A Christmas Carol

The reason I watch Scrooge (A Christmas Carol) every year is simple. It puts me in the correct perspective amid the commercialization and hype of the holiday season. With the Far Right proclaiming that the Left has declared war on Christmas, it is especially bad this year. Conniosseurs of Dickens will carry on a bit of a religious battle themselves over which version of this movie is the best. I watch the Alistair Sim (1951) version for one simple reason. It scares the piss out of me.

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol as a ghost story. This is no cuddly little warm hearted children’s classic. This was intended to wake people up to the fact that the world had been overrun by greed, especially at a timof year when men’s hearts should be filled with love for their fellow man. Dickens has a way of portraying the dregs of society with awesome clarity. Director Brian Desmond Hurst brings this out in haunting camera angles and a sinister soundtrack. I especially love the stairway in Scrooge/Marley’s house, and the play of light and shadow as Scrooge goes to pay his final respects to his partner. The rag picker’s quarter’s are horror-filled; the consumptive children, the fat pox-laden Rag Man in his beaten-up stove-pipe hat, absently scratching at fleas. Patrick McNee (of Avengers* fame) even plays a bit part as a young Jacob Marley.

Then there’s Alistair Sim. He just looks mean and nasty. He delivers each line with precision. No nuance is wasted. He is an amazing actor. Watch the transformation in his whole body. His performance is stunning.

The thing I like best about this version is its faithfullness to the original. Dickens words haunt us today. Scrooge, when asked to donate money to the poor, replies, “Are there no prisons?… and the Union workhouses, are they still in operation?… and the Treadmill and the Poor Law are still in full vigor?” This is a strangely familiar attitude given the welfare to work laws of today. The incidence of welfare abuse is conflated by those with similar motives to Scrooge and his cohorts. The most disturbing image to me is point at which the second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, opens his robe to reveal the two children inside. “…this boy is Ignorance, this girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy…”

We cannot afford to remain ignorant of the condition of the nation or of the world. If we learned nothing else from Katrina, let us learn that people of few means do not have cars in which to evacuate themselves from natural disasters, and political appointees are more likely to stuff their faces at restaurants than do their jobs at a time of crisis. The spectre of the boy haunts even G.W. Bush, who today hid behind the veil of faulty intelligence in explaining starting a war that has cost over 2000 American lives and 30,000 innocent Iraqi lives. Dickens original words? “Beware this boy, for on his forehead I see that written which is Doom!”
*thanks, merle

Mythic Meme

This is pretty -- I ganked it from copper_rose:


ELF

You are an elf. An elf is like a
human but much fairer and pure. Elves are
usually tall, with pointed ears, and resemble
humans very closely, but elves are usually much
more beautiful. Elves are a distant race. They
prefer to keep to themselves, because often,
many of them feel that their race is superior
to humans. Elves symbolize wisdom, prudence,
love, and hope. They are very merry and happy.
They are forever young and delight in music.
They are natural artists as well.


Which mythical creature resides in your soul? (11 Results + Pictures)
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