Everyone likes a traditional, feel-good film at this time of year. Home Alone (1990, Chris Columbus) was voted Ireland’s favourite in 2020, and it doesn’t look as if the new update Home Sweet Home Alone (2021, Dan Mazer) will replace it. The Christmas film industry is huge in the USA, churning out over 30 festive movies a year, and The Hallmark Channel is one of the major players. Their quick production means they often rely on cartoon-like characters and repetitive tropes, varying from seemingly comedic to downright insulting. The ‘car crash’ and ‘dead parent’ plotlines are bad at the best of times, but at worst, when tied to festive jollities, they lead to flat character development and propagate the idea that there is always a ribbon-wrapped ending to huge life events like these.
A California Christmas (2020, Shaun Paul Piccinino) tells the convoluted story of a ranch on the brink of bankruptcy, run by the daughter of a woman with terminal lung cancer named Callie (Lauren Swickward). Her fiancé and father died in a car crash a couple of years earlier. The family is saved by the no-good son of a millionaire who is sent to the countryside to learn the value of hard work before the ‘non-stakes’ stake of coming back in time for the firm’s Christmas party. He finds a way to save the farm by restarting their ailing vineyard. The film fades out to the couple sitting on a bench with a name plaque on it. People who have been through these things will tell you that life finds a way of getting better again, but in the majority of experiences, it does not come from sitting with some rich douche on a bench that has your recently deceased mother’s name on it.
In the 1990s, two religious TV channels merged and were repackaged into the Hallmark Channel we know today. These conservative origins mean that its films are rooted in ‘family values’ and are vaguely timeless. They present typically white families living in homes that look like showrooms, no matter how poor they are supposed to be, finding heterosexual love and learning the value of family above all. The American philosopher Charles Mills frequently spoke out against the major consequences that the exclusion of Black scholars in his field has for how systemic racism is understood. He said the disproportionately white field relies on abstract thought experiments which impede existing white supremacy from continuing to be dissected. This applies to all industries with a social influence. When Christmas films present the same type of world over and over again as if it is the norm, it erases any space for variety.
The premise of independent film Bad Santa (2003, Terry Zwigoff) is intentionally Grinch-like. It tells the story of Willie T. Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton) and his inability to make anything of himself. He relies on his only skill: robbing safes. With his companion Marcus Skidmore (Tony Cox) they ruse mall-owners all across America into believing their earnest Santa act, and then steal all they can. From the start of the film, Willie and his minion are both equally unlikeable, but their characters are distilled into such patheticness that they don’t seem evil. Marcus, who is Black with dwarfism, is frustrated with the lifestyle of the pair and sees no way out. Willie is full of abject hatred, but he is given room for a character arc, experiencing a turning point with his rage and recklessness that leads him to change his ways. Marcus however, turns on Willie, flattening the film’s only Black character into a one-dimensional villain. There is no empathetic take on why Marcus acts as he does, whereas Willie is given a pronounced backstory of growing up with abusive parents. The film falls back on well-worn narratives of bitterness in marginalised communities as a cheap way of developing plot.
Aside from the comic relief provided by the aging grandmother, the only female character in the film is Willie’s love interest, Sue (Lauren Graham). She slips into the trope of the ‘manic pixie dream girl’, with the fingerprints of a handful of male screenwriters all over her. She pursues Willie when he’s nothing but foul to her, and is a ‘cool girl’, down with drinking and having sex whenever asked. She has no expectations of herself apart from having fun and conveniently for Willie, she likes kids and ends up looking after the child that he acquires. That’s the frustration of the trope: it essentially presents a man in the body of an extremely hot girl, who is expected to eventually conform to what a woman is traditionally viewed as; a mother and a servant.
When Terry Zwigoff was directing Bad Santa, he wanted to create a darkly comic character study. According to IFC, a voiceover describing Willie’s backstory was only added to the opening scene of him getting in a drunk fight dressed as Santa because test audiences weren’t sure whether to laugh at or pity him. Zwigoff called the theatrical cut ‘inelegant’, craving the ambiguity of the original.
The push for a more comic version of life, simply because it’s Christmas, is where a lot of these films’ problems lie, and there is a particularly dark side to their portrayal of female characters. One study showed that exposing women to abusive relationships framed as ‘love’ in films made them more likely to tolerate similar situations in real life. Films set a normative standard more than we give them credit for. Old films aren’t necessarily harmless. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra) has George (James Stewart) breaking into a disproportionate rage at Mary (Donna Reed), in one scene ripping her clothes off of her in a borderline-abusive act. Another family favourite, Love Actually (2003, Richard Curtis) wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test. It has a very narrow depiction of women: their whole lives revolve around men, creepy age gaps, negging. It has aged shockingly badly, especially compared to The Holiday (2006, Nancy Meyers), a British film produced at a similar time which has notably more intelligent character arcs. One of the most iconic Love Actually scenes has Mark (Andrew Lincoln) showing up in the snow at his best friend’s fiancé’s door holding up cue cards professing his love for her. It’s bad enough that he’s betraying his friend, but he’s spent almost the whole film acting like she’s stolen his favourite primary school crayon then proceeds to love-bomb her. Worse still, the trailer has him calling twig-thin Kiera Knightley a fatso. This might fly in another context, if we hadn’t had barely-size-12 political staffer Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) constantly referred to as the chubby girl by her colleagues and finding out her ex wouldn’t marry her because he thought she was too fat. When she gets together with the Prime Minister there is a clear abuse of power. These grievances aren’t unique to Christmas films, but they are strikingly poignant because of the genre’s supposed ‘Goodwill to all men’ vibe (but not necessarily women).
Christmas films are marketed as instilling a warm gooey sense of the goodness of humanity. Bright lights and comedy, laughter and love are all we see as we settle down with friends and family. But when we peer under their cosy covers, unsettlingly, these films often propagate the same values of a comment section found in the darkest corners of the internet.
