A Christmas Story

The Simpsons didn’t come from nowhere, and A Christmas Story appears to be a direct inspiration.  Here you have a somewhat dysfunctional family — a slightly mischievous kid, a goofy dad, and a forebearing mother — which is celebrated as a nuclear family.

Not having seen this since childhood, it’s surprising to us that this movie is now a Christmas classic that the whole family gathers around and watches.  Frankly, you can’t understand it well as a kid, probably not even as a teenager.  It’s told from the perspective of the voiceover narrator, who looks back on his childhood both nostalgically and critically.  The obvious lesson he learns is about human nature.  The man working as Santa Claus in the department store does not want to work past 9 pm, the Little Orphan Annie radio show manipulates you into participating in its Secret Decoder Ring group only to further market its Ovaltine product to you, and lying to your mother sometimes works.

These lessons, contained by several short stories that are strung together to make the movie, are what keeps the movie from veering off into goofy or childish comedy, and are therefore what gives it its potency.  Even the dream sequences, with their hammy acting, are interesting because they demonstrate what most everyone has thought at some point.  For instance, that your teacher is going to extol your praises once she reads the “brilliant” assignment you are turning in to her.

Consider the prize the Old Man wins.  As a kid, you don’t quite get why this guy is so thrilled that he won a woman’s leg as a lamp.  But it’s clear — if you’ve got the perspective that the voiceover narrator has — that the Old Man has his blinders on when it comes to the aesthetics of the lamp, and to how his wife views the lamp, but that he views it as a symbol of his intellectual prowess.  Like so many Tom Wolfe characters, the Old Man is promoting the triumph of Me.  He’s proud to display his ridiculous lamp in the front window of his house for all his neighborhood to see.  He believes vainly that his newspaper puzzle is a challenging test of brainpower that he has soundly defeated.  Of course, for his wife, the lamp is not only a violation of her household decor but also a kind of rival.

The absence of Christianity (this is the 1950s American Midwest) is curious.  Given the old man’s parenting ways, it’s not hard to see how kids like Ralphie can turn into 1960s teenagers — individualistic, hedonistic, and probably rebellious in one way or another.

Note: the movie contains a hilarious jump cut which you should watch for.  At the end of one scene, we see Randy walking into the bathroom and getting ready to sit down on the toilet.  Then the movie cuts to a pot of boiling food on the stove and then pans over the kitchen table.  We’ve already seen Randy eat like a pig, so once again the joke’s on Randy.

Entertainment: 9

Intelligence: 6

Morality: 5