Hits Different

I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life many times over the years, my father introduced us to the film decades ago. This is a James Stewart house. We salute the flag. In a dark cinema last weekend I caught the movie again. And this time the tears it elicited were somehow more - more hot, more fraught, more.

It’s the watching George Bailey plan for a big life, knowing he won’t make it out of town, when you start feeling the pangs. The way his face catches disappointment, like a quick moving cloud’s shadow, and then he schools his expression into stoic acceptance. He puts a smile on his face.

This time though, it was his speech to the Building and Loan board about why his father’s work mattered that got me: “Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle.”

I was gone. I was shaking. I downed that coke like a cowboy drinking whiskey in a saloon.

We keep getting told the economy is in great shape. Full employment and what not. And I know people who are living on that side of the street. People who know the name of shades in the Farrow & Ball catalogue. People who have stock options. Most are nice people. I love a lot of people like that. Hell, I went to Stockholm on a weekend break this year. But we’re also living in a country where people are queueing for food. People are queueing for food and not getting food. People are trapped in damp houses, no houses. We keep watching the number of children experiencing homelessness shoot up. We use the phrase ‘experiencing homelessness’. Children with scoliosis are waiting in pain for surgery. People aren’t getting healthcare. People are dying sooner than they should. People are scrambling through bins in the city centre for plastic fucking bottles. People vote for more of the same. Newspapers talk about defence spending and policy changes on that front, as if it’s not just another way to rob money from people who need it and kill their sons. I remember reading about the famine and literary representations of the Great Hunger, and how for some people it was actually a good thing. It cleared the land up, it helped strengthen the rural middle class. It was such an obvious finding, conclusion, whatever that I put the book down and went ‘of course’. That quote from Joyce about the sow that eats her farrow. Of course.

Anyway, here’s the full speech, video and text. It should be shown in the Dáil. It should be mandatory viewing. As someone said to me, maybe we need to bring back shame.

Just a minute – just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. Just a minute. Now, you're right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I'll never know. But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was -- Why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn't that right, Uncle Billy? He didn't save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get outta your slums, Mr. Potter. And what's wrong with that? Why -- here, you're all businessmen here. Don't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers?

You, you said that they -- What'd you say just a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even thought of a decent home. Wait? Wait for what?! Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they're so old and broken-down that -- You know how long it takes a workin' man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you'll ever be.