One of Hollywood's most prized Christmas films, and one of the most wonderful, is being tagged as racist.Reported by the New York Post, the 1946 Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life, is being dubbed racist by a Carleton University music professor, James Deaville.“Listen and pay attention to the sounds of the movie and that’s where the racism lies, in the music,” Deaville said. The film is about the main character, George Bailey, who plans to commit suicide on Christmas Eve..However, over the course of the movie (spoilers ahead), Bailey comes to realize, with the help of a guardian angel he meets, Clarence Odbody, who grants Bailey's wish to have never been born, that life in the town of Bedford Falls without his existence would be starkly different.The tale is about understanding the positive impact individuals can have on people's lives — a snowball effect — and is framed similarly to the Dickensian classic, A Christmas Carol.For Deaville, however, the music is most strongly influences the message of the film, to the point where the film's narrative becomes distorted.After Bailey's wish to never exist comes true, he watches the impact this has on his community, transforming Bedford Falls into Pottersville, a slum of nightclubs, drunks, and miscreants..The town's transformation calls for an obvious musical and tonal shift to match the narrative shift.However, Deaville says the melodies are all wrong.“The music in Pottersville is boogie woogie and jazz, a Black type of sound, but when the town is called Bedford Falls, the song George and his wife Mary sing to each other is ‘Buffalo Gals,’ a white traditional standard,” he stated.He said that Bedford Falls is populated by mostly whites “apart from a Black housekeeper,” slamming Frank Capra, the film’s producer and director, as a racist..The American Film Institute has ranked the film 11th on the list of the 100 greatest films ever made.
