the writing nib

Tag: christmas

  • Christmas movies, capitalism and colonialism. Sorry.

    I’m here to shit on Christmas movies because a) I don’t like the idea of Christmas b) I don’t remember the last time I had enough “Christmas Spirit” to keep me joyful about the holidays for a whole month: I’ve spent the last 3 Christmases alone so, in a way, I don’t really care what Christmas magic has to offer. c) I have too way much time, and I spend some of that time thinking about some very serious issues that affect modern society: Why are Christmas movies a thing? Will Meghan Markle play herself in The Crown? Will the colonization and continued oppression of indigenous peoples ever end??

    This hasn’t been the best year (it is actually the worst year I have ever had) so I needed to focus my energy on something. Something that wouldn’t let me down. I was hoping that Christmas movies would make me angry and want to scream, and they did exactly that. I watched a bunch, my calculations tell me about 15-20, which was way more than my poor brain could handle. Here are my thoughts. Read till the end for an incomprehensive list of movies you should watch on Netflix this holiday season.

    I noticed very early on that most Christmas movies are about women seeking or finding love around Christmas time. This triggered me. Most of these women have successful corporate jobs or live in big cities, but we’re made to believe that their lives are incomplete and unhappy until they find love-no matter what remote town they end up in because of love. The parents of these women would push their daughters to achieve the best, e.g. a medical fellowship in Boston (Christmas Under Wraps), or the women would want the best for themselves in the art world, for example, (Christmas Wonderland), but a man would come along and make them want to settle in the middle of nowhere Alaska where the richest man is actually Santa Claus and his factory workers are the slaves or elves, whatever you decide to call them (by the way this is an actual movie plot). I applaud one movie for putting more focus on the guy’s story (Christmas Made to Order). Do you see what’s going on here? The capitalist machine is preparing us for Valentine’s Day where they’ll sell us cheaply made cards, flowers, and other useless things that for some reason are supposed to mean “love” just because they’re red. Love is beautiful, but it doesn’t help to keep portraying falling in love as the only meaningful thing to happen during the holidays. What about the women who find happiness and comfort in being alone? I would love to see this in this movies and not women made to give up their well-paying big city jobs so that they can move to the rural town they grew up because they want to be with their high school ex.

    I have also come to the conclusion that there is a Netflix Christmas Movie Cinematic Universe: the NCMCU (this is not innovative, I know). The first clue was Sharl the Baker. He appears as Sharl the Baker in both Christmas Wedding Planner and Christmas With a View. Then, if you consider Vanessa Hudgens’ The Princess Switch movies, especially the second, it is very likely that there is a fourth lookalike, i.e. Brooke Winters from The Knight Before Christmas. This makes more sense if you consider that both stories are about European monarchs falling for slightly above average American girls.

    And what’s a cinematic universe without some white saviors? Let’s talk about Operation Christmas Drop. The streets (Twitter) are saying that Guam has been misrepresented in the movie. The protagonist is a black woman who works for a US Congresswoman. In one scene she is so moved by the poverty of the kids she meets in one of the islands, and then she just hands out whatever is in her purse to the kids: pens, HER USED HAIRBRUSH, and the handbag itself with whatever else that was in it. Seriously? What the children of Guam really need is the end of US military occupation so they can grow up in an independent country where they have full control over what happens within their borders. Using a black woman doesn’t take away the white savior trope. A black American woman who works in the US government is still an element of the American imperialistic framework, which works because of the white savior complex and other things. Basically, anyone from a Western country trying to “save” indigenous communities is a white savior, because being from the West is still very much associated with whiteness. Operation Christmas Drop is a glorification of Western occupation of indigenous land, and modern colonialism, which is bad! Was this movie supposed to be a cute story about the US military (of all things) because it’s about Christmas?? I hope it flops.

    Enough of my ranting. Here’s what you should consider watching in the next two weeks. These are some of the movies that managed to get some Christmas spirit out of me-just enough to keep a smile on my face for a few minutes. Enjoy!

    • Klaus (a must watch!)
    • Die Hard (it is a Christmas movie, don’t try to argue)
    • Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
    • Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square
    • How The Grinch Stole Christmas
    • Elf
    • Christmas Chronicles

    And if you still want to watch trashy movies then these are some of the movies worth your time. They have bizarre, but somewhat fun plotlines.

    • The Princess Switch
    • Christmas Wedding Planner
    • Love Actually

    Merry Christmas, or whatever.

  • #SantaIsOverParty

     Recently, I came across this tweet:

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    I actually never thought of it that way, ever, until just a week ago and I felt that this tweet has so much truth in it that I needed to write something on it. So let’s get on with it.

    Before anything else, I’ve never watched this Grinch movie. I did watch one episode about the Grinch on The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, but that was a long time ago. I don’t remember most of the details other than the Grinch turned out to be Mrs. Claus. Obviously, the Grinch was an antagonist in this episode and I assume he/she has been one in many other makes of Christmas movies.

    So, of course, watching too much Western Cartoons (and I mean way too much) as a kid, Christmas became a thing I loved. Somehow it never felt like Christmas back in Tanzania because we don’t have snow and for some time I wondered why Santa never brought me and my siblings any presents. Then I grew up and unlearned all that Santa bs and Christmas, to me, got a different meaning. I’m really glad it did and I shall explain why below.

    The North Pole is supposed to be at the North Pole. It’s cold, snowy and I’m pretty sure they don’t have YouTube over there, based on the general/dominant assumption from TV and movies. Mr. and Mrs. Claus are old and live in a nice warm house in the North Pole. Mr. Claus aka Santa Claus has a factory where his elves make toys for good kids. Santa has a list of all the kids in the world and they’re grouped based on who’s been naughty or nice that year. How does he know how to do this? He stalks them using God knows what ways meaning he invades their privacy.

    There are about 2 billion kids in the world right now so according to this, Santa’s elves have to work day and night for a whole year (and way more) just to produce toys (really good toys that require a lot of work and intelligence to make) for a billion kids assuming half are nice and half are naughty (and this is me being very pessimistic about the world’s balance of good and evil). So basically, Santa’s elves are his slaves and here’s why; they’re overworked, they’re all dressed in hats and green uniforms and most importantly, the fact that elves are shorter, smaller and have pointy ears already establishes a physical difference between Santa (and Mrs. Claus) and the elves. We can just go ahead and say this promotes racism since the same logic of physical differences was used to justify the slavery of black people in different parts of the world, most notably the United States of America. The fact that absolutely no one administers the North Pole makes it worse because then Santa can do whatever he pleases, including enslaving poor elves. Also, do elves know that the ILO (International Labor Organization) has existed for 99 years now?

    There is an argument against this conclusion. Based on the movie Elf, that elves choose to work for Santa and working at Santa’s toy factory is what elves love the most among other “elfisms” that include baking cookies and making shoes at night. This makes me think of slavery in the United States and how some slaves preferred to be house slaves-NOT because they liked being slaves, but because most times they had no choice, but to be there and working in the house seemed far better than working outside, also considering how escaping meant death. We don’t know why the elves are in the North Pole. They have nowhere else to go and because it’s the North Pole it’s mostly dark and cold and covered in snow and with their small bodies it wouldn’t be very pleasant to walk around, or even escape. Where do they even go? My assumption is that elves are natives to the North Pole, Santa is an outsider, he is an invader; a colonizer who set up his factory at the North Pole and forced its natives into slavery. We’re told elves are happy to be working for Santa, but is that payment? No. You can’t have these poor elves working day and night (for the North Pole, it’s mostly night) and then say that they get rewarded because they’re happy to be serving the colonial administration that is Santa and his wife. This is not right. Just the simple idea that elves have a limited handful of options for work at the North Pole already violates every human right I can think of because everyone is free to choose what they want to do and how they want to do it and nobody should be limited by a few options just so that Santa can have his glory. Santa should be in a retirement home somewhere in his home country and he and Mrs. Claus should’ve left the North Pole and given independence to the elves a long time ago when all the other colonizers were doing it.

    Now we move on to the issue of the reindeer. The dominant assumption is that Santa is big and old (why he hasn’t died after all these years, no one knows). How is it fair that he makes 9 reindeer fly him around the world in something close to 24 hours considering different time zones (and still having time to eat cookies and milk)? This is animal torture and it’s wrong to teach kids that you can just make animals move you around for however long you need for whatever cause. This has to go.

    Finally, I want to point out the fact that somehow this Santa fantasy is mostly (if not completely) based in Western Societies. Elves like Buddy (Will Ferrell in Elf) always end up in New York or some Western town. Imagine how this impacts the minds of children in Western societies; instead of educating them and exposing them to what other societies are like, Santa literature teaches them that the only world that matters is the Western world because that’s the only place where Santa cares enough to visit in every story. The media in my country is obviously based in my country and the societies within it, but it still acknowledges the existence of other places in the world such as Europe, USA, China, India and most importantly, other countries in Africa. Imagine if filmmakers without advanced technology as that you’d find at Walt Disney Studios or wherever can make their viewers aware of a world outside the one they’re confined to because of mostly economic incapabilities then how is it possible that big studios in Hollywood and elsewhere act like these parts of the world (such as the one I come from) don’t exist or even matter enough for this “good man” Santa to visit and reward kids with presents?

    I’m also going to go on a tangent here and mention that most of the time countries like mine get mentioned in Western TV and movies is when the topic is disease or war. Just a few days ago I watched an episode of Modern Family where the characters mentioned that they had a friend in Tanzania who they feared had become a warlord. I felt insulted because my country has always been a peaceful place without wars and neither do we have “warlords”. Imagine how unexposed people somewhere outside of Tanzania swallow this bs and of course, how kids in the Western World become indoctrinated with the evil ideas that this whole Santa narrative presents.

    Christmas should be about family, no matter what religion you are or what society you live in. Decorate if you want to, but if you’re going to tell kids about in Santa then think of a better story to tell because the one that exists now doesn’t contribute to a better society. Tell kids a story that promotes human rights (including elf rights), animal rights and most importantly, love.