'Scrooged' Is the Perfect Documentary For Our Time

This isn’t a story about redemption, it’s an account of exactly how impossible it is to get people with money and power to act like human beings.

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It’s not unique to have cultural objects take on different meanings as you age. This is not a drag, but Catcher in the Rye is simply not the same in the eyes of a 35-year-old versus a 14-year-old. And I’ll never forget rewatching Rent a few years ago with an old friend; when it was over, we stared at the credits rolled and she said, “I get why we liked it in our teens.” Brutal, but true.

That said, the way holiday culture hits with the passage of time is really something special. Absolutely insane to think that there was an era for some of us when Love Actually felt even remotely poignant (Emma Thompson’s single iconic scene aside!), or that we were supposed to find Kevin McCallister’s relationship with pigeon lady sweet in Home Alone 2 (wow, I wonder if pigeon lady is available for a Bird of the Week blog).

Most of the time, these are nothing more than passing reconsiderations, like the less-than-ideal but not fatal feeling of too much eggnog after a heavy meal, or the 45 minutes you spend at the company Christmas party after you have an inkling that it’s time to go. An ugly ornament nestled in the boughs of an evergreen branch or a sour note in an otherwise pleasant carol. Still, they’re worth considering, and I had one such musty revelation recently while rewatching the 1988 adaptation of A Christmas Carol — Scrooged.

It’s a movie I’ve seen many times before and a story I know all too well. But damn is it a bitter pill to swallow in 2024, and not entirely for the reason it intends.

I won’t waste too many words summarizing the plot. If you don’t know the plot of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, please comment simply so I can ask you how that’s possible with the truly countless number of adaptations that have materialized over the years. Anyway, in this particular adaptation, Bill Murray plays “Frank Cross,” which I guess is a modernization of “Ebenezer Scrooge” but I’m just going to call him Scrooge because…god dammit he’s Scrooge.

So, you know, Scrooge is a cold-hearted, highly paid TV executive who has sacrificed any semblance of an actual life to work his way up the corporate ladder, where he now sits, bitter and rich. Then he’s visited by his deceased former boss and the ghosts of past, present, and future. Lots of wild and supernatural events ensue! He wrestles with the choices he’s made! He goes through several stages of grief! He has a change of heart! The story climaxes on live TV and several people benefit! All is well.

(I should note here that Rafi tipped me off to a juicy anecdote from Dennis Perrin’s Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue about how O'Donoghue and co-writer Mitch Glazer hated the final film and thought it was “a piece of unadulterated, unmitigated shit,” in part because of the sappy final scene. Seems like no one liked each other on the set of this movie, which feels apt somehow. I’d also like to note that Mark Twain’s review of the original Christmas Carol was withering: “There is no heart,” he said. “No feeling—it is nothing but glittering frostwork.” Men love to be bitter at each other over this one!)

Perhaps it’s the sign of an addled 2024 brain, but I felt a clear and piercing sense of preoccupation while watching Scrooged this time. There’s a lot to nitpick about characters behaving in wild unrealistic ways and weird pacing et cetera, but my prevailing annoyance was around where I knew we were headed. As I anticipated a redemption arc for this rich, powerful, heartless monster, I became preemptively furious at the movie for trying to get me there emotionally. Why on earth should we feel sorry for the craven husk of a human who reigns ruthlessly over people less powerful than he is just because his generally neglectful dad didn’t give him the Christmas gift he wanted??? Bah fucking humbug.

Luckily, as the movie went on, I started to find amusement in this anger. This is a story about how a high-powered TV exec would have to be LITERALLY HAUNTED to even begin to consider that something is amiss in his life. He has to be visited four, count em, FOUR actual ghosts who often physically assault him before the tides start to turn in his little asshole brain. He has to be shown HIS OWN CASKET. Yes… ha ha ha …. YES.

Things got REALLY interesting in my own little brain when I started to remember the subplot with Bobcat Goldthwait, an employee named Eliot Loudermilk that Scrooge fires for disagreeing with him. Loudermilk goes on a bender and then returns to the office with a shotgun. A disempowered, disenfranchised individual who finds himself so desperate to simply survive in our capitalist hellscape that he resorts to violence against his oppressor? Can’t imagine why that storyline felt resonant in this moment.

It’s worth noting that A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843, and was Dickens’ response to mass industrialization and the crisis of worker welfare he was witnessing (he was apparently partially inspired by a report on child labor conditions). And while he wrote a now-classic story with class consciousness and social reform in mind, the novel was itself a bit of a desperate cash grab. Despite it being a huge hit, Dickens’ own demands for how it was bound and how much it sold for meant that he did not get rich off of it.

I don’t pretend to know his heart, but it seems Dickens largely had good intentions with this work. That said, it’s also important to note that he was actually anti-revolutionary, which tracks for someone who envisions a world in which a man like Ebenezer Scrooge could truly find his soul again after losing it to greed and individualism. It would take forceful hauntings and a very traumatic day, but it could happen, he posits. Even so, I have a hard time believing the author actually bought what he was selling. Not entirely. He’d seen enough of the world, I think, to know that the climactic conversion wouldn’t last.

Toward the end of A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge his grave, Scrooge begs:

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

And later: “I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?”

Is he past all hope? Are our real-life Scrooges? I’m sincerely not interested in making every little thing about The Moment We’re In, but frankly, the moment we’re in calls for a true consideration of what we can reasonably expect from the systems and people that rule the world. We’ve found time and time again, in truly heart-wrenching and horrifying ways, that those with power will not give it up willingly. That change must be forced, and that transformative miracles are a myth. It’s good to be reminded that change must come through force, whether that’s in managing one bad man, or all of them. Gosh, that almost fills me with the holiday spirit!

In all honesty, I’ve historically enjoyed referring to myself as a bit of a Scrooge in that I cannot hide my loathing for certain Christmas traditions and trappings. I think I might move away from that. I’m nothing like Scrooge: I have a heart, a conscience, and an active desire for a better world. Plus, all the ghosts are on my side.