Sixth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

"The thing about illegally breeding fire-breathing possums is that you gotta keep a bucket of water handy."

*Those fools! Fire-breathing possums are greasy; water will only feed the flames! Oh, if only I could tell them of my empire...*

(Context: https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/1839.html?thread=2678831#cmt2678831)

Talk fandom! Making things! Reading, writing, drawing, whatever! Miscellaneous life chatter! Meme's happy to see you again!

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Comments

Re: Films

[(Anonymous)]

I watched the original Miracle of 34th Street, and had a lot of thoughts and feelings, and then I tried to watch the remake and it was making me so angry I ragequit. It’s so bad! The acting is so bad! There are scheming baddies! Kris Kringle is weirdly aggressive from the start! Susan is sad about not believing in Santa, and all the wider context is missing!

Re: Films

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't seen the original since I was a kid! I remember enjoying it. I need to rewatch. It was my yr 3 teacher's favourite film haha.

Re: Films

[(Anonymous)]

So, some of my thoughts on the original.

Susan going over to Love-interest Lawyer’s (who has been taking an interest in her) apartment is a bit weird, but safeguarding is actually addressed: her nurse can see them in the other flat, due to how the windows line up, so they’re always in view. On the other hand, there’s a really weird scene when Susan is in bed and it sort of looks like Kringle has hidden behind the door while (I think the nurse?) put Susan to bed, and then he comes out of the shadows to talk to her privately. While she’s in bed. Shut in her bedroom with her.

I really like that Susan isn’t sad or melodramatic about her lack of beliefs. Why would she be? This has been her entire life, and she’s been raised to see it as pragmatic and a good thing. She’s a bit sorry for adults trying to kindly lie to her, and other children, even if it puzzles her. And it actually comes down to her gaining the ability to pretend, and have some imagination, which is a perfectly fine thing. And her mother’s caution and attempt to keep her grounded in reality, in her education, and strong, make perfect sense given that as far as we can tell some guy wooed her away from her education and career, got her pregnant, then abandoned her in the 1940s. LL’s attempts to undermine this do come across as a violation. I’m not so keen on the whole now-we-kiss-and-marry ending.

I liked that the act of violence that gets Kringle in trouble is because of the company probably-not-a-certified-psychologist hurting a teenager by planting harmful ideas in his head, and that he was going to report all of it to the boss of the company, but he never brings it up at all in his defense or as an explanation because he is respecting the teenager’s privacy and dignity, and that’s never brought up.

Guy getting his wife drunk so she agrees to a lodger is all kinds of wrong.

When LL offers his room to Kringle, he’s literally offering to share his bedroom with him. He already has two beds side by side in there, so they can sleep next to each other. And they do.

Re: Films

[(Anonymous)]

Also, it’s so deeply grounded in its post-WW2 setting. The little Dutch girl nearly made me cry: very well played.

Re: Films

[(Anonymous)]

Also also! There’s the whole theme of people around him starting to shift to a different mode of capitalism, focusing more on giving and being seen to be good. And it’s all performative, but it’s still making people happier and the general atmosphere better, and helping people. The only real baddie is the company not-a-psychiatrist who is so caught up in his own issues that he tries to convince a teenager that enjoying making children happy means something is terribly wrong with him, because people only do good out of guilt.

Re: Films

[(Anonymous)]

I mainly bring that up because it’s such a contrast to the remake.

Re: Films

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, so the trial. I think a key thing is that absolutely everyone involved believes that Kringle is, in Susan’s words, “a nice old man” who wouldn’t harm a fly, and by the time of the trial not even the nasty man wants him actually put away. Everyone is sort of trapped by events, although why they can’t fall back on their previous position that delusion is insufficient reason to put someone away if they aren’t a danger, I don’t know. They seem to suggest that previous actions now force them. He did give deliberately very confused answers to the psychiatrist at the hospital, but still you’d think the home he was already in could cope.

So everyone wants to find a way to let the nice old man continue to wander around thinking he’s Santa, and at no point is anyone really thinking about what he might need, and whether he’s actually a danger to anyone. Which is interesting, because earlier Susan’s mum had a proper moral dilemma about how best to treat who she thought was a kind but severely delusional old man.

But what is very clearly portrayed is that all the adults make a choice to pretend not to know the truth, or even to say words that they know are a lie, and all the other adults know they are lying about, because they don’t want to be treated socially and in the press as the person who said the obviously true but unkind thing. It would wreck the judge’s political career! Only a few Republicans would vote for him, and he’s a Democrat! Everyone is lying to the children about it, who don’t know any better and who confidently believe the words as they speak them because the adults in their lives say it is so, and the adults are lying because they don’t want to upset the children!

While funny, the whole thing feels quite uncomfortable. If people could have been honest about actually considering the needs of a vulnerable, pleasant old man, none of the theatrics and lying would have been necessary. You don’t need to affirm his delusion to be kind to him.