willems, the role that suburban living -- including no sidewalks, houses far apart, no porches, fences -- played in the loss of social cohesion in America over the 20th century is pretty well documented. In fact, I think a strong case could be made that the same impulses that give rise to no fault divorce and rampant contraception give rise to the trends in living the Deneen is talking about. Both are based in the idea that the atomized individual/family should have the ability to will for itself whatever life it wants, without input from the larger community.
For example, Professor Deneen's previous employer, Georgetown University, in 1953 transferred persons buried in the on campus College Ground - a cemetery established for Holy Trinity Church in the early 19th Century - to Mount Olivet Cemetery to facilitate future expansion of the University.
Similarly, his present employer - the University of Notre Dame - accepted the remains of deceased members of the Potawatomie tribe in 1928 (for reinterment at Cedar Grove Cemetery) for expansion of Angela Boulevard in South Bend.
Eternal rest need not impair the highest and best use of real estate.
My point is that it goes deeper than geography. The most intimate of invasions continues to take place. And good luck talking about these things with your parish priest or fellow Catholics.
It should suffice to take a simple jab at the concept of the front porch. Let’s face it. Porches are expensive. In my neck of the woods (Houston), any reasonably sized covered outdoor space attached to the house starts at around $25,000 and moves up in price rapidly from there. Even if one considers that building houses with porches costs a bit more than half as much as adding on, the minimum price for a front porch is around $13,000 for the feature in a newly built home. And the broad spaces shown in the movie would probably start at around $50,000 for add-on construction or $25,000 for construction designed into a new home. Again, cost-conscious folk will look at that and choose other options, and there is no reason to believe that these costs, when adjusted for inflation are any different from the costs faced by an small town citizen looking at the possibility of home construction. There is a reason that tenements have flourished traditionally, especially in newcomer communities: alternatives are too expensive. And once the George Baileys of the world helped bring costs down, off-Main-Street construction flourished as well.
As it turns out, it is indeed a wonderful life.
I have lived in many small towns with numerous front porches still perched between the house and sidewalk. I have rarely seen front porches used to sit and interact with neighbors. More often than not they are used as storage sheds for kids toys and bikes. Others have been enclosed with screens to keep the mosquitoes out or with storm windows to keep the snow out. They then become a storeroom for more than just yard toys as boxes of last year's Christmas decorations are stacked out in the porch beside the spare folding chairs and an extra leaf for the dining room table.
For sitting outdoors most people nowadays build a deck in the back yard surrounded by a privacy fence so they can enjoy the mosquitoes without the interference of nosy or irritating neighbors.
In other words, the kind of interactive community envisioned by the professor did not disappear because houses lacked front porches. Rather, houses lack front porches because most people do not want that kind of interactive community.
http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/the-hidden-key-to-its-a-wonderful-life/
Hilarious! The direct link to the SNL skit is here http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/its-a-wonderful-life-lost-ending/2731/
Deneen's wrong thinking continues by claiming we've been "mercilessly bled by the automobile; drained of life by subdivisions, interstates, and the suburbs". His fantasy land is out of touch not only with history but with any average American citizen. But perhaps this is forgivable after all, for a college professor.
People's choices don't always reflect what they ought to choose. Moreover, what people think is good for them is often not. There are larger cultural forces at play that shape what we want, and it sometimes takes someone breathing fresh air (Deneen, Berry) to point out the uber-libertarian filth the rest of us are breathing.
In my neck of the woods, bikini espresso stands (with young, scantily clad female baristas) are all the rage. This community has "chosen," as it were.... When I express my reservations and disgust over such self-degradation and brazen lecherous behaviour, folks around here look at me in amazement and conclude that I must be gay. I'm then left scratching my head over the non sequitur.
Front porches, anyone?
I willingly accept that individuals do not always know their own self-interest. I am far more dubious about your assertion that you do know their self-interest. The basis of capitalism is not that individuals know what is in their best interest. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. The basis of capitalism is that a third-party observer almost never knows what is in another individual's self-interest. When central planning was attempted, some of the greatest economic minds of the time were given nigh infinite information and resources from which they were to set prices. It still failed, because regardless of how stupid an individual is, it is still more likely that he perceives his self-interest more accurately than a prodigy sitting in a study hundres of miles away.
This brings us to Prof. Deneen's problem with Bailey Park. He claims the lack of communal living space will frustrate a sense of community. Supposedly, he would mandate that George Bailey include front porches in the houses he builds and sidewalks in subdevelopment plans. This will raise the cost of the houses, limiting their availability to the good people of Bedford Falls. Prof. Deneen assumes this is worth it. But how does he know? His assertion that a lack of communal space causes societal breakdown is by no means proven. Any number of things could have (and with respect to other commentators, probably did) caused that. Furthermore, we are only given a short glimpse of how bad Pottersfield is. It may be worth sacrificing some sense of community to get people out of those slums if they lack things lack running water or basic sanitation. Finally, what Prof. Deneen lacks is the reason that each family wants to move to Bailey Park. One family could want to get into a better school system. Another might have a growing family they cannot adequately house in the slums.
Prof. Deneen does not know what the housing market is like, why people want to move, or if there are any plausible alternatives. Perhaps, giving the realities in the market, the "false choice" between Pottersfield and Bailey Park is not a false choice, but a real one. The only thing Prof. Deneen has is an unproven theory about communal living space, formed in complete ignorance of the realities of the community. And we are supposed to allow him to decide? No, thanks. The people moving to Bailey Park may not be the perfect arbiters of their self-interest, but I will trust them more than an armchair sociologist.
PS
I thought Potterville looked like a lot more fun and that the real villain of the movie was George's brother and George's real mistake was marrying Mary. Both the brother and the wife do nothing but throw monkey wrenchs in Mr. Bailey's plans.
Potter is not really the villian for most of the movie. the cheap slums he rents to the immigrants are almost certainly better than what they had in their home country. Bailey's developments are better than Potter's slums. As a businessman George is superior to Potter since he is able to use his 'personal connection' with people to make loans that are riskier on paper (less money down, shorter credit history) than Potter who insists on more security because he lacks the ability to inspire, motivate an know people well.
Potter isn't really the villian until the end when he decides to hide the money from the S&L and falsely accusing George of stealing it. Leaving that aside both are a force for good in their own way, IMO. But they aren't forces for perfection. Neither the slums nor the 'small town mainstreet' nor George's developments are perfect. If you continued the story it might lead to George's kids or grandkids leading a rebellion against surburban conformity and disconnectedness.
The movie, though, really isn't about urban planning. It's about the good one can do in one's life without even realizing it. You can just as easily do the exact same movie set in NYC or LA or anywhere else.
That said, I'd love to see what happened *after* the big song and concluding scene. Exactly how does one 'account' for the deficit with a pile of cash on the table? What about all the extra money, does George just keep it or do they somehow try to give it back to everyone? Should everyone just take their money back since Sam Wainwright seems to have it all covered with his instructions to 'advance up to $25,000' to George?
Central to the argument: recognizing that one's neighbor (especially when one's neighbor isn't very similar) is worthy of respect and charity doesn't come naturally. Supposedly, mankind was unable to do so at all before the Incarnation.
But even with the change brought about by Christ, we still have to a lot of work socializing our young to bring about that sort of understanding. It's hard not to see how that work could be facilitated by integrating properly public spaces into our neighborhoods and cities.
I think it's emperically verifiable that many of such public spaces we did have have been negatively impacted by Wal-Mart, interstates, etc - among other things. And yes, it's great that we now have inexpensive consumer goods and that people have jobs. Who would argue otherwise? But surely we could stipulate that a properly human life can't be measured by employment or access to inexpensive consumer goods alone. Let it not be written on my headstone: "Here lies David - employed at or above minimum wage for a majority of his earthly sojourn, and a avid consumer of knick knacks and cheap home goods."
Even if Deneen overreaches, apparently even suggesting that post-war suburban development has negative consequences is an ananthema on the level of suggesting to a liberal that there are drawbacks to an entitlement culture. Surely, no one is prepared to argue that Bailey Park - or its modern equivalent, the gated exurb - is the City of God? Maybe not even the Suburb of God?
You have made a serious error in logic. You assume that the two alternate realities portrayed in IAWL are cross dressing. Can you prove in this fictional saga that the cemetery is older than Geo Bailey age at the time?
Patrick Deneen's piece betrays the unmistakeable influence of the Peak Oil literature, perhaps most especially the writings of James Howard Kunstler. I happen to know from my personal acquaintance with Dr. Deneen that he is well aware of the Peak Oil problem world civilization faces.
Dr. Deneen, now that you seem to have regular access to this particular stage in the world of the Catholic press/blogosphere, why not use it boldly to proclaim the reality of Peak Oil to faithful Catholics, and to start a widespread dialogue on what is to constitute a proper Catholic approach to the Peak Oil predicament?
"Supposedly, mankind was unable to do so at all before the Incarnation [that is, to see his/her neighbor as something other than a threat]."
I find this a very interesting theological claim, and one that I am completely unfamiliar with. I would like to learn more about this topic.
Would you or possibly someone else be so kind as to direct me to some sources where I can read more about this?
Air conditioning did away with the front porch.
Question authority. Ask me anything.
Sometimes dissecting a thing takes away its beauty and essential truth. I don't think there is really anything to be gained by putting this holiday favorite under a microscope. So it isn't Citizen Kane. Who cares? How many people like Citizen Kane, and look forward to seeing it every year?