Wonderful living: George Bailey and the hard work of making community
The classic of Holiday classics It’s a Wonderful Life is ubiquitous this time of year. Like the Christmas Day marathon of A Christmas Story that TBS has made into a new Holiday tradition, it will be hard to miss, if you have your TV on for even a few hours.
Even the St. Louis Rep got into the act this year, with their one-man stage adaptation, This Wonderful Life.
Perhaps appropriate to this Christmas season, though, some are recalling the darker side of George Bailey. The side of him that, as one writer puts it,
is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your…
