Sentimental Hogwash? on Capra's It's a Wonderful Life

Concern about the ethical condition of mankind has exercised great minds from the beginning of time. In Biblical chronology, the Fall follows only Creation. No longer a denizen of paradise, man began his struggle against himself and the elements, the former proving a consistently more formidable foe. Plato's description of life in a democratic regime illustrates not only how easily vice can dominate virtue, but how such an ethical inversion comes to be accepted as the norm rather than the aberration: They praise [democratic man] extravagantly and call insolence good breeding, license liberty, extravagance generosity, and shamelessness courage ... [i]n fact, he lives from day to day, indulging the pleasure of the moment ... [t]here's no order or restraint in his life, and he reckons his way of living is pleasant, free and happy, and sticks to it through thick and thin. (1) What Plato considered the penultimate level of civil degradation could easily be mistaken for a People magazine cover story regaling the exploits of contemporary bon vivants. Often enough lapses in probity among even politicians and preachers prompt winks and nods as much as reproach. Such is the extent to which American popular culture lionizes the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, adopting Hobbes's sensual calculus in place of the classical and Christian pursuit of the good for its own sake. Some observations transcend time and place, illuminating as they do so those principles that apply to all mankind in every circumstance, past, present and future, principles universal in their application. Plato means to divine the journey to the good, the true, and the beautiful, which necessarily involves the cautionary exposition of paths of least resistance paved with self-deception and evil. Some seventy generations after Plato, a moment's reflection on his words confirms that human nature does not change much despite "progress," that man remains forever susceptible to the inversion of vice and virtue, of what merely feels good for what truly is good, and therefore at risk of alienation from that which truly vests human life with meaning. One thinker who devoted systematic study to the manifestation in art of man's ethical condition was Irving Babbitt, and his scholarship offers an insightful and erudite guide to discerning how artistic--and, indeed, all--human activities affect the ethical order. "Life," he posited, "is a dream that needs to be managed with the utmost discretion, if it is not to turn into a nightmare." (2) For Babbitt, as Claes Ryn has noted, "the foundation and center of all genuinely civilized life is personal moral character and effort." (3) A person's access to the true meaning of life and its attendant happiness is a function of determined moral striving of which aesthetic activity is necessarily a part. "[A]rt," therefore, "achieves greatness in proportion as it expresses the ethical essence of human existence." (4) Given the centrality of moral striving to Babbitt's notion of a healthy social order, there can be little doubt as to how he might perceive the modern American Christmas. What began as a celebration of one of the most ethically consequential events in history, the Incarnation, has degenerated into a pretext for conspicuous consumption. The religious awe before transcendent good is increasingly, if not totally, subsumed by indulgence of the desire for material goods. Amidst the frenzied shopping and ubiquitous kitsch, the film It's a Wonderful Life stands in America as one of the most recognizable artistic symbols of this season. Set on Christmas Eve in a post-World War II small town, the movie tells the story of the likable and selfless George Bailey who suffers scandal and ruin not of his own making only to be saved in the final act through intervention by God, family, and friends. On the surface, the film's director, Frank Capra, appears to have manufactured the perfect feel-good holiday vehicle. …