“One man’s life touches so many others, when he’s not there it leaves an awfully big hole”
(Clarence, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’)
The Christmas classic ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ has probably one of the cheesiest endings you can find to a film. It comes as a relief after two hours of relaying the ways in which community has failed George Bailey, the plight of an individual who always puts other people’s needs before his own. The ending is undeniably powerful, however out of place the cheerful rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ might be in today’s gritty, realist cinema.
It’s amusing that a film essentially about the Christmas spirit of sharing and community was subject to Cold War politics, accused of espousing communist values by the FBI due to the portrayal of the evil capitalist banker and the moral good of George Bailey’s appeals for collective responsibility. Rather than being a state redistribution of wealth which would characterise socialism, the film’s main message is arguably about acts of charity and self-sacrifice made by George to keep the town’s finances afloat and prevent his friends from falling into debt to Mr Potter’s monopoly. The emphasis on the power of an individual to affect change in a community through charity arguably makes George Bailey the ideal neoliberal citizen.
The devolution of responsibility for societal problems such as food insecurity and homelessness while simultaneously cutting budgets and underfunding welfare programs through austerity has been characteristic of neoliberal governance (Evans et al, 2005). The burden of fixing these problems has therefore shifted to the public through the rise of volunteering and charities, arguably making resolving them more difficult due to competing visions and lack of access to a shared pool of resources.
It is this environment, combined with the cutting of support to children’s free school meals during the pandemic, that the George Bailey of 2020, Marcus Rashford, emerges. His campaign to feed children living in poverty in the UK has earnt him accolades (recently the Sports Personality Expert Panel Special Award) and widespread support, a representation of the power of a celebrity individual to create change, but also the millions of people across Britain who had been volunteering in food banks, warehouses and welfare responses to insecurity created by coronavirus. Despite some government funding, Parliament refused to continue backing the free school meals scheme during holidays, with the majority of support coming from the private sector, businesses and celebrities.
The well-deserved praise for these acts of initiative and kindness hides the inherent tensions present in the movie and in the logic of neoliberalism between the collective and the individual. Encouraging responsibility for social welfare to be shifted on to the shoulders of unpaid volunteers already bearing the burden of the economic and social stresses of the pandemic is an uneasy solution to problems which require targeted policies and state interventions. The central tenet of the film is the punishment of George Bailey, who is forced to make personal sacrifices for his community which he laments, almost driving him to suicide, while Mr Potter faces no consequences for his actions even by the end of the movie.
It has been a year in which celebrities have been criticised for their individualistic desire to virtue signal through musically incompetent renditions of ‘Imagine’ and awkward DJ sets in support of Black Lives Matter. The Christmas period, along with messages of kindness and sharing, also harbours the return of the patronising ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’, which laments African children missing out on a Western Christian tradition with the refrain ‘feed the world, let them know it’s Christmas time,’ despite the fact this year UNICEF began efforts to alleviate child food insecurity in the UK.
However, Rashford’s campaign serves as a reminder that celebrity charity can embody the best aspects of Christmas emphasised in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’: the idea that in a culture which promotes individual consumerism and creating the best possible conditions for our own lives, individual acts of charity can inspire genuine collective change. Forced into existence by the withdrawal of the state from its task of provisioning welfare and highlighting the failures of the Conservative government, campaigns like this might take on a new significance as Britain becomes reliant on George Bailey and Marcus Rashford figures and the charity of it’s wealthy celebrities this winter to protect vulnerable children from hunger.
Written by: Sean Cobb, 3rd Year Geographer
DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF COMPASS MAGAZINE AS A WHOLE OR THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
Image sourced from Unsplash