MickeyCaroling
Over a century and a half ago Charles Dickens wrote the quintessential holiday story. A Christmas Carol shows a man who has armored over his heart to deal with the slings and arrows of life, who has shut himself off from mankind only to find redemption in breaking through his own walls and rediscovering and reveling in his own humanity.
If you're old enough to read you've almost certainly seen at least a dozen adaptations/versions/perversions of this story. If I had a dime for every time a sitcom picked a character at random to act scroogish until an X-mas miracle showed them the True Meaning of Holiday Cliches, the sheer weight of metal would collapse the tectonic plate I'm on.
Not that all such adaptations are rubbish. The animated Mr. Magoo presented a very stylish and funny cartoon version that appeals to all ages on some level or another. Bill Murray's Scrooged updates the story brilliantly, including various references to Dickens' original masterpiece. And a perennial holiday favorite cartoon, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was too intent on making a good, timeless classic to be too meticulous in filing all the serial numbers off.
And while I certainly value the rare genuinely funny moments on TV, one of the best adaptations is the made-for-cable 1999 version of A Christmas Carol starring Patrick Stewart. Faithful to the original yet fully accessible to a modern audience, this Carol is one of the most compelling ones I've seen.
Ebenezer Scrooge has become a pop-culture caricature- just say the name and anyone can instantly imagine a spiteful old miser miserably hording his coins away. Not a few people actually think Dickens' original was actually titled "Scrooge." Like any one-half dimensional character, he's easy to play- and in fact is played so often that it's easier still to forget the man behind the cardboard.
Dickens' didn't write about a man who enjoyed being mean and cheap for its own sake. Ebenezer Scrooge has suffered his share of human pains, and has learned to deal with them by suppressing his feelings of pain and loss... and losing the other feelings, like delight and joy and love in the process. He comes to value gold because it is real, unlike his long-buried emotions and human ties. He can feel its weight, its substance, even as he becomes more and more numbed to his own life.
Stewart brilliantly portrays Scrooge as a three-dimensional man, a man who is made to see the error of giving up on life's joys merely to escape its pains. After a lifetime of sealing off his own heart in one night he is redeemed and learns to embrace the joys and wonders of human life. Some might argue that a story of redemption is more appropriate for Easter, but the spiritual rebirth of Scrooge back into the company of Men is perfectly appropriate for Yuletide. This season a large fraction of humanity celebrates the birth of a Redeemer, and A Christmas Carol reminds us all that each of us, in some way, can use a bit of redemption.
If you're old enough to read you've almost certainly seen at least a dozen adaptations/versions/perversions of this story. If I had a dime for every time a sitcom picked a character at random to act scroogish until an X-mas miracle showed them the True Meaning of Holiday Cliches, the sheer weight of metal would collapse the tectonic plate I'm on.
Not that all such adaptations are rubbish. The animated Mr. Magoo presented a very stylish and funny cartoon version that appeals to all ages on some level or another. Bill Murray's Scrooged updates the story brilliantly, including various references to Dickens' original masterpiece. And a perennial holiday favorite cartoon, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was too intent on making a good, timeless classic to be too meticulous in filing all the serial numbers off.
And while I certainly value the rare genuinely funny moments on TV, one of the best adaptations is the made-for-cable 1999 version of A Christmas Carol starring Patrick Stewart. Faithful to the original yet fully accessible to a modern audience, this Carol is one of the most compelling ones I've seen.
Ebenezer Scrooge has become a pop-culture caricature- just say the name and anyone can instantly imagine a spiteful old miser miserably hording his coins away. Not a few people actually think Dickens' original was actually titled "Scrooge." Like any one-half dimensional character, he's easy to play- and in fact is played so often that it's easier still to forget the man behind the cardboard.
Dickens' didn't write about a man who enjoyed being mean and cheap for its own sake. Ebenezer Scrooge has suffered his share of human pains, and has learned to deal with them by suppressing his feelings of pain and loss... and losing the other feelings, like delight and joy and love in the process. He comes to value gold because it is real, unlike his long-buried emotions and human ties. He can feel its weight, its substance, even as he becomes more and more numbed to his own life.
Stewart brilliantly portrays Scrooge as a three-dimensional man, a man who is made to see the error of giving up on life's joys merely to escape its pains. After a lifetime of sealing off his own heart in one night he is redeemed and learns to embrace the joys and wonders of human life. Some might argue that a story of redemption is more appropriate for Easter, but the spiritual rebirth of Scrooge back into the company of Men is perfectly appropriate for Yuletide. This season a large fraction of humanity celebrates the birth of a Redeemer, and A Christmas Carol reminds us all that each of us, in some way, can use a bit of redemption.
