Capra got it wrong...

All hail Pottersville!_
The "bad" town in "It's a Wonderful Life" jumps and jives 24/7 with hot bars and cool chicks -- while "wholesome" Bedford Falls is a claustrophobic snooze.

By Gary Kamiya
Dec. 22, 2001 | 'Tis the week before Christmas, and all through my house and 250 million others, people are blubbering helplessly as George Bailey overcomes despair and discovers that he really did have a Wonderful Life. I have no desire to rain on Frank Capra's heartwarming, seasonally-sanctioned parade. Let cynics deny that a brief sojourn in a counterfactual limbo conjured up by a bumbling, liver-spotted angel can really produce a life-changing epiphany. Let jaded roués deride George as an infantile weenie whose courtship of Mary comes to fruition only because she prudently massaged her scalp with Spanish Fly before he arrived. Such criticisms are mean-spirited, if not downright un-American. But even a master sometimes flubs a brushstroke, and there is a glaring flaw in Capra's great canvas.

I refer, of course, to Pottersville.

In Capra's Tale of Two Cities, Pottersville is the Bad Place. It's the demonic foil to Bedford Falls, the sweet, Norman Rockwell-like town in which George grows up. Named after the evil Mr. Potter, Pottersville is the setting for George's brief, nightmarish trip through a world in which he never existed. In that alternative universe, Potter has triumphed, and we are intended to shudder in horror at the sinful city he has spawned -- a kind of combo pack of Sodom, Gomorrah, Times Square in 1972, Tokyo's hostess district, San Francisco's Barbary Coast ca. 1884 and one of those demon-infested burgs dimly visible in the background of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

There's just one problem: Pottersville rocks!

Pottersville makes its brief but memorable appearance during that tumultuous scene when George, who has just been bounced from Nick's Bar and is beginning to seriously freak out, rushes down the main street. A large neon sign -- the first of many -- announces "Pottersville." As sirens sound in the distance and a big band wails jazz, George staggers on, into an unfamiliar nightlife district that has replaced the town he knew. In a rapid montage, we see a neon bar sign saying "Blue Moon." Another announces "Fights." Yet another blares "Midnight Club -- Dancing." There's a pool and billiards joint and a pawnbroker shop. A large marquee announces "Girls Girls Girls -- 20 gorgeous girls -- 3 acts." The "Indian Club" gaudily sports a kitschy neon sign depicting the face of a brave. The "Bamboo Room" promises a more Oriental setting. As the disbelieving George stares at the teeming entrance of the "Dime a Dance" joint ("Welcome jitterbuggers"), a scuffle breaks out -- some floozy is resisting being thrown into the paddy wagon. "I know every big shot in this town!" she shrieks as the gendarmes manhandle her. In horror, George recognizes the floozy -- it's Violet, the town flirt from his previous existence, now apparently turned full-fledged professional. After his protests almost land him in the pokey too, he stumbles off in shock and grabs a taxi.

George's confusion, even dismay, is understandable -- it's always a shock when the laws of space and time cease to apply. But if he'd hung out for a while, had a few drinks in the Indian Club, dropped a couple dimes in the dance hall, maybe checked out the action at the burlesque, he would have gotten a whole new take on the situation. Pottersville has its problems -- its bartenders can be undeniably ill-humored, for example -- but compared to the snooze-inducing Bedford Falls, it jumps. In the immortal words of Jeffrey "Janet Malcolm" Masson, it's a place of "sex, women, fun."

The gauzy Currier-and-Ives veil Capra drapes over Bedford Falls has prevented viewers from grasping what a tiresome and, frankly, toxic environment it is. When Marx penned his immortal words about "the idiocy of rural life," he probably had Bedford Falls in mind. B.F. is the kind of claustrophobic, undersized burg where everybody knows where you're going and what you're doing at all times. If you're a Norman Rockwell collector, this might not bother you, but it should -- and it certainly bothered George Bailey. It is all too easily forgotten that George himself wanted nothing more than to shake the dust of that two-bit town off his feet -- and he would have, too, if he hadn't gotten waylaid by a massive load of family-business guilt and a happy ending engineered by God himself.


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:cry:

She recently told me, "Well, you know what they say. Everytime you hear a bell, an angel dies." :crazy:

I said "You are supposed to lasso it, not catch it".

I'm one of them. I moved from Dallas/Ft. Worth to a very rural setting and work in a small town. There are private clubs and restaurants that discreetly serve liquor but no bars. There's a certain amount of gossip, but I don't think people have time any more to be on the lookout for who does what. As for entertainment, there's the live theatre downtown that hosts plays and local live music acts. There's the art studio nearby, and the monthly downtown art walk. The local pharmacist lives above his store and has done wonders to make sure downtown has cheerful streetlights and flower boxes. There are folks here who will make sure you have things like food and clothing even if you are down on your luck.

For you that want Pottersville, take it. It seems to me that too much of our country has become a Pottersville, and too little is like Bedford Falls.

What's appealing to me about the mythical Beford Falls is the candor, integrity, and honesty of ordinary, everyday people portrayed ... no bigotry, no passive-agressives, no homelessness, and the only DISHONEST and scheming person happens to be wealthy. In the world I inhabit, people EMULATE the wealthy and successful ... because, after all, it's only with society's assistance that such wealth and 'success' is achieved and enabled. They're our role models. They're living what we ASPIRE to - warts and all. Furthermore, they get the girls.

Bedford Falls. Now that I live in NYC, I appreciate it more and more. It was almost idyllic, no crime, homelessness, poverty (people helped the less fortunate and pulled together when someone experienced a tragedy.)

I am sure less than pleasant things went on behind closed doors (my own stepmother was very abusive) but it was nice to grow up with a sense that caring for each other was one of the more important things in life.

I am tired of the glorification of excesses and the fast lane. It's all about consuming anyway, there is no real substance or comfort in it.

I especially agree with your last sentence - when are people going to see that all the glitz and glamour are just empty promises? To quote Elvis Costello, "What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?" - Why is kindness and compassion so "uncool?"

What a sad country we have become.

Potterville was all about dissolution and the exploitation of women. As the OP points out, Bedford Falls was about as exciting as cold oatmeal.

After all, when there's not a little Potterville in a town, that where the kids are going to start tweaking out of sheer boredom.

is so devastating as to spur Mr. Kamiya's spin zone. Day is night, night is day, Caligula rocks, Jesus was a wimp.

I believe that perhaps you've given away a first-rate philosophical review of "It's a Wonderful Life" by posting it on DU. This is definite "New Yorker" magazine material.

Please try submitting it to publications that will print a top shelf piece of irreverence.

In short, misanthrope, I think what you've written is outstanding.

(On edit: Pottersville is the world we live in and there is much I wish were different. But I don't think I'd enjoy Bedford Falls for more than a day.)

The thrust of the movie is not small town versus big town. Sam, his wealthy friend moved to the big city and yet helped to bail his friend out during his crisis.

The real message I took from it, is fellowship with one another as opposed to what's in it for me and screw everybody else. Another message for those despondent people suffering from depression is to keep in mind, the impact they make evey day, even by seemingly small deeds which can dramatically alter someone else's life for the better. We all one way or the other make our ripples in the pond.

George Bailey lived a life of sacrifice, always putting others first and the moral of this movie reflected the wealth of love and friendship, he had accumulated over his life time from these deeds. George Bailey whether he was Christian or not lived in the spirit of Christ.

Old Man Potter lived a life of lonely self indulgent avarice and greed. Nothing mattered to him except money and power, and in spite of all his material wealth, he was morally bankrupt. Old Man Potter whether he was ancient Roman or not lived in the spirit of Caligula, apparently the author believes that's the way to go.

Bedford Falls was a dreamworld in which I wished to live. Except that I really would have preferred to fall into a haystack with Gloria Gram rather than Donna Reed.

My comments were not intended to spit on George Bailey, or the Hollywood fantasy that was created in this film. Rather, it was an acknowledgment that the Hollywood fantasies have always held out the promise of things that don't exist. The film ends, the lights go up, and we leave the theater hoping that some angel is watching over us.

Like you, I wish that things were different. I wish the world was full of George Baileys.

But the truth is that life is full of modern day Caligulas hiding behind names like George W. Bush.

Damn, I hate to be that pessimistic. But after the film is over, harsh reality somehow manages to creep in. Just ask the survivors of Hurricane Katrina how they feel about George Bailey and Old Man Potter. On the other hand, don't bother. All you would get is a blank stare and plea for humane treatment.

I don't blame you for being pessimistic, however the George Baileys are out there, you just don't hear much about them because the Old Man Potters are in control of the mass corporate media, and they don't want you to know about the Baileys.


Much more on link on below


http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/7/164747/4155

On Thursday, September 1^st, my friend Jill Chozen of San Francisco called to ask if I could put someone in touch with Al Gore. Dr. David Kline, the father in law of Jill’s friend Denise Kline, was stranded in Charity hospital in New Orleans. The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute – food and water running out, no power, four feet of water surrounding the hospital and alligators eating corpses outside. David is a neurosurgeon and needed to take his patients out of the hospital as soon as possible. David asked Denise to find Al Gore for help because David knew Gore from operating on Gore’s son after a life threatening auto accident nearly 16 years ago.

I emailed Gore with Denise Kline’s number after speaking to Jill and got an answer immediately. Gore had phoned David in the hospital several times and ascertained that he was now on the way to an Apache Helicopter landing site with his patients. Things were looking up.

<snip>

Gore was supposed to win - more people voted for him, more people in Florida tried, the butterfly ballot, etc. Fate was screwed by Bush, Cheney, James Baker and 5 votes on the Supreme Court.

We've got a world we were never supposed to actually have - a disaster.

I want to find some flower petals in my pocket to show it was all just a dream.

:(

I imagine that there are hundreds of thousands of US & Iraqi families that would give anything to make this just an awful dream that we will awake from.

and probably a few glory holes as well.

Strangely enough, i've seen potter compared to cheney here on DU a few times (potter's 'win at all cost, greed is good' etc philosophy crushing naive, innocent george bailey suggested murdock and walmart/haliburton-i myself said that IAWL couldn't get made now, georgebushamerica wouldn't stand for it!) but your adroit dissection of the movie points to the fact that freedom means something that BF wouldn't survive!
(item- some suggest that potter was actually made to resemble Roosevelt, and FDR has always bugged the rightwing boors, whom capra etc pandered to(?))
So 2 contradictory messages get promulgated...
1) that small town conservativism is good, superior to big city sophistication which are the result of unfettered capitalism
2) innocence, generosity, sacrifice and family values structure society in a way pleasing to God, not to mention god fearin' folk; capitalism based upon old fashioned virtues ie the plucky S&L, generally pays off socially more then unfettered capitalism that potter epitomises...
who's to say?
As the great philosopher Simone Weil once pointed out, in comparing the actual and fictional results of good and evil that in fiction, good=boring while evil is exciting whereas in reality good=exciting while evil is boring, if you're lucky...
great post!

a quietly rural place that rolls up the sidewalks at dark and where people live doing family things during the daylight like little league, going the beach and the rural farmer's markets and swap meets that are around on weekends. There's always plenty of parking a just a little rush hour at 5 p. m.

Traffic and paying for parking, getting tickets for expired parking and fighting for parking drove me out of the rat race. Bedford Falls is very nice actually. Oh and there are a few saloons and pool halls if you really have to go to them.

... I read this quote:

"whose courtship of Mary comes to fruition only because she prudently massaged her scalp with Spanish Fly."

I couldn't help but LOL. That scene is one of my favorites in the movie, but poor George probably wouldn't have hooked up with Mary if not for the close proximity of his nose to her hair.

The grocers, pharmacists and hardware stores in Bedford Falls have replaced by bars and strip clubs which the poor and disaffected flock to so they can forget their misery for a few moments.

Pottersville sounds like a wonderful place - for pimps, drug dealers and criminal gangs.

Makes me all warm and mushy inside, to see so many folks pick Bedford Falls over that nasty old Pottersville. :)

Ans although I enjoyed this Menkenesque critique of that Capra classic, it hasn't changed the high regad in which I hold that film.

So here's one more in the spirit of Christmas --- "IT'S A WONDERFULLY PRIVILEGED LIFE": http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/wonderful.htm "NO MAN CAN BE A FAILURE IF HIS FRIENDS ARE RICH ENOUGH"



pnorman

George Bailey is a typical social justice democrat. Always concerned about the needs of the people in Bedford Falls, even above his own needs. He believed that everyone deserved to own their own homes. He wanted his entrepreneurial friend, Sam Wainwright, to open the plastics factory in Bedford Falls to help put the town back to work during the depression. If times were tough he didn't foreclose. He was inclusive -- giving a mortgage to the Martini's during a time when Italian Americans were very much discriminated against.

Potter is a typical right winger -- greedy, heartless, hypocritical, dishonest, racist (called the Martini's "garlic eaters") Didn't really care if the town went to hell in a hand basket with crime and moral decay, as long as he was profiting.

There are so many lessons in this movie.

This whole article is so completely phony, assuming it was serious at all. Apart from the inane stereotype of the greedy ones as "interesting" and the good people as "tame" and "boring"--aren't they past that yet?--the writer strangely presumes that the "sinful" people are somehow such goody-goodies that they are never violent, (the prostitute Violet does not have bruises and does not cry, unlikely), and do not express any hateful opinions of others behind their backs. It is one of the phonier prejudices of those who hate "good, moral" people, that they attribute all hostile, judgmental attitudes to them, and admit none of their own. The author, selfish to the core, tells "us" how wonderful the world of "whores" and "broads" is, there for the taking when Dickie Two-Inch wants it. What a living Hell for the women.

The whole difference between the two groups is summed up by the fact that George Bailey, the "New Dealer," extends credit to poor people so they can buy their own homes, when they could never get a loan at a corporate bank, and is generous and understanding when they have trouble paying it back, allowing them time. Potter on the other hand, is a lying opportunist who not only keeps them all in overpriced slums, but seizes every opportunity to further capitalize and buy every single property in town, and complete and total monopoly. The people will never get ahead, never be able to save, never live in their own homes. They, after all, are "losers" and "suckers" who observe laws and quaint morality. Potter steals the money that belongs to the building and loan, never gives it back, and is never caught. That is a "smart business move." Capitalists thrive on slavery and poverty; someone who wants to improve society and help others, wants them to have a better life.

I agree that the only world worth living in, is the Bedford Falls where people will help you, and each other, and where you are safe. Vulgar people are never interesting, they introduce exploitation into their relationships, and make the world a Hell for anyone else, for any reason they think up this time. We have been living in it for all these years now--everything for us and Halliburton, and you people can all fuck off--and I am God-damned sick of it.

maybe it's dull but it beats dirty greedy intolerant Pottersville any day of the week. I wish there really was a Bedford Falls I'd happily spend the rest of my life in a place where people came before profit. Pottersville is what happens when the repukes are in charge of things. x(