Miracle on 34th Street

This week's inductee into the "Overrated Hall of Fame" is ... Miracle on 34th Street.

Ahhh, Thanksgiving. What great memories the holiday evokes for many of us. Boring football blowouts from Detroit. Drunk relatives who won't shut the fuck up. A casserole of baked, moist bread that's been given the fancy name of "dressing." And the first day of another endless Christmas movie season. And what movie goes better with Thanksgiving than the 1947 classic Miracle on 34th Street? After all, the first part of the movie takes place on Thanksgiving day.

Most people, at least white ones, seem to agree that this is one of the most endearing movies of all time. The American Film Institute ranks it the ninth "Most Inspiring Film" ever. (Edged out by Reservoir Dogs at number eight, I'm sure.) I guess that all depends on what it's actually inspiring. This movie is supposedly a warm gooey chunk of Americana, a Norman Rockwell print set to film, a tear-inducing sap-filled slice of what is supposed to be good and right about this country.

I, however, see right through the manipulative machinations of the filmmakers and see the movie for what it truly is: A paean to homosexuality, socialism and child molestation. Allow me to ruin what might be one of your family's great holiday traditions - watching this subversive piece of evil propaganda that has done more harm to our nation's core ideals than 20 9/11s.

First, we have the homosexuality motif. Let's start with the protagonist - the clean, well-dressed, exceedingly neat, very single, and affluent thirty-something lawyer. That description alone ought to have your Gaydar needle in the red. What is his name? Fred Gailey. Could the screenwriter have been any more blatant in his attempt to assault our subconscious by placing at the lead a moral, upstanding man who just happens to be gay? Why didn't he just call him Fred Cocksmoker or Fred Assplunger? By the end of the movie, we associate the word "Gailey" with goodness, but any good American knows that gay equals bad. Just ask any Fox News anchor.

Note how he and Kris Kringle share a bedroom as well. Surely one of these single men could take the couch, or perhaps the spare bedroom that a high earning lawyer like Mr. Gailey surely has in his cushy Manhattan digs. Instead, they share twin beds just a few feet apart and even share intimate conversation about how Mr. Kringle sleeps with his whiskers out because it helps them grow. Oh, please. Even the most obtuse movie watcher knows that the beard is a codeword for that big Kringle Kock. After that comment, it's fade to black. Or make that fade to "broke-black."

Finally, we have the off-the-chart creepiness of Alfred, the young Macy's mercy hire with the IQ of Mr. Kringle's cane, his omnipresent oak-hard phallic symbol. The casual viewer sees Alfred as a dim-witted broomboy who takes an innocent shine to the charming Mr. Kringle. Ha! What's so innocent about their intimate conversation in a locker room with Alfred massaging his long, stiff broom for a beaming, nearly breathless Mr. Kringle? The entire locker room scene is used only to imply that we just missed mutual male nakedness. Think about it. Would a 19-year-old retarded janitor need a locker room to change clothes to sweep floors at Macy's? Sure ... if he shows up at work in leather chaps and fishnet shirt.

The movie also underhandedly promotes the virtues of socialism while slyly skewering good ol' American capitalism. When retail business titan Mr. Macy realizes that his new Santa's idea of sending shoppers to other stores will in fact help Macy's set record profits, he is made to look greedy and cynical, while the Kringle plan of sharing the wealth is made to look purely altrustic. Who helped pen this screenplay, Karl Fucking Marx? Competition has driven the powerful capitalistic locomotive called America since its inception. If this country followed the Kringlian biblical business model, why, we'd never have known the consumptive glory that is a Saturday morning at Wal-mart.

And note the fact that Kringle's doctor friend can't even afford a basic X-ray machine so that he can help all the brittle-boned old coots at the nursing home where Kringle lives, the message being that in an evil capitalistic society, caring doctors who just want to help people go without the necessary tools to help the masses. But in the socialist world of Kris Kringle, all the necessary medical machines are provided by sharing the wealth, which is what Kringle does in donating his fat, evil business bonus to the cause of the greater good, which means allowing a doctor to confirm for near dead octogenarians that, yes, that hip is actually broken. Again.

And lastly, we come to the film's main aim, the clever promotion of the glories of child molestation. No sick fuck who feels child molesting tendencies can watch this movie and not suffer (or enjoy, I guess) a two-hour hardon. (I hear those accusations, asswipes, and I assure you all that my ability to detect these subversive attacks on the subconscious are in no way evidence that I harbor any kind of desire for children. I'm just a savvy movie-watcher who is always on alert to protect America's innocent subconscious. But you have to admit, you could tell even then that Natalie Wood was going to be one smokin' piece of ass when she grew up.)

Let's start with Mr. Gailey's relationship with little Susie. He befriends her while watching a parade out of his apartment window. I think that clever ploy is found on page three of the How to Seduce Stupid, Innocent Kids into Giving You a Handjob manual. Had Susie's workaholic mom not returned home early that day, I think Miss Wood would have drowned a lot earlier, only in an ocean of something else.

True to the pedophile mindset (hey fucker, I read a lot, that's how I know!), the filmmakers make little Susie into a brazen little tease instead of the innocent precocious brat she is supposed to be. When Gailey remarks about the baseball player float in the parade, Susie, in a very un-little girl like voice, looks Gailey smack in his lustful eyes and coos quite sultrily, "Sometimes people do grow very large, but that's abnormal." The little slut. I imagine this is cumshot scene number one for the molesters watching at home as they imagine little Susie eyeing the inflated float in Mr. Gailey's woolen trousers. And Gailey is a sleazy flirt, too. When he brings up a sample fairy tale to Susie, he chooses Jack and the beanstalk. Nothing phallic about a boy sprouting a giant, alluring stalk, right? Nooo.

Mr. Kringle's illicit advances are even more blatant. Alone in his bedroom, he asks Susie to yank on his beard. Hmmm. Nothing too symbolic there. He also has her teach him to blow a bubble. I'm sure there's nothing untoward about a creepy old man who likes to play Santa Claus being alone in a bedroom with a little girl and asking her to show him how to "blow" something. No, nothing illicit in that scene, no sir. No way that line would help him segway into a quid pro quo-like "Now I'll teach you how to blow something" line. When he sings her a little Kringle jingle, he chooses that "To Market" tune, the one with the line about buying a "fat hog." I'm sure no double entendre was intended there. He also damn near sends a homesick little Dutch girl into her first orgasm when he speaks her language while she sits on his bouncing knee. The enrollment in Dutch language classes probably spikes every holiday season as scheming molesters see yet another slimy tack they can take to diddle doltish Dutch adoptees.

No, this movie isn't the uplifting slice of the good ol' days it pretends to be. It's subversive, sleazy and sick. Instead of wasting two hours this Thanksgiving being brainwashed by this overrated Hollywood dreck, search out another, more innocent holiday classic, such as It's a Wonderful Life. You know, the one where George Bailey steals his friend's girl, calls his kid's teacher a fat cow, berates his children, destroys his living room in self-pitying temper tantrum, shuns his family on Christmas Eve so that he can get plastered in a whore-filled bar, mismanages a family business, makes high risk home loans to personal friends, calls his addled uncle a silly fat cow, ungentlemanly refuses to give a naked girl her robe back, doesn't report a fuckup of a pharmacist who damn near kills a kid because he can no longer fill simple prescriptions and pays good money for office blowjobs by the town slut. Now that's an accurate slice of Americana.

Happy fucking holidays.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.