Just so we’re clear, the villains won and had the heroes taken out back and shot a loooooong time ago. ❄️Happy Holidays❄️
(and in all seriousness, go watch It’s a Wonderful Life if you haven’t. It’s a great time capsule of the competing values of its time that, imho, provides a lot of context for how we got… here. And it’s a really good movie.
It couldn’t be made today by a major studio, and if it got remade for name recognition, the core message would be completely gutted.)
Wasn’t the message that we had to prevent the spread of fear and fomo and trust that the markets and capitalism would prevail therefore the best course of action was leaving money in the banks preventing runs on the bank
What George reluctantly ran was more akin to a local credit union. Potter ran the big evil bank trying to destroy the local community credit union that considered circumstances and community standing of borrowers, because Potter’s bank was cold, ruthless, opportunistic and sociopathic just like every for profit bank in America today.
George’s Building & Loan made no one including its owner anything resembling rich, that wasn’t what it was for. It demonstrates that financial institutions don’t have to be evil, they choose to be. Even in 1946, George Bailey’s Building and loan was portrayed as a dying breed of community based financial institutions being killed by greedy profiteers who saw the profit potential in destroying humane lending institutions not solely driven by maximizing return as the only point.
Mr. Potter kept coming to George like the devil with a deal, telling him HE and his family could live large, he just had to sell out his community. He basically said no and fuck you for asking every time. Our values today are so poisoned that I think the American that wouldn’t take that deal, the modern American Dream, would be few and far between. Because the Mr. Potters of the world won, we were taught that COMMUNity was evil, because community could stand against reckless profiteering, and once did.
The message was that living a life caring about others makes you valuable to people in your community, in ways money can’t buy, while living a life of greed leaves you wealthy and without so much as a true friend in the world.
The thesis of the movie: https://youtu.be/O4ne13Zft9Q?si=3K1OTNjWT9FtCiZ9
You got me excited to rewatch it this year with the familu
I’m glad!
Sorry for the overzealous rant/fervor, I have just felt for years like the movie expresses vital societal sentiments that either have or are on the precipice of being forgotten here.
I love it brother/sister/whatever
I think its great when people crystalize movies like this down to some insight about the world we live in.