You won’t find Springsteen’s home town in a Christmas Movie11 min read

Are you a Christmas movie watcher? I didn’t say fan mind, just watcher, or in my case, addict. There are two or three on every day for weeks before Christmas. If you’re in full-time work they may have passed you by. If you watch them they may still pass you by because they’re not deep. They serve to confirm illusions, in this case illusions about Christmas and about the good old U.S. of A. They’re about as safe a way to waste time as you can think of – a cinematic Mills and Boon; if you want a yardstick, they make ‘Love Actually’ seem like particularly gruesome scandi-noir. Hallmark make the best (is that the right epithet?) ones, with titles such as ‘Rocky Mountain Christmas’, ‘Romance at Reindeer Lodge’ and ‘Christmas Encore’.

There are stock characters and stock situations which are deeply comforting for we viewers as the wheels come off the world.

So I’ve been watching and found their predictability strangely comforting until one day I slipped back into consciousness and realized that it wasn’t just the plots that were the attraction but the whole world the plots plodded through and, to put it bluntly, there’s something not quite right about Christmas Movie World which might make it a close cousin of Trumpworld.

So what’s in them? Here are some of the common ingredients of Christmas Movie World:

There will always be a romance involving the realisation by one of the leads that the person s/he is going to marry is not ‘the one’ and a turning to someone who is ‘the one’. This choice is an existential one involving the rejection of false values (represented by s/he who is ‘not the one’).

Characters

• both romantic leads will be pretty (the bloke in a rugged sort of way and the woman in a blonde, big-smiley way) but not stunning – the girl/boy next door;
• the ‘not the one’ will be superficially charming, a good catch and a very successful business person BUT business and money-focused!;
• the male/female lead who turns out to be ‘the one’ will be a home town guy/gal much nicer than the obnoxious but soon to be married rival;
• one of the male protagonists might well just have got out of service, usually the army, or be home on unexpected leave; he will be a thoroughly nice person not a highly trained killing machine. He’s likely to be widowed and have a child (often looked after by his sister who will be one part of the central love interest);
• one of the leads will own/have an interest in a small local business which is ethical, employs a thoroughly nice bunch of local people and makes ends meet through hard work and decency (it might be a toy shop, a lumber mill, a resort, stuff like that);
• there will be a less pleasant (almost not nice!) woman, possibly working for the money-obsessed boyfriend (if that is the pairing; just swap genders if it’s the other way round); she will try to make all the nice bunch of local people redundant just before Christmas and take over or close down the nice business and split up the couple. She will have dark hair!
• there may be a child (optional single parent, poor but good and holding down six jobs but worried about affording Christmas);
• there will Pa or Ma (possibly both but more often just one, widowed, kind, caring and wise but not yet over bereavement). This is called a sub-plot;
• lastly, there will be a random group of carol singers dressed in Dickensian bonnets and cloaks who wander aimlessly around the set singing at inappropriate moments. Hallmark may have got them as a bonus free gift with something or just been given the weird clothes and not known what to do with them.

Setting

Setting for Christmas movies is absolutely key. Small town America, rural, full of nice people – think Smallville before Superman ruined it; it might be in the mountains, one was even set in somewhere in Alaska I think. Towns have names like Evergreen. The key is that the place hasn’t been ruined by big-city ways and values. Since one half of the love-interest is visiting from the city (either never having been or having been away so long s/he has been infected with city ways) there is lots of room for epiphanies and the measuring of home town mores against the ruthless and fundamentally empty values s/he has grown into. The films are basically cinematic Bildungsromans, exploring at a deep level the psychology of growth and the traumatic change which can occur when Christmas trees are involved.

Plot

What’s a plot?

• there will be wedding plans, which of course change as bad boyfriend (or girlfriend) realizes that goody two-shoes hometown boy/girl is really the love of her/his life, not greedy, obnoxious city-slicker.

Note: I’ve lost track of which gender is which so from now on I’ll write as if the male lead is the local boy and the stranger in town looking for epiphanies is female. Just be aware the roles are reversible (but there are definitely no same sex couples in home town America).

• there will be a buying the Christmas tree scene (unless it’s the holiday resort one where they chop down their own). This scene will involve some kind of incident that will begin to make the female lead doubt the wisdom of her choice of fiancée;
• there will be a falling out just before the heartwarming denouement, probably when small-town male lead discovers, courtesy of jealous, dark-haired other woman that her new love planned to close down/take over the small local business which is ethical and makes ends meet through hard work and decency;

• thankfully this turns out to be a mistake because she realizes (epiphany moment) that the true value of things is not measured in dollars and vows to save the toy shop, lumber mill, resort, bordello/brothel (only kidding) or whatever it is[1].

  

  She may even get as far as the airport ready to fly back to big city corporate America before discovering her mistake and realizing she really loves the guy who has stayed true to home town values. She comes back to join mom, pop (if both are alive; if not attractive neighbour also widowed and looking for some action – this is more of the sub-plot) and rugged hero, for Christmas dinner with Tiny Tim et al.

That’s about it for plot except that it will definitely snow on Christmas Eve or Day (as it always does in the US I believe).

So there you have it: what’s not to like?

Well it’s a bit like worrying over the gap where a tooth should be. I’ve happily watched these films for years, after all there’s nothing to object to in their content. It’s not what’s there that bothers me –  it’s what’s missing.

Important Note: stop reading here if you don’t want to think about hard and depressing stuff!

In Christmas movies  (and I’ll start with the easy stuff):

• there is no Walmart, just really friendly coffee shops and stores run by really friendly people who are really friendly in a friendly sort of way;
• there is no poverty or rough sleeping, absolutely none unless the heroine or hero does a spot of volunteering; I’m pretty sure I saw one once where that happened;
• no unemployment, although the prospect of the business folding does create a frisson of anxiety;
• there is no illness and no need for health insurance; generally, people are comfortably off and live in pretty nice houses. Most scenes take place in the enormous kitchens where lots of home baking goes on, mainly Ma’s apple pie or Christmas stuff;
• oddly, there is very little overt religion; no church scenes to speak of really. Of course, everyone is a Christian and grace is generally said before meals but the makers have decided to give worship a wide berth;
• there’s no violence and no guns;
  this really is quite odd since there are something like 357 million guns in the US, 40 million more guns than people and just over eight per gun-owning household. If there are no guns in small-town America everyone else must have hundreds;
• this lack of guns may explain the absence of violence. Voices are sometimes raised but never a blow is struck. If the law is seen it‘s in the shape of a kindly and (again) ruggedly handsome bloke who helps clear the snow. Incidentally, there are no obnoxious youths either, just a crowd of lovable kids who take part in the school play or Christmas show;
• no guns and no youths means no mass shootings. I’m prepared to believe in Father Christmas but no shootings! There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant. There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to Everytown for Gun Safety Research, a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt. Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015 (excluding suicides) according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured.
• the absence of any child over ten might explain the absence of even a hint of a drug problem. No-one living in such a wholesome demi-paradise would dream of taking anything stronger than fruit juice and a very small glass of wine on special occasions.
  I’m not certain it’s really like that though: according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, “overdose deaths, particularly from prescription drugs and heroin, have reached epidemic levels.” Drug overdoses have become the leading cause of death of Americans under 50, with two-thirds of those deaths from opioids;
• finally and possibly explaining all of the above, Christmas movies have an all-white cast; the plurality and diversity which is generally a source of pride for Americans won’t be found in a Christmas movie. I have seen two black characters (both in the same movie) and can’t recall any other race being represented. The lack of non-white characters means no young black men going about their business will be gunned down in small town America by cops going about their business.

It’s a world away from Springsteen’s ’American Skin: 41 shots’ :

41 shots, Lena gets her son ready for school
She says, “On these streets, Charles
You’ve got to understand the rules
If an officer stops you, promise me you’ll always be polite
And that you’ll never ever run away
Promise Mama you’ll keep your hands in sight”

Is it a gun (is it a gun), is it a knife (is it a knife)
Is it a wallet (is it a wallet), this is your life (this is your life)
It ain’t no secret (it ain’t no secret)
It ain’t no secret (it ain’t no secret)
No secret my friend
You can get killed just for living in your American skin

‘Make America great again’ could be the Christmas movie slogan.

I know there’s no point in blaming Hallmark and other Christmas movie makers for not making movies they never set out to make. Social realism is the last thing we want at Christmas; if we can, we give a bit to charity and set out to spoil ourselves and we don’t want to focus on bad news. Movie makers are interested in making money not upsetting their audience. It’s just that the myth fostered in the movies might be pernicious as well as comforting. Older, white Americans were predominantly Trump voters. The races and cultures not seen in Christmas movies were predominantly Clinton voters.

You won’t find Springsteen’s hometown in a Christmas Movie either:

Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back
To your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
Talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I’m thirty five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around
This is your hometown

The world seen in these movies is one older, reasonably well-off, white Trump voters think is threatened and the more they get sucked into the movies and nostalgia for a 50’s America that never was, the less chance they’ll have of seeing America the way it really is. I’ll probably still watch them next year!

[1] This is one of the few realistic elements of the genre; the real story of how the west was won is one of companies from the east buying out or driving out small businesses and farms struggling to survive. If you haven’t seen McAbe and Mrs Miller have a look.