Taking Christmas movies seriously
Regular readers know of my fascination with Christmas movies. That even extended at one time to planning a course on the films -- a demonstration that even some of the cheesiest of holiday films merit academic consideration. The course hasn't happened but you might be interested in the argument I made for it. So here ... Christmas Movies: Ideas and Issues, Text and Subtext Description Where holiday films are often discussed in terms of familiar themes such as faith and family, a closer consideration of them finds meditations Race in America is underscored in Tradi on power, media manipulation, depression and other issues buried under the more obvious them. ng Places, This Christmas and The Preacher’s Wife , the last of which is a story first done in 1947 with a white cast and then retooled for African-American stars. Holiday Inn, which introduced the song “White Christmas,” also had what one historian called “a breathtaking medley of Hollywood’s most infamous racial ster...