Keenan's Book Reviews: Search results for Christmas

I previously wrote about “stealing” characters. In that essay, I described several characters from popular fiction and how they might be seen as variations on the same character template. I suggested that a writer can modify and reimagine existing characters to create new ones. Actually, I think that is probably how most characters are born, even if the authors aren’t consciously aware of it.

Similarly, plots can be “stolen.” Some have suggested that there are a very limited number of plots, so in a sense all writers are stealing from a small pool. On the other hand, there is a lot more to a story than just the plot, so it may not matter. Let me illustrate the idea with some examples.

A Christmas Carol is one of the most popular, and I think one of the best, ghost stories ever written. Charles Dickens’ novella was first published in 1843. The story has been adapted to the stage (including opera), many films, radio, television (my wife and I are fond of the 1984 version with George C. Scott as Scrooge), comic books, and numerous pastiches.

The plot is well known. Ebenezer Scrooge begins as a miser. On a certain Christmas Eve, he is confronted by the ghost of his former business partner and three spirits who represent Christmases past, present and future. The visions they show him convince Scrooge that his single-minded pursuit of money has deprived him of life. He awakes Christmas morning as a new man committed to relating to his fellow man and putting his money to use.

Let’s reverse Scrooge. Make him an extremely generous person instead of a miser. In that case, he might be something like George Bailey. Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, was the generous man at the heart of It’s a Wonderful Life. His dream is to travel the world. Instead, he delays his dream again and again to help his neighbors, his brother, and eventually his own wife and children. It comes to a head when a mistake by his uncle brings imminent ruin to the savings and loan George runs. Faced with ruin, George sees himself as an utter failure. He contemplates suicide in hopes that his insurance policy will rescue his family from financial ruin.

At this point, he receives a spiritual visit like Ebenezer. In this case it is a single spirit, an angel named Clarence. Like the Christmas ghosts, Clarence shows George a vision. This is also an inversion of Dickens’ tale. Instead of showing him a history of missed opportunities and blindness to the needs of others, Clarence reveals an alternate world in which George and his generous acts did not exist. His brother is dead. His wife is a frightened spinster (it’s hard to believe Donna Reed would have been overlooked by the marriageable men of Bedford Falls even holed up in the library with her glasses on). The people are mired in poverty because he hadn’t been there to fight for access to credit so they could build homes and businesses. The town is under the thumb of the miserly landlord Mr. Potter, himself a type of unreformed Scrooge.

Like Scrooge, George is changed by his vision. He sees that his life is worth something and that his sacrifices bought him a lot of love. In the end, returned from his walk in the dark alternate universe, that love is displayed by a return of generosity from his many friends that saves him.

These beloved stories don’t have the same plot. However, one is a variation or alteration of the plot of the other. This plot archetype doesn’t have to be so serious.

Topper, either the book by Thorne Smith or the movie starring Cary Grant, is an example of this plot played for laughs. Cosmo Topper is a banker. He is bored with his job. He is somewhat alienated from his wife who clings to respectability. He has money and status, even what might have been considered a good marriage in a time when such relationships were as much about business as love, but he has no fun and it is wearing on him.

The ghosts are a piece of work, too. George and Marion Kerby are a wealthy couple who die in a car accident. Instead of shuffling off to the afterlife, they find themselves stuck on earth. They have never done something substantive, either good or bad, in their entirely frivolous lives. They decide to fix the situation by helping their old friend Topper.

In this case, all the major characters are a type of Scrooge. Topper has let his job, money, and status keep him from a life of fun and serious connection. The Kerbys had so little meaningful connection to other people that they neither helped nor harmed another soul. Even Topper’s wife Clara has sacrificed intimacy in her marriage to focus on social climbing.

So Topper is visited by spirits like Scrooge and Bailey. Instead of taking a serious look at life, it is presents a screwball comedy. The Kerbys drag Topper into all kind of risqué situations he would normally not get into. Misunderstandings abound and Topper is embarrassed repeatedly. The ghosts are have good intentions, but they are not very competent. Topper feigns irritation at the hijinks, but in his heart is having a ball and doesn’t want the haunting to end. Clara feels humiliated by all the trouble Topper is getting into, but fear of losing him to a wild life reminds her of how much she loves him.

Through a series of screwy events, the characters undergo a Scrooge-like change. The Toppers loosen up and rekindle their love. They discover that their intimacy as a couple is more important than jobs, wealth or status, though they don’t have to completely give up those things. The Kerbys take responsibility for themselves and their actions. They finally put Topper’s needs ahead of their own and do something substantively good, opening the doors of heaven.

You can probably see that these stories are related by more than similarities in plot. They have a common theme. All of these stories are about connecting to others in relationships. Bailey is a little different from the others in that he starts out blind to all the good that has resulted from his seemingly humble touching of the lives of others. Scrooge, the Toppers and the Kerbys are isolated for various reasons, mostly of their own making, and need to discover that relating to others is the main thing.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Christmas Links

It’s been a busy season for me, so I don’t have a lot of links this year. Here is what I have. You can check out previous years, too.

December Featured Book
December Featured Category

Christmas Links 2009
Christmas Links 2008

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Holiday Inn (Film)

Holiday Inn. Writ. Claude Binyon and Elmer Rice. Dir. Mark Sandrich. With Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Paramount, 1942.

Holiday Inn is one of my favorite movies. It has great music by Irving Berlin. It has performance by Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire; they only appeared together in one other movie. It’s a good romantic comedy, too. The film works in each of these areas.

Berlin originally conceived it as a showcase for his music, with a song for every holiday. He wrote the song “White Christmas” for the film and it went on to become one of the most popular songs ever. All the songs are solid and some are nearly as good as “White Christmas.” I think the song for Washington’s Birthday is the weakest, especially in comparison to the great tune for Lincoln’s Birthday, but in light of where it fits in the movie I feel like cutting it a little slack. I’m especially fond of “You’re Easy to Dance With.”

Crosby and Astaire provide good acting performance, but audiences rightly expect them to sing and dance and they deliver. Two of Astaire’s dance numbers are worth particular mention; the first is supposedly drunk and the other involves firecrackers. These two dances themselves are enough to make the movie worth seeing.

It’s a fair romantic comedy. There is a lot of chemistry between Crosby and Astaire, who deliver clever lines with snap. There is also good chemistry between them and their leading ladies, Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds. The basic plot is boy meets girl, they fall in love, girl is ambivalent about ambitions, conniving friend takes advantage and sweeps away girl, repeat.

The film is an interesting look into race relations at the start of World War II. The film only has three black characters, a female house servant (played by Louise Beavers) and her two children. As if the role of cook-maid isn’t stereotypical enough, she is even called Mamie. The film plainly shows how things would have been done at the time, but seems to have slight moments of reticence about it. Here is an example.

On Lincoln’s Birthday, the white server-performers at Holiday Inn have darkened skin. The actual black people stay in the kitchen, out of sight of the guests. The song for the holiday focuses on Lincoln’s role in ending slavery. The original plan is to play it straight, but at the last minute Crosby’s character decides to change it to a blackface number to hide the identity of a starlet, his love interest, from his rivals. Even in a celebration of the end of slavery, the segregation is so complete that the white guests come no closer to interacting with black people than the make-up darkened skin of white performers.

Even so, the film isn’t about race. It’s a fun love story. It has great music and singing. It has wonderful dance numbers. It’s worth seeing, especially around Christmas or New Year’s Eve.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Christmas Featured Book

The featured book for Christmas is the Gospel of Luke. Luke’s record of the Nativity is beautiful.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Christmas Featured Category

For Christmas, we’re featuring books related to Christianity. Check out our featured book or others on the subject.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Belated Epiphany Reading

Just a little late for Epiphany, here is a selection of recent reviews of books by Christian authors:

The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith
The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton
The Dangerous Duty of Delight by John Piper
Epic by John Eldredge

The Gospel of Luke has more information of the childhood of Jesus than the other gospels. The early chapters are particularly good selections for Christmas and Epiphany.

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
No More Christian Nice Guy by Paul Coughlin (see comments)
Peace of Mind through Possibility Thinking by Robert H. Schuller
Walking with God by John Eldredge

My Christmas selections for 2008

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Interesting Stuff Jan. 5, 2010--Happy New Year

I wasn’t a humbug about Christmas, I was just busy. So were you.

12 Comics of Christmas
50 Best Comics Covers of 2009 (From Complex, where the language can be rough)
-Other cool covers from io9’s selection of the top 100 from the last decade:
--Catwoman 2 (I like the work of Darwyn Cooke)
--Detective Comics 745
--The Incredible Hulk 49 (Wild things)
--Spider-Man: Blue 2 (Tim Sale is very good, too)
7 Super-Sized (And Somewhat Insane) Soviet Projects
Fog-catching in a Peruvian slum
GE Gets $1.4B Contract for Wind Turbines
Government Comics Collection (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Headed to Space? Take the Elevator
Interesting Stuff Halloween 2009
Kids Should Play in the Dirt
Mickey Mouse gets his edge back
Sketchbook: Calvin & Hobbes Covered by Comic Book Artists & More Calvin & Hobbes Covered by Artists
Taylor Swift Tackles Bad Driving Habits
Team wins $900K in Space Elevator Games

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Christmas Reading & Entertainment

The Gospel of Luke has the most complete story of the Nativity and youth of Christ.

Holiday Inn is one of my favorite films and the Christmas season may be the best time to see it.

The Thin Man is set around Christmastime.