{"id":183188,"date":"2019-02-04T08:07:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T08:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=183188"},"modified":"2019-02-08T06:50:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T06:50:46","slug":"james-perloff-on-the-extraordinary-censorship-of-its-a-wonderful-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=183188","title":{"rendered":"James Perloff on The Extraordinary Censorship of \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\">\n<h1>YouTube \u2013 Jan 30, 2019<\/h1>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Xmi2XVufAEE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1>The Extraordinary Censorship of Its a Wonderful Life\u201d<\/h1>\n<h2>James Perloff \u2013 jamesperloff.com Jan 2, 2019<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Although the holiday season is behind us, I believe there are some remarks long overdue concerning the suppression of <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em>, arguably America\u2019s most beloved Christmas film of all time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">I first became aware of the movie nearly half a century ago when I was around 20. A local station happened to air it, in no connection with Christmas. <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life <\/em>was, at that time, just another piece of forgotten cinema, not regarded as \u201ca holiday classic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Yet even though I was a jaded agnostic youth, I found myself weeping uncontrollably as the life of Jimmy Stewart\u2019s character fell apart. And I was a person who almost never cried at the movies. But there was something so endearing about George Bailey, it transcended the emotional barriers of all but the most hardened cynic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">When the movie was over, I knew I had experienced something special, several cuts above \u201cstandard Hollywood fare.\u201d For me, the breaking point was when George began kicking and smashing things in full view of his children. It was a display of vulnerability that just wasn\u2019t seen in Hollywood, where heroes were perennial tough guys with none of the everyday human \u201cchinks in the armor\u201d that the rest of us have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Late in his life, Hollywood paid tribute to Stewart at a special dinner. I\u2019ve been unable to find a video of that televised event, so please pardon me for going on memory here. Dustin Hoffman actually broke down and wept as he recalled Stewart\u2019s performance in <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful life<\/em>. But the remarks by actor Telly Savalas etched themselves most in my memory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Savalas had largely grown up as a streetwise New Yorker (a background that would later serve him well when he took on his most famous role, that of Lieutenant Theo <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0069599\/\">Kojak<\/a><\/strong><\/span>). According to Savalas, he and his buddies entered the theater showing <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em> in their accustomed manner\u2014sneaking in the side exit without paying. However, the film\u2019s impact was so great, that when it finished they all sheepishly went to the ticket window and paid for their admission. <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em> had a way of bringing out personal integrity, and personal integrity is something you just don\u2019t mess with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">By the 1980s it seemed like everyone had discovered the film. During the Christmas season, it would air hundreds of times on local television stations. I took my father and sister to see it on the big screen at the famed Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Mass.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Then, disaster struck. After legal battles over controversial copyright issues, NBC acquired control of the film in 1994. Since then, NBC has twisted the screws tight. Not only is no one else permitted to televise the film, but NBC usually only screens it once a year\u2014on Christmas Eve, riddled with so many commercials that people are discouraged from watching. As the film reaches its climax, ads are inserted with increasing frequency, disrupting the movie\u2019s emotional flow. It got so bad that one year my son turned off NBC and inserted an old VHS tape we had of the movie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Some will say that permitting only one annual screening makes the film \u201cmore special.\u201d That\u2019s kind of like saying you should only hug your children once a year because it makes hugs more special.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The unique restrictions on the film do not make sense from a business or marketing perspective. If you have a product that is in high demand\u2014whether it is sneakers, a smartphone, or an energy drink\u2014you produce <em>more <\/em>of them, to meet the demand and increase your profits. Because<em> It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em> is in high demand, NBC could easily increase its advertising revenues by showing it more often, or lease screening rights to other broadcasters. The movie is, in fact, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/AFI%27s_100_Years...100_Cheers\">ranked<\/a><\/strong><\/span> as the number one most inspiring film of all time by the American Film Institute.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">I realize that we live in a multimedia world, and that people still have the option to buy a DVD or download. One could argue that is NBC\u2019s marketing strategy. But to market a product, you need to make it visible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">This past Christmas Eve (2018), I was curious to know what was going on with <em>It\u2019s a<\/em> <em>Wonderful Life<\/em>. I found it was not airing as usual on NBC. Instead, it had been back-doored onto a secondary channel, NBC10, which most people probably didn\u2019t even know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In short, <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life <\/em>is being progressively flushed down an Orwellian memory hole until future generations will hardly even know of the film\u2019s existence. Since no business model can logically explain NBC\u2019s antipathy toward its own intellectual property, we must look elsewhere for an explanation. Anyone familiar with the realities of today\u2019s Hollywood knows that ideological agendas<em>, not box-office profits<\/em>, are the true bottom line.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">I suggest that <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life <\/em>has been suppressed for the following reasons:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"> (1) It contains redeeming values despised by the Luciferian New World Order, such as love, self-sacrifice, traditional family, and the value of human life;<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"> (2) it validates the existence of God, and within a generally Christian framework (heaven, angels, prayer, Christmas caroling); and<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"> (3) the film\u2019s arch-villain is a usurious <em>bankster<\/em> who oppresses and threatens to destroy the culture around him, just like\u00a0today\u2019s banksters are actually doing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Small wonder then that NBC, a mainstream media organ and handmaiden to the oligarchs, is doing its best to send <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em> into oblivion.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>1946: Best Picture? Best Actor?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jamesperloff.com\/2019\/01\/06\/the-extraordinary-censorship-of-its-a-wonderful-life\/\">Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Perloff on why one of Hollywood\u2019s finest movies is being progressively flushed down an Orwellian memory hole<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":183190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,42,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183188"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183192,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183188\/revisions\/183192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/183190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}