Film Analysis Essay on It's a Wonderful Life

Introduction

It's a wonderful life is a 1946 film by Frank Capra that highlights different outcomes of the lives of individuals based on whether they decide to pursue Hedonism or the Objective List theory. George Bailey, the main character in the film, gives up on fulfilling his dreams by choosing to help others first instead. On every occasion, George puts the needs of others first and putting his own on hold. When he was 12, he saved his brother Harry from drowning in a lake full of frozen water and as a result, he becomes deaf in one ear. After completing school, George got a job at Mr. Gower's pharmacy. Mr. Gower's son had succumbed to the flu, and the man was distraught. As a result, he unknowingly added poison to a young child's prescription and George intervenes before the child can take the poison alongside the medicine.

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With dreams of attending college and touring the world in 1928, George attends Harry's graduation party where he is reintroduced to his childhood crush, Mary Hatch. Their walk home together is short-lived when George is informed of the death of his father, Peter. George's plans of touring the world come to a grinding halt as he now has to take care of the family business and safeguard it from Mr. Potter, the wealthiest man in that town. After college, George gets a job from his father-in-law and marries Mary. The couple uses their honeymoon money to keep George's family business solvent due to the bank run they witnessed. George cannot be drafted for service during World War II due to his deafness in one ear. Billy, George's uncle, misplaces $8,000 of the family business money which falls into Potter's hands. When George begs Potter for a loan to avoid going to prison and offers his life insurance as collateral, Potter calls for his arrest. All these failings lead George to want to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. At this point in the film, it cannot be said that George has had a wonderful life.

On the other hand, his brother Harry seems to be fulfilling all of George's dreams and living the life George wishes he could have. He gets enlisted for service and becomes a Navy pilot where he downs a kamikaze plane, which earns him the Medal of Honor. He receives a hero's welcome from the town on the morning of Christmas Eve. His life does to seem to have a downside according to the film, and he can be considered to have a wonderful experience from this perspective.

As the wealthiest man in town, Mr. Potter has control over numerous of its resources and businesses. He can take control of any company he wishes as he even tries the same with George's family business by intending to dissolve it and eliminate it as competition. Potter even tries to buy out George for $20,000 a year as his assistant so that he would not establish Bailey Park. Bailey Park was to enable people to acquire their own homes. The only thing that prevents Mr. Potter from getting everything he wants is people like George who bravely stand up to him. Potter derives satisfaction and pleasure from getting anything he wants. Given how much he can obtain whatever he desires, it can be assumed that by his definition, he has had a wonderful life.

Mr. Potter subscribes to hedonism where the cardinal positive value is placed in things that bring pleasure and a negative value for those that bring unpleasantness. The hedonic value of anything or any activity can be quantified as a sum. A hedonist, therefore, will opt for the option with the most exceptional value. The common understanding of hedonism is the pursuit of sensual pleasures although philosophers who defend it as the correct theory of the great claim that life in the quest of cerebral pleasures has a higher hedonic value than the one in pursuit of sensual pleasures. Hedonism is not a theory of the right, but a theory of the good. When combined with the functional act theory of moral wrongs and rights, any act of hedonism should not be pursued if it brings a small gain to the self with more harm to others. Mr. Potter only made rational decisions that would benefit him, rather than the right decisions while Potter may have claimed to have been happy, his happiness was not the right and kind. His pleasure was dependent on the oppression of his fellow men in the town or taking what other people rightfully owned. As a result, his happiness was tainted by guilt for his lack of virtue and consideration.

One cannot be truly happy if they are fearful of being caught for having done something considered unacceptable. An objection brought against hedonism is its implication that pleasures derived from false beliefs hold the same hedonic value as pleasures derived from genuine feelings. Robert Nozick explains this objection in the "the experience machine" by stating that true happiness and contentment stem from an individual achieving their goals by their own hands as well as enjoying being the kind of person that the experiences build you into (Nozick, p. 44). Any shortcuts taken on the road to fulfillment such as using the experience machine would ultimately lead to one feeling unfulfilled. One would feel like they could have felt more contented had they undertaken the experience themselves and become the person shaped by the experience. Doing activities has been shown to produce more feelings of fulfillment than merely sitting back and taking the exposure. False satisfaction does not lead to true happiness.

Another objection to hedonism is the fact that it does not factor in things that one does not know. In essence, one cannot desire things they do not yet know about nor feel hurt by the same. Parfit gives an example of a sadist and a grass courter. Both are aware of what they are engaging in because it is what makes them happy and satisfied. Given a choice to do all other things, they would still choose to cause pain to others and count grass, respectively (Parfit, p. 295). Mr. Potter may have had his desires accomplished, but he did not have a wonderful life.

George, on the other hand, practiced another theory of the good, referred to as the objective list theory which competes with hedonism. The opinion outlines a list of things which make life all the better, such as acquiring knowledge and acting morally. Conversely, there are items on the list that make life worse such as being oppressed or betrayed and working in an ethically depraved manner. The more the number of things that make life better, the better life is. The objection to this theory and perspective is that an individual might have all items in the list that create a better experience but still be miserable all their life. For example, the individual might not want to lead a virtuous life or recognize the beauty of the world or the people in it and so attaining it does not lead to happiness or satisfaction for them. George led a morally upright life for as long as he could remember.

Conclusion

A response to this objection is brought forward by the intuition expressed by saying "she does not know what is best for her." A person who is of the opinion that the sadist and the grass counter also have no idea what is best for them shares the same intuition. The objective list theory appeals to individuals who might think that the sadist and the grass counter are just being irrational. However, that life might be the best life for them because if they are coerced into another kind of life, then they are bound to be unhappy. Consequently, Parfit suggests that the best life that one can lead is one where one attains the entries in their objective list, and at the same time, those entries are the ones desired by the individual to make them happy. If the things claimed to be good for an individual are the same ones that the same individual wants, then that individual will be happy. It is a plausible tentative solution. At the end of "It's a Wonderful Life," George is shown by Clarence, his guardian angel, just how the world would have been if he had not been born. After seeing just how much the good that he did improve the lives of the townspeople, he felt pure happiness. Even though all his troubles would not go away immediately, with a renewed perspective, George could enjoy life despite the difficulty in it. His joy from helping others could not be watered down by anything the same way that Potter's happiness could be watered down by guilt. Numbing his conscience was the only way Potter could enjoy the pleasures he obtained from oppressing others. In the end, George realized that he did have a wonderful life, only that he did not know how to look at it.

Works Cited

Nozick, Robert. "The experience machine." (2013).

Parfit, Derek. "What makes someone's life go best." Ethical Theory: An Anthology 13 (2012): 294-298.