One More Bit about A Christmas Story—the Un-PC Element

One More Bit about A Christmas Story—the Un-PC Element by Roxanne McDonald

Interesting to note is how humor has changed in the last twenty years.

While A Christmas Story still has many, many moments that contemporary viewers can laugh at without feeling socially inappropriate and therefore guilty, it is interesting to note the many un-pc moments in the movie that comic writers today would certainly never be able to pull off—or get away with:

Consider, for example, when the father (Darren McGavin) is haggling over a Christmas tree. The adult Ralphy narrates, saying that his dad “loved bargaining as much as an Arab trader.” Oooph.

Then there’s the implied evil element, known in Ralph’s imagination as Black Bart (though he is white), who is such a bad pillager and plunderer that Ralph has to save his family by shooting the man with his Fisher Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Air Rifle (which is still at this point in the movie a coveted item).

Finally, there is the ridiculous depiction of the Chinese restaurant workers who stand around the family at the Christmas Eve dinner singing “Deck the halls with bows of horry…far ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra.” Even after their manager tries to give them accent reduction lessons on the spot, they cannot render an American version, and therefore sent back to the kitchen.

There is today such a fine line between culturally sensitivity and really funny entertainment, that I couldn’t help but consider A Christmas Story…though other shows, thankfully, still play the race humor angle and –like Scrubs, for instance, directly and indirectly incorporating the issues in the episodes—get away with it.

The Commerce of A Christmas Story

The Commerce of A Christmas Story by Roxanne McDonald

The Fisher Red Ryder 200-shot Action Carbine Air Rifle [bb gun] aside, the commercialism is wryly displayed, discussed, and used as a harbinger of disappointment in A Christmas Story, reminding us that even in the forties, commerce was a cruel king.

The adult narrator of A Christmas Story may be the informed one informing us of a more mature disappointment in commercialism at Christmas, but one underlying theme of the film does point to the pain of

being a powerless kid in a world gone money-mad. Here are some such moments, I suggest:

The tree lot salesman: “This is a TREE.” “This aint a tree; THIS is a TREE. Then, “I’ll knock off two bucks cause I can see you’re a man who knows his trees.” Then, when Mother asks if it is one where all the needles fall off, he says “No, that’s them Balsams.”

The irony of the elves yelling at the kids waiting for Santa and Santa being jolly out loud but muttering to “get [the kid] off [his] lap,” muttering that he isn’t staying one minute past closing, and doing such hostile kid-unfriendly things as shoving Ralphy down the slide with the toe of his boot on Ralphy’s forehead

And, of course, the most obvious anticipation of using kids to sell product is in the cipher Ralphy cracks after waiting weeks for his special decoder ring (which was advertised on a radio program sponsored by Ovaltine)—“BE SURE TO DRINK MORE OVALTINE”

Another Way A Christmas Story Delights Us with Every Viewing: the Cliches

Another Way A Christmas Story Delights Us with Every Viewing: the Cliches by Roxanne McDonald

“You’ll shoot your eye out” is number one, but adults do say the darndest things—comments that get passed on to kids who grow up to repeat them, dread turning into their parents because of them, and laugh hysterically whenever hearing them in the context of one of the best Christmas movies of all time.

One of the reasons we are so drawn to and repeatedly watch A Christmas Story is in the cliches adults speak to their kids and those picked up by kids after years of conditioning comments.

As Dad admires his Oldsmobile, the grown up Ralphy narrates how “the old man always saw himself at the Indianapolis Speedway.” This race track was the one

most often mentioned when we were growing up—whenever an analogy for cars, driving [too fast] and doing things quickly came up.

When Father is bitching about work or war or something at dinnertime, Mother warns, “little pitchers…” The saying went that “Little pitchers have big ears,” whatever that meant.

“You know better” is also, in variation, a most convenient comment for lectures and discipline. Mother uses it on Ralphy just as our parents used it on us.

The fallacious admonishment that “people are starving in China” was often used on finicky eaters, as it is on Randy, who will only eat when his mother tricks him into emulating a pig and showing her how a piggy eats (which was not a strategy for the rest of us).

Another oft-repeated line is the one Mother says to Ralphy after she punishes him is the “Don’t you give me that look” snap.

And of course, “You’ll shoot your eye out” is in there with the “Don’t run with scissors” warnings and threats—one which is so common that Cingular has adopted and adapted it for its 2006 Christmas season commercials, denying kids the bad choices for cellular service by telling them they will “run the bill up.” It kinda works—but not as well as the harping original we have all heard too many times not to laugh now.

The Pun in Punishment: Great Moments in A Christmas Story

The Pun in Punishment: Great Moments in A Christmas Story by Roxanne McDonald

While it may be too close to home for many of us who actually had to eat soap for sassing or swearing or had to go to bed without dinner or dessert for one truancy or another, many moments in A Christmas Story send us right back to childhood—punishments and frustrations alike bringing continued joy.

Whether it is the familiarity of punitive gestures or comments on our behavior or whether it is the coo-coo father or the silly brother or crazy rabbit-sleeper-sewing aunt, we identify at some level with many of the moments

in A Christmas Story. Here are some of my favorites:

Randy’s constant laughing

THE BOASTING
The father getting such esteem from the leg lamp, which he considers a “major award”

THE BEATING
When Ralphy beats the bull out of the bully [and when Mother coddles him and covers for him afterward, soothing him with warm water and distracting his father with talk of football itineraries, etc.]

THE SCREAMING
When in the Chinese restaurant, the family is served a duck with the head still on, and Mother screams

When Ralphy’s mother calls Schwartz’ mother and tells her the swear word Ralphy used came from Schwartz and the mother does this cartoon scream over the phone, “WHATTT?! WHATTT?! WHATT?!”

The grumpy phony Santa and impatient elves, jerking the kids into lap position as many little ones wail and scream

The overloaded electrical outlets and the inevitable blackouts whereby Father would tell everybody to stay put, not move, while he replaced the fuse, which the adult narrating Ralphy says, “The old man could replace fuses quicker than a jackrabbit on a date….”

Mother getting Randy to eat like a “piggy”—to get him to eat at all

Dad coaching Ralphy as he loads the toy rifle

And the many other disappointments and debacles and dogs, of course, make A Christmas Story the classic that it is and always will be.

Another Nod to A Christmas Story: Great Lines

Another Nod to A Christmas Story: Great Lines by Roxanne McDonald

“You’ll shoot your eye out” is the classic line, but others are up there in the greatest lines category.

When it works, effective repetition makes for great hilarity. This is most obvious in the “you’ll shoot your eye out” line that is repeated so much that even the viewer begins to feel like a kid being admonished for wanting a cherished Fisher Red Ryder 200-shot Action Carbine Air Rifle.

But the Christmas classic that certain channels [TBS, for one] show in marathon format for twenty-four hours every year in

December also contains other great lines and snippets of dialogue:

That the oversized plastic leg is a “major award”…

That “frageelay” must be Italian, when Mother corrects that it is the word “fragile”…

That the leg is a “statue” to which Ralphy agrees, open-mouthed and gaping, “Yeah, a sta-tue…” and to which the voiceover speaker says that “only one thing could pull [him] away from the electric sex in the window”—his nightly radio show.

And then when that quiz show prize, that “major award” gets broken when Mother is cleaning, Father yells that she “was always jealous” of that lamp…

Other critics have called the dialogue of A Christmas Story “tedious”, hackneyed, and boring in its repetitiveness. But with each scene, whether it be the scene where Ralphy presents the perfunctory teacher gift that dwarfs all the others and says he thought maybe she would enjoy something different or whether it be little brother Randy rifling through the gifts on Christmas morning and yelling “Mine!” and “That’s mine!” over and again, the timely dialogue never gets too old for the rest of us—who appreciate the contribution to character development and to what was once most original Christmas story-telling.