Carleton University Musicologist Attacks 'It's A Wonderful Life' As Racist

Carleton University Musicologist James Deaville attacked the Christmas classic, It’s A Wonderful Life, as racist.

Deaville griped about the film in an article on The Conversation writing, “Some depictions of music and sound beg analysis around how these reflect racist ideas about ‘proper’ musical, social and community norms.

Later in the article he charges:

“A key concerning aspect to the music heard in It’s a Wonderful Life revolves around the portrayal of Black musical forms and practitioners.

Capra’s known racism against Blacks, consistent with racist discourses and practices of the era, is reflected in how jazz and other Black musical forms appear and are framed.

In the iconic Bedford falls dance, the band plays three songs, including African American pianist and composer Johnson’s “Charleston,” which is performed by a white band.

As American journalism professor Sam Freedman notes in a podcast on whiteness and racism in America, the town features predominantly white citizens apart from a stereotypical depiction of a Black housekeeper in the Bailey family.

Deaville also points to the use of jazz music when the film depicts the moral degradation of Bedford Falls when it is turned into Pottersville, “While negatively portraying jazz practised by Black artists, the film simultaneously draws upon and appropriates Black musical forms as necessary and key to popular American life but in a white-controlled version.”

He reiterated many of these points in comments to the New York Post telling the outlet, “Listen and pay attention to the sounds of the movie and that’s where the racism lies, in the music.”

He explained, “The music in Pottersville is boogie woogie and jazz, a Black type of sound, but when the town is called Bedford Falls, the song George and his wife Mary sing to each other is ‘Buffalo Gals,’ a white traditional standard.”

Additionally, The Post’s Jeanne Erickson added that Deaville “also griped that Bedford Falls is populated by mostly whites ‘apart from a Black housekeeper,’ and slammed Frank Capra, the film’s producer and director, as a racist.”

Deaville’s criticisms are just another example of tiresome woke academic iconoclasm. It exemplifies the corrosive spirit of liberalism’s endgame: a relentless deconstruction of cultural treasures that dares to smear a timeless ode to community, sacrifice, and transcendent order as a vessel for “bigoted ideas” about music and race.

NEXT: Zoe Saldaña Explains Why Her 'Avatar' Character Is A Racist