quietprofanity (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quietprofanity) wrote2008-10-25 10:24 pm
quietprofanity) wrote2008-10-25 10:24 pm
An American Carol: Evil Professors, Impotent Fat Kids and DOOM, Part 3
This next section of the movie sucks. Well, the whole movie pretty much sucks, but this section especially. I think this is around the part where Bill O'Reilly shows up. I hate Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly looked at a kidnap victim with Stockholm syndrome and said, "Yep, looks like a homosexual juvenile delinquent to me." He's a jerk.
Sorry, that was a bit of a digression. But the next section of the movie is basically a digression from everything.
Since Malone was unconvinced by Chamberlain and his own potential present of enslaving people, raping women and having HORRIBLE BIRACIAL BABIES, Patton shows Malone the horrors of the modern era. Specifically, the college campus.
Patton explains to Malone that college students are stupid kids "who show what they don't know by repeating it loudly." Also, they don't actually like Malone. Their college professors like Malone, because they hate America. The college professors hate America so much they do a big song-and-dance number about how they indoctrinate their students to be liberals and hate their own culture. Also, they give extra credit to minorities, they like to oogle the hot blonde co-eds and they just wish things were like 1968. Also, Patton ... somehow ... brings the kids’ parents in to look on in horror. "Do you know what you're spending your money on?" he asks. "Oh no, Patton!" they say, "Those horrible professors are ruining our children! And they have tenure and we can't do anything. WAAAAH!" (This is sort of paraphrased, but I'm not adding stuff.)
Okay, as somebody who has just been through the halls of one of America's public institutions for higher learning, I'll give them that college students (or at least the undergrads) are kind of stupid. But the rest? Bullshit. Big LOADS of bullshit.
Yes, college campuses tend more liberal, but that doesn't mean every one is some gay, Green Party, atheist monolith.* Take my own college, which shall remain nameless. It was in a "blue" state, but in a rural section. While I'm thinking a lot of the staff may have been liberal, to me it didn't seem very obvious. None of my professors EVER told me to see a Michael Moore movie. In fact, my favorite teacher, a political science professor who never told us what his political affiliation was (although we suspected he was conservative), would chastise us if we referred to The Daily Show as news. Most of the students were liberal, but the campus also had some active right-wing student groups like the College Republicans and Feminists for Life, and a number of religious student groups.** And they were hardly huddling against the storm of the evil liberals, because any time the Gay-Straight Alliance would put up signs for stuff they'd have anti-gay graffiti on them or get ripped down.
Anyway, to me, that sounds about right for the region. And you want to know something? I knew liberal AND conservative students on campus, and most of them seem to have known they were liberal or conservative right when they got there and – wow – did not actually change very much the day they got dressed in those big black robes. I knew I was liberal when I was arguing for Gore in my 10th grade history class. My conservative classmate knew he was a conservative when he wrote his paper on Reagan back in high school, too.
You know who might be a little more influential in the development of young people's political minds? THEIR PARENTS! And you know what they say about the kids that go totally opposite from their parents? THEY'RE REBELLING AGAINST THEIR PARENTS! So it is still, ultimately, THEIR PARENTS who are responsible for this. I mean, really. College professors? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but do you think young people are naturally pre-disposed to blindly follow authority figures?
Also, any college student I knew saw Fahrenheit 9/11 on their own time. Just as I'm sure all of the College Republicans who came to An American Carol did the same thing.
Anyway, enough of higher education. Seeing that ACLU jokes worked so well for The 1/2 Hour News Hour, Patton takes Malone to a courthouse where a judge has The Ten Commandments on his wall. He's shooting at the ACLU, who pictured as zombies attacking him. This may have something to do with the stupid terrorist plot because I think somehow the zombies stop The Patriot Act from working and now nobody can have their bag searched and the terrorists can bomb the country music concert for the troops and ... sorry, did I mention that the terrorists who want to make a movie with Michael Moore’s want to bomb a country music concert for the troops? Well, they do. Which is weird because I thought they just wanted a recruitment video in the beginning ...
I don't really feel like getting into a debate on the merits of the ACLU or The Ten Commandments hung up in courtrooms. Sure, I disagree with the movie, but ... eh. It doesn't feel like any gross misrepresentations of my positions are happening.
Still, I have to comment on two things. One, Malone balks at using a gun when the ACLU!zombies attack. Moore can shoot guns. In the very beginning of Bowling for Columbine, Moore talks about his experience as a gun owner and as an NRA member. (Although he had hopes to switch the group's emphasis to gun safety and education.) It's another part of the movie that makes the filmmakers look stupid because they don't know who they're attacking.
Two, at one point one of the female zombies cries out, "I'm premenstrual" which was kind of the straw that broke my back in my former decision to ignore the sexism in this movie. Complaining about the sexism in this movie, which has so many other problems, feels whining about a dog leaving hairs on the couch after they've already pooped on it, but at some point it gets to be too much. There are no major female parts in this movie, and most women are either 1.) sweet, pretty conservative women who love military men 2.) harpy liberals, most of whom are ugly lesbians or 3.) generic hot women of both stripes who exist only to have Malone or Leslie Neilsen's grandpa character from the framing device get distracted and stare at their hot breasts. You know ... as they condemn Malone for being a pervert. It's very much eating the cake and having it, too. But really, a whole worldview where women are either bitches or window dressing is sucky and does not endear me to the movie's cause.
Anyway, at some point Patton remembers what a Past Ghost is supposed to do and brings us back to Michael Malone's past***. There we find that the reason Malone hates America is ... well, he always happened to hate America.
... I'm serious.
Of course, the filmmakers think they’re doing some armchair Freudian psychology. Malone, you see, is a jerk because he was rejected by his girlfriend. Malone went to film school, dropped out and in the meantime the girl took up with a soldier. Once again we get a scene of Malone hating on the man in the uniform and saying he must have been drafted because war is horrible while the military man beatifically replies, "But I WANT to go." The girl defends her decision by saying men in uniform are hot. And then in the next scene the girlfriend fucks a bunch of men in uniform but still marries the military man (because conservatives are traditionally into promiscuity and open relationships and shit) while Malone protests the U.S. Army outside the wedding.
This may be the one part in the whole "Past Ghost" section that resembles the original story, but it so misses the point that I feel like describing all the things wrong with it would be over-explaining everything. But eh, what the hell?
Scrooge, as we know, hates Christmas, but that's not his disease, it's just a symptom. Actually, this whole doing away with the Fourth of July is more of a Grinch trait than a Scrooge one. Scrooge would rather ignore Christmas and treat it like any other day, and gets frustrated when people, like Fred, the young boy caroler or the collectors for the poor, intrude on his determination to do so. "I wish to be left alone," as he tells the collectors.
Scrooge's real problem is his values are messed up. What the Ghost of Christmas Past first shows Scrooge is himself as a young child – someone who was poor, but someone who could imagine, someone who loved his sister. Then we see Scrooge at his employer Fezziwig's grand Christmas party for his employees. Scrooge could have remained a part of this world, but then comes the next scene, where Belle breaks up with him.
"It matters little", [Belle] said, softly. "To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."
"What idol has displaced you?", [Scrooge] rejoined.
"A golden one."
"This is the even–handed dealing of the world!", he said. "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"
"You fear the world too much", she answered, gently. "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master–passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
"What then?", he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you."
She shook her head.
"Am I?"
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man."
I want to just make an aside and say that, while I don't think Dickens' female characters are half as horrible as his critics make them out to be, if a Dickens female character has more agency and backbone than your 2008 character, you are TOTALLY fucking up.
But my real point is that Scrooge lost his girl because of his messed up values, values that Belle was able to see. The whole point of the Christmas Past section is basically to show Scrooge, yes, you were once like that caroling boy. Yes, you could have been a happy, generous employer. Yes, you could have gotten your priorities straight and had a happy marriage. Instead, you've made yourself miserable and shut yourself up so much you can't even be bothered to see the son of the sister you loved.
In the large cultural mindset, Scrooge is seen as some sort of cartoon version of an impossibly mean old man. He's actually quite conceivable when we take a good look at him, and much more human than we give him credit.
Malone's story, on the other hand, is just, "Well, he was always an impotent fat kid**** who was always jealous of America’s Sainty St. Sainterson soldiers." It's not exactly the penetrating commentary that earns one respect ...
On their final trip, Patton takes Malone to see his nephew at his Fourth of July party. Yeah, we;re in official "Present Ghost" territory, but Patton is still here. They love him that much. This scene is basically a combo of the Cratchits' dinner and Fred's party. Once again, Josh (and his smiley, pretty, conservative wife) are the pictures of total dovish understanding in the face of the wrongness of liberals. They are also totally unlike their supposedly treacle-y A Christmas Carol counterparts:
'He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!' cried Scrooge's nephew. 'He believed it too!'
'More shame for him, Fred!' said Scrooge's niece, indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by halves. They are always in earnest.
…
'He's a comical old fellow,' said Scrooge's nephew, 'that's the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.'
'I'm sure he is very rich, Fred,' hinted Scrooge's niece. 'At least you always tell me so.'
'What of that, my dear!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'His wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking—ha, ha, ha!—that he is ever going to benefit us with it.'
'I have no patience with him,' observed Scrooge's niece. Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion.
'Oh, I have!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'I am sorry for him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims! Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a dinner.'
'Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,' interrupted Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.
…
Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was unanimously followed.
'I was only going to say,' said Scrooge's nephew, 'that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it—I defy him—if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday.'
But angel Josh and his angel wife don't say anything bad. Yet having Patton insult and slap Malone a lot isn't enough, so guess who gets to insult him? The Tiny Tim characters! Josh has a son on crutches, a blind daughter and a kid whose gender I forget strapped to multiple amounts of medical equipment. The son asks, "Is your asshole uncle coming tonight?" in the nastiest voice possible and the rest follow suit, asking why that bastard won't give them money for their medical conditions, that selfish jerk.*****
And here I thought the military had a pretty good healthcare plan for dependents. Also, once again, way to criticize a real person for something he probably does not actually do.
I kind of get this scene, though. I've seen enough of Zucker's comedies to know he has a thing for mocking movies' tendencies to imbue children and children in peril with a precocious sweetness. It's a sacred cow he likes to skewer and I'm kind of all right with that. But what comes across as a simple skewering of moviegoers' mores in neutral territory takes on an obnoxiousness in this explicitly ideological fiction.
In simpler language, what would come off as, "Ha ha, disabled kids swearing are funny!" in another movie comes off as, "You liberals are so stupid, even these kids can see you're full of shit" in this one.
Unlike Scrooge, who reacted to the Ghost of Christmas Past by freaking out and trying to get rid of it, and who felt his heart opening up under the tutelage of the Ghost of Christmas Present, Malone varies between petulance and whining during his time with Patton. So they go to St. Paul's Chapel in Manhattan, where Patton prays forgiveness for not being able to get through to Malone. Hey, Patton? Want to put in a word for those nasty things you said about Jews and blacks when you’re done with your fauxpology?
Then George Washington shows up. Washington tells Malone that he came to pray in this church for two years, further driving the point home how much real Americans love God. He then lectures Malone on America, particularly on "freedom of speech, which you abuse." Malone notices it's a bit dusty in the church and asks why they don't clean it, to which Washington says look next door. The door opens to show the source of the dust: the wreckage of the World Trade Center.
Washington tells him the wreckage is a warning of what those awful Muslims can do and how his films are appeasing or something. Malone says America's foreign policy (and a few other things) had some bearing on the attacks. Washington responds, "Is that what you're going to say on Judgment Day?" And how anybody who would say that is making up lies to themselves because they just hate America so much and they should know what's coming and ... good God.
A few reviewers were offended by this scene, and that's because it happens to be offensive. Jon Stewart has put this more succinctly than me, but there's something very wrong about how some conservatives bring up the specter of 9/11 in their attempts to tar liberals, whether it's Karl Rove saying (in New York!) "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers" or conservative commentator John Gibson calling Jon Stewart's reaction to 9/11 insincere. It doesn't seem to occur to them that most people in New York City and California, where the planes were going, are liberals. I'm not saying 9/11 was solely a liberal tragedy – far from it. People of both political stripes died that day, people of both political stripes were helping with the cleanup and at Ground Zero. I'd venture to say those who died and those who helped didn't all come from America, either. (I heard many from the UK died in the attack, for instance.) But considering the high population in both areas, it IS insensitive and ugly.
And it's not very Dickensian. The origin of this scene comes from the reveal of Ignorance and Want. Ignorance and Want don't get into all of the adaptations, although they are in these. But they're one of the cruxes of the story, I believe.
'Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,' said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, 'but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?'
'It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,' was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. 'Look here.'
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
'Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!' exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more.
'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. 'Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!'
'Have they no refuge or resource?' cried Scrooge.
'Are there no prisons?' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. 'Are there no workhouses?' The bell struck twelve.
I love this section a lot as an allegorical statement. The Ghost of Christmas Present is the spirit of bounty and joy, what many of us associate with the holiday season. It's not bad to feel happy or to enjoy what we have during the time, but there's always the knowledge that there are others who aren't so fortunate and that even in time of plenty, they're still out there, hidden beneath the ghost's robes.
Scrooge isn't the only one being implicated in this. We all are. Ignorance and Want are MAN'S children.
But in An American Carol, doom is only written on the brow of one-half of America, a half that made up much of the victims. This movie doesn't go so far to say that 9/11 is only the conservative half of America's tragedy, but they'll know who to blame if it happens again.
Next time: The last ghost, why Charles Dickens hated America and if it all really matters in the era of Barbie in a Christmas Carol. And then I shall finally be done with this, yay.
* And yes, I know about Berkley, but it's also in a very liberal section of the country. Does anyone expect it to look like Texas A&M?
** I was kind of part of the Hillel, although I'm guessing that doesn't count. Also, this one time two students came up to me while I was eating lunch and asked if I found Jesus. I told them I was Jewish and we talked about our faiths a little bit. They left knowing they hadn't convinced me but said I was nicer than the atheist they talked to earlier.
*** This part may have actually come before the ACLU section. My notes are a little messed up. I'm pretty sure the section where they go to the present was the last one, though. So you can trust me after that. And you can trust these things happened in the movie.
**** Moore's greater weight gain actually seems to have happened after his fame. In Bowling for Columbine there's a picture of him as a teenager with a shooting trophy in which he looks very skinny. And while he's no spring chicken in Roger & Me, he doesn't look as chubby as he does now, either. Just keeping a tally of all the stuff they get wrong ...
***** This isn't the first time this happens in the film. Grandpa Neilsen's kids make obnoxious comments throughout the film, and in an earlier scene Malone gets dressed down as a fat, smelly, obnoxious, lying jerk by a Girl Scout.
Sorry, that was a bit of a digression. But the next section of the movie is basically a digression from everything.
Since Malone was unconvinced by Chamberlain and his own potential present of enslaving people, raping women and having HORRIBLE BIRACIAL BABIES, Patton shows Malone the horrors of the modern era. Specifically, the college campus.
Patton explains to Malone that college students are stupid kids "who show what they don't know by repeating it loudly." Also, they don't actually like Malone. Their college professors like Malone, because they hate America. The college professors hate America so much they do a big song-and-dance number about how they indoctrinate their students to be liberals and hate their own culture. Also, they give extra credit to minorities, they like to oogle the hot blonde co-eds and they just wish things were like 1968. Also, Patton ... somehow ... brings the kids’ parents in to look on in horror. "Do you know what you're spending your money on?" he asks. "Oh no, Patton!" they say, "Those horrible professors are ruining our children! And they have tenure and we can't do anything. WAAAAH!" (This is sort of paraphrased, but I'm not adding stuff.)
Okay, as somebody who has just been through the halls of one of America's public institutions for higher learning, I'll give them that college students (or at least the undergrads) are kind of stupid. But the rest? Bullshit. Big LOADS of bullshit.
Yes, college campuses tend more liberal, but that doesn't mean every one is some gay, Green Party, atheist monolith.* Take my own college, which shall remain nameless. It was in a "blue" state, but in a rural section. While I'm thinking a lot of the staff may have been liberal, to me it didn't seem very obvious. None of my professors EVER told me to see a Michael Moore movie. In fact, my favorite teacher, a political science professor who never told us what his political affiliation was (although we suspected he was conservative), would chastise us if we referred to The Daily Show as news. Most of the students were liberal, but the campus also had some active right-wing student groups like the College Republicans and Feminists for Life, and a number of religious student groups.** And they were hardly huddling against the storm of the evil liberals, because any time the Gay-Straight Alliance would put up signs for stuff they'd have anti-gay graffiti on them or get ripped down.
Anyway, to me, that sounds about right for the region. And you want to know something? I knew liberal AND conservative students on campus, and most of them seem to have known they were liberal or conservative right when they got there and – wow – did not actually change very much the day they got dressed in those big black robes. I knew I was liberal when I was arguing for Gore in my 10th grade history class. My conservative classmate knew he was a conservative when he wrote his paper on Reagan back in high school, too.
You know who might be a little more influential in the development of young people's political minds? THEIR PARENTS! And you know what they say about the kids that go totally opposite from their parents? THEY'RE REBELLING AGAINST THEIR PARENTS! So it is still, ultimately, THEIR PARENTS who are responsible for this. I mean, really. College professors? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but do you think young people are naturally pre-disposed to blindly follow authority figures?
Also, any college student I knew saw Fahrenheit 9/11 on their own time. Just as I'm sure all of the College Republicans who came to An American Carol did the same thing.
Anyway, enough of higher education. Seeing that ACLU jokes worked so well for The 1/2 Hour News Hour, Patton takes Malone to a courthouse where a judge has The Ten Commandments on his wall. He's shooting at the ACLU, who pictured as zombies attacking him. This may have something to do with the stupid terrorist plot because I think somehow the zombies stop The Patriot Act from working and now nobody can have their bag searched and the terrorists can bomb the country music concert for the troops and ... sorry, did I mention that the terrorists who want to make a movie with Michael Moore’s want to bomb a country music concert for the troops? Well, they do. Which is weird because I thought they just wanted a recruitment video in the beginning ...
I don't really feel like getting into a debate on the merits of the ACLU or The Ten Commandments hung up in courtrooms. Sure, I disagree with the movie, but ... eh. It doesn't feel like any gross misrepresentations of my positions are happening.
Still, I have to comment on two things. One, Malone balks at using a gun when the ACLU!zombies attack. Moore can shoot guns. In the very beginning of Bowling for Columbine, Moore talks about his experience as a gun owner and as an NRA member. (Although he had hopes to switch the group's emphasis to gun safety and education.) It's another part of the movie that makes the filmmakers look stupid because they don't know who they're attacking.
Two, at one point one of the female zombies cries out, "I'm premenstrual" which was kind of the straw that broke my back in my former decision to ignore the sexism in this movie. Complaining about the sexism in this movie, which has so many other problems, feels whining about a dog leaving hairs on the couch after they've already pooped on it, but at some point it gets to be too much. There are no major female parts in this movie, and most women are either 1.) sweet, pretty conservative women who love military men 2.) harpy liberals, most of whom are ugly lesbians or 3.) generic hot women of both stripes who exist only to have Malone or Leslie Neilsen's grandpa character from the framing device get distracted and stare at their hot breasts. You know ... as they condemn Malone for being a pervert. It's very much eating the cake and having it, too. But really, a whole worldview where women are either bitches or window dressing is sucky and does not endear me to the movie's cause.
Anyway, at some point Patton remembers what a Past Ghost is supposed to do and brings us back to Michael Malone's past***. There we find that the reason Malone hates America is ... well, he always happened to hate America.
... I'm serious.
Of course, the filmmakers think they’re doing some armchair Freudian psychology. Malone, you see, is a jerk because he was rejected by his girlfriend. Malone went to film school, dropped out and in the meantime the girl took up with a soldier. Once again we get a scene of Malone hating on the man in the uniform and saying he must have been drafted because war is horrible while the military man beatifically replies, "But I WANT to go." The girl defends her decision by saying men in uniform are hot. And then in the next scene the girlfriend fucks a bunch of men in uniform but still marries the military man (because conservatives are traditionally into promiscuity and open relationships and shit) while Malone protests the U.S. Army outside the wedding.
This may be the one part in the whole "Past Ghost" section that resembles the original story, but it so misses the point that I feel like describing all the things wrong with it would be over-explaining everything. But eh, what the hell?
Scrooge, as we know, hates Christmas, but that's not his disease, it's just a symptom. Actually, this whole doing away with the Fourth of July is more of a Grinch trait than a Scrooge one. Scrooge would rather ignore Christmas and treat it like any other day, and gets frustrated when people, like Fred, the young boy caroler or the collectors for the poor, intrude on his determination to do so. "I wish to be left alone," as he tells the collectors.
Scrooge's real problem is his values are messed up. What the Ghost of Christmas Past first shows Scrooge is himself as a young child – someone who was poor, but someone who could imagine, someone who loved his sister. Then we see Scrooge at his employer Fezziwig's grand Christmas party for his employees. Scrooge could have remained a part of this world, but then comes the next scene, where Belle breaks up with him.
"It matters little", [Belle] said, softly. "To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."
"What idol has displaced you?", [Scrooge] rejoined.
"A golden one."
"This is the even–handed dealing of the world!", he said. "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"
"You fear the world too much", she answered, gently. "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master–passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
"What then?", he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you."
She shook her head.
"Am I?"
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man."
I want to just make an aside and say that, while I don't think Dickens' female characters are half as horrible as his critics make them out to be, if a Dickens female character has more agency and backbone than your 2008 character, you are TOTALLY fucking up.
But my real point is that Scrooge lost his girl because of his messed up values, values that Belle was able to see. The whole point of the Christmas Past section is basically to show Scrooge, yes, you were once like that caroling boy. Yes, you could have been a happy, generous employer. Yes, you could have gotten your priorities straight and had a happy marriage. Instead, you've made yourself miserable and shut yourself up so much you can't even be bothered to see the son of the sister you loved.
In the large cultural mindset, Scrooge is seen as some sort of cartoon version of an impossibly mean old man. He's actually quite conceivable when we take a good look at him, and much more human than we give him credit.
Malone's story, on the other hand, is just, "Well, he was always an impotent fat kid**** who was always jealous of America’s Sainty St. Sainterson soldiers." It's not exactly the penetrating commentary that earns one respect ...
On their final trip, Patton takes Malone to see his nephew at his Fourth of July party. Yeah, we;re in official "Present Ghost" territory, but Patton is still here. They love him that much. This scene is basically a combo of the Cratchits' dinner and Fred's party. Once again, Josh (and his smiley, pretty, conservative wife) are the pictures of total dovish understanding in the face of the wrongness of liberals. They are also totally unlike their supposedly treacle-y A Christmas Carol counterparts:
'He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!' cried Scrooge's nephew. 'He believed it too!'
'More shame for him, Fred!' said Scrooge's niece, indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by halves. They are always in earnest.
…
'He's a comical old fellow,' said Scrooge's nephew, 'that's the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.'
'I'm sure he is very rich, Fred,' hinted Scrooge's niece. 'At least you always tell me so.'
'What of that, my dear!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'His wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking—ha, ha, ha!—that he is ever going to benefit us with it.'
'I have no patience with him,' observed Scrooge's niece. Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion.
'Oh, I have!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'I am sorry for him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims! Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a dinner.'
'Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,' interrupted Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.
…
Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was unanimously followed.
'I was only going to say,' said Scrooge's nephew, 'that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it—I defy him—if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday.'
But angel Josh and his angel wife don't say anything bad. Yet having Patton insult and slap Malone a lot isn't enough, so guess who gets to insult him? The Tiny Tim characters! Josh has a son on crutches, a blind daughter and a kid whose gender I forget strapped to multiple amounts of medical equipment. The son asks, "Is your asshole uncle coming tonight?" in the nastiest voice possible and the rest follow suit, asking why that bastard won't give them money for their medical conditions, that selfish jerk.*****
And here I thought the military had a pretty good healthcare plan for dependents. Also, once again, way to criticize a real person for something he probably does not actually do.
I kind of get this scene, though. I've seen enough of Zucker's comedies to know he has a thing for mocking movies' tendencies to imbue children and children in peril with a precocious sweetness. It's a sacred cow he likes to skewer and I'm kind of all right with that. But what comes across as a simple skewering of moviegoers' mores in neutral territory takes on an obnoxiousness in this explicitly ideological fiction.
In simpler language, what would come off as, "Ha ha, disabled kids swearing are funny!" in another movie comes off as, "You liberals are so stupid, even these kids can see you're full of shit" in this one.
Unlike Scrooge, who reacted to the Ghost of Christmas Past by freaking out and trying to get rid of it, and who felt his heart opening up under the tutelage of the Ghost of Christmas Present, Malone varies between petulance and whining during his time with Patton. So they go to St. Paul's Chapel in Manhattan, where Patton prays forgiveness for not being able to get through to Malone. Hey, Patton? Want to put in a word for those nasty things you said about Jews and blacks when you’re done with your fauxpology?
Then George Washington shows up. Washington tells Malone that he came to pray in this church for two years, further driving the point home how much real Americans love God. He then lectures Malone on America, particularly on "freedom of speech, which you abuse." Malone notices it's a bit dusty in the church and asks why they don't clean it, to which Washington says look next door. The door opens to show the source of the dust: the wreckage of the World Trade Center.
Washington tells him the wreckage is a warning of what those awful Muslims can do and how his films are appeasing or something. Malone says America's foreign policy (and a few other things) had some bearing on the attacks. Washington responds, "Is that what you're going to say on Judgment Day?" And how anybody who would say that is making up lies to themselves because they just hate America so much and they should know what's coming and ... good God.
A few reviewers were offended by this scene, and that's because it happens to be offensive. Jon Stewart has put this more succinctly than me, but there's something very wrong about how some conservatives bring up the specter of 9/11 in their attempts to tar liberals, whether it's Karl Rove saying (in New York!) "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers" or conservative commentator John Gibson calling Jon Stewart's reaction to 9/11 insincere. It doesn't seem to occur to them that most people in New York City and California, where the planes were going, are liberals. I'm not saying 9/11 was solely a liberal tragedy – far from it. People of both political stripes died that day, people of both political stripes were helping with the cleanup and at Ground Zero. I'd venture to say those who died and those who helped didn't all come from America, either. (I heard many from the UK died in the attack, for instance.) But considering the high population in both areas, it IS insensitive and ugly.
And it's not very Dickensian. The origin of this scene comes from the reveal of Ignorance and Want. Ignorance and Want don't get into all of the adaptations, although they are in these. But they're one of the cruxes of the story, I believe.
'Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,' said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, 'but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?'
'It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,' was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. 'Look here.'
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
'Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!' exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more.
'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. 'Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!'
'Have they no refuge or resource?' cried Scrooge.
'Are there no prisons?' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. 'Are there no workhouses?' The bell struck twelve.
I love this section a lot as an allegorical statement. The Ghost of Christmas Present is the spirit of bounty and joy, what many of us associate with the holiday season. It's not bad to feel happy or to enjoy what we have during the time, but there's always the knowledge that there are others who aren't so fortunate and that even in time of plenty, they're still out there, hidden beneath the ghost's robes.
Scrooge isn't the only one being implicated in this. We all are. Ignorance and Want are MAN'S children.
But in An American Carol, doom is only written on the brow of one-half of America, a half that made up much of the victims. This movie doesn't go so far to say that 9/11 is only the conservative half of America's tragedy, but they'll know who to blame if it happens again.
Next time: The last ghost, why Charles Dickens hated America and if it all really matters in the era of Barbie in a Christmas Carol. And then I shall finally be done with this, yay.
* And yes, I know about Berkley, but it's also in a very liberal section of the country. Does anyone expect it to look like Texas A&M?
** I was kind of part of the Hillel, although I'm guessing that doesn't count. Also, this one time two students came up to me while I was eating lunch and asked if I found Jesus. I told them I was Jewish and we talked about our faiths a little bit. They left knowing they hadn't convinced me but said I was nicer than the atheist they talked to earlier.
*** This part may have actually come before the ACLU section. My notes are a little messed up. I'm pretty sure the section where they go to the present was the last one, though. So you can trust me after that. And you can trust these things happened in the movie.
**** Moore's greater weight gain actually seems to have happened after his fame. In Bowling for Columbine there's a picture of him as a teenager with a shooting trophy in which he looks very skinny. And while he's no spring chicken in Roger & Me, he doesn't look as chubby as he does now, either. Just keeping a tally of all the stuff they get wrong ...
***** This isn't the first time this happens in the film. Grandpa Neilsen's kids make obnoxious comments throughout the film, and in an earlier scene Malone gets dressed down as a fat, smelly, obnoxious, lying jerk by a Girl Scout.
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