KKKRISTMAS WITH THE KKKRANKS
Tim Allen's latest 'holiday film' is the perfect way to usher in the Fourth Reich
By Andy Klein
Tim Allen's latest 'holiday film' is the perfect way to usher in the Fourth Reich
If the election wasn't depressing enough, now we have Christmas with the Kranks to contend with - perfect entertainment to inspire the 51 percent. Deck the halls with bows of subservience! Don't you touch that gay apparel! Festoon those corridors with red-state red and bile green!
How offensive is Christmas with the Kranks? Well, some folks may read it as anti-Semitic. Frankly, it's worse than that. And I say that as someone who doesn't have a lot of relatives to crash with in Europe, if you catch my drift.
The film's one great saving grace is its almost utter lack of humor, which blunts any potential it might have to propagandize effectively. I laughed aloud only once, during a gratuitously inserted, but very funny, bit of physical humor involving Botox.
Here's the "comic" premise: Luther and Nora Krank (Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis) live in a well-to-do Chicago suburb. For the first time ever, their only child, twentysomething Blair (Julie Gonzalo), won't be home during Christmas. The idea of celebrating without her is frankly depressing. When Luther realizes that they spend 6,000 bucks and change every year on Christmas-related things, enough for a deluxe Caribbean cruise, he sells Nora on the idea of forgoing all Christmas activity and shipping out.
From their neighbors' reaction, you'd think that the Kranks had publicly embraced Satan and Marx and were planning to hold a rather loud Black Mass on Christmas Eve, complete with the blood sacrifice of local small-business owners. Or maybe just that they were embracing Judaism, since it's not clear that this bunch of overbearing busybodies would be able to make the distinction.
They treat the Kranks like pariahs. They don't merely shun them; they harass them relentlessly. The message is clear: Anyone who doesn't honor Christmas must be an awful, awful person.
"Now, Andy," I can hear you say, "maybe you're missing the point. Maybe this is a satirical criticism of exactly that kind of behavior." And, indeed, the film uses the neighbors' over-the-top behavior as comic fodder. But not nearly as much as Luther's behavior. And, when the plot eventually works itself out, Luther is wrong wrong wrong, and the ram-Christmas-down-his-throat crowd is right. Far right.
The movie does its best to stack the deck by associating Luther's Christmas boycott with genuine Scroogery. "Not buying a tree" becomes "stiffing the Boy Scouts, to whom the tree money goes." Declining (for the first time ever) to make his usual, apparently generous, charitable donations is unspeakably reprehensible. Oh, right: We live in George Bush's America now, where the government has stopped violating our personal lives with its intrusive social-service programs, and voluntary, faith-related donations (like to Christmas charities) are the only social safety net. Why, the Kranks' selfishness is tantamount to them being communists!
But it's not the idea that Luther lacks actual Christian virtues, like charity, that really steams these people. It's how his behavior reflects on them: Traditionally, every house on the block puts an identical Frosty statue atop their roofs, which is why they always win the Best Christmas-Decorated Block in the City award. By not marching in lock step - or Christmas goose step - the Kranks ruin it for everyone.
And what ... what ... about the big party the Kranks have always thrown for the neighbors? What are they all going to do on Christmas Eve without the Kranks' party?
Well, I've got a good suggestion: How about saying thanks to them for doing it all these years and somebody else throwing the party just this once?
It's not even mentioned as a possibility in this film's universe. Actual, you know, Christian behavior is nonexistent here. Which brings us to the pesky subject of Christ.
With one minor lapse, the filmmakers have bent over every which way to reassure us that this is all about secular Christmas, not religious Christmas. Jesus is never mentioned. The decorations are all Santa and Frosty, no crèches. The only carols we hear are secular ones like "Deck the Halls" and "The Twelve Days of Christmas." This is Christmas the season, Christmas the vacation, Christmas the shopping spree.
On some level, that's a good thing. (And, notwithstanding my unmysterious dearth of European relatives, I'm a big fan of secular Christmas. I grew up with Christmas trees, caroling, Santa, and the whole megillah.) It's not like these pushy, fascist bastards are shoving Christ down the throat of a house full of Jews or Muslims, though the story could be read as code for something that can't be stated upfront in the current culture.
But I don't think that's it.
There is only one moment when religion is mentioned, and it's particularly telling. The head of a group of itinerant carolers asks one of the neighbors, "How come that one house has no decorations? Are they Jewish? Or Buddhists or anything?" The implication being that, in those cases, the oddballs would be given a pass. (A complete pass? Wouldn't there be some long-simmering resentment of a Jewish family's reluctance to put Frosty on the roof, since that would still queer the block's chances for that all-important award?)
That moment defines what I think the film is really about: cultural oppressiveness, not explicit religious oppressiveness. The point is: Participate in our rituals ... or else. It never occurs to anyone that perhaps the Kranks could be devout Christians who have grown offended by the commercialization of Christmas ... or who simply want to celebrate quietly, by themselves. Maybe they are - gulp! - atheists! Maybe, unbeknownst to the community, the Kranks are actually having a bad year financially and are hiding the fact: The whole cruise thing is a face-saving cover story, and they're really spending the holidays under a cardboard box in a dark alleyway.
Maybe it's none of the neighbors' fucking business.
Of course, about a third of the way through, wayward daughter announces she is coming home, and she's in love and engaged, and she's bringing along her fiancé, Enrique, who's never spent Christmas in America, and she's told him all about the party, and the tree, and Frosty on the roof ...
... so mom and pop must then frantically try to put together the party, and get a tree, and mount Frosty and all that, without any help from the neighbors, who are mostly all "Nyah, nyah, that'll teach ya." And then ...
... the de facto "leader" of the neighbors, a smug burgher named Frohmeyer (Dan Aykroyd), rallies everyone to help out and save the day. Ma Krank, worn down by the abuse, is relieved to once again belong. Pa Krank becomes more and more isolated, since he still wants to take that trip. When everybody makes toasts, he says thanks but, to Ma's disgust, can't bring himself to utter the two-word loyalty oath that will officially signal his capitulation to the hivemind - "Merry Christmas!" He finally realizes the error of his ways, which is trickily conflated with his being generous and forgiving, but which really represents his permanent abdication of any right to individuality.
The final thrust of the film is: submit; even mild rebellion toward the majority culture is loathsome; you will receive cosmic retribution for your hubris that can only be neutralized by admitting your error and giving yourself over wholly to the group. Oh, yeah, and, by the way, the culture of forced conformity may lead to some excessive reactions, but, when a crisis arrives, when you're under the gun, the same conformity is the only thing that can save you, and it can only be brought to bear through the intervention of the group's natural leader, who has the power to bend people to his will. Heil Frohmeyer!
The name "Krank" should have been a tipoff from the start, suggesting the protagonist is, well, a crank. But it has another, worse, connotation: The word "krank" means "sick" in ... in ... what language was that? Oh, yeah: German.
Well, now I feel better.Published: 11/25/2004
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