All hail Pottersville! (Trump is now haunting me from Christmas past)
So I always have gotten big laughs from this 17-year old comedic essay. I hadn't read it in a number of years, and now that I revisit it, who makes an appearance but the GD orange menace. He's ruining everything for me. You have to click through for the refence to idiot boy. Still funny though:
"All hail Pottersville!
The "bad" town in "It's a Wonderful Life" jumps and jives 24/7 with hot bars and cool chicks -- while "wholesome" Bedford Falls is a claustrophobic snooze.
In Capra's Tale of Two Cities, Pottersville is the Bad Place. It's the demonic foil to Bedford Falls, the sweet, Norman Rockwell-like town in which George grows up. Named after the evil Mr. Potter, Pottersville is the setting for George's brief, nightmarish trip through a world in which he never existed. In that alternative universe, Potter has triumphed, and we are intended to shudder in horror at the sinful city he has spawned -- a kind of combo pack of Sodom, Gomorrah, Times Square in 1972, Tokyo's hostess district, San Francisco's Barbary Coast ca. 1884 and one of those demon-infested burgs dimly visible in the background of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
There's just one problem: Pottersville rocks!
Pottersville makes its brief but memorable appearance during that tumultuous scene when George, who has just been bounced from Nick's Bar and is beginning to seriously freak out, rushes down the main street. A large neon sign -- the first of many -- announces "Pottersville." As sirens sound in the distance and a big band wails jazz, George staggers on, into an unfamiliar nightlife district that has replaced the town he knew. In a rapid montage, we see a neon bar sign saying "Blue Moon." Another announces "Fights." Yet another blares "Midnight Club -- Dancing." There's a pool and billiards joint and a pawnbroker shop. A large marquee announces "Girls Girls Girls -- 20 gorgeous girls -- 3 acts." The "Indian Club" gaudily sports a kitschy neon sign depicting the face of a brave. The "Bamboo Room" promises a more Oriental setting. As the disbelieving George stares at the teeming entrance of the "Dime a Dance" joint ("Welcome jitterbuggers"
, a scuffle breaks out -- some floozy is resisting being thrown into the paddy wagon. "I know every big shot in this town!" she shrieks as the gendarmes manhandle her. In horror, George recognizes the floozy -- it's Violet, the town flirt from his previous existence, now apparently turned full-fledged professional. After his protests almost land him in the pokey too, he stumbles off in shock and grabs a taxi.
(snip)
I have made, I believe, a definitive case that Pottersville has gotten a bad rap and that Bedford Falls is grossly overrated. But if there are any who are still unconvinced, I would just like to remind them of one little detail: in the real world, Potter won.
We all live in Pottersville now. Bedford Falls is gone. The plucky little Savings and Loan closed down years ago, just like in George's nightmare. Cleaned up, his evil eyebrows removed, armed with a good PR firm, Mr. Potter goes merrily about his business, "consolidating" the George Baileys of the world. To cling to dreams of a bucolic America where the little guy defeats the forces of Big Business and the policeman and the taxi driver and the druggist and the banker all sing Auld Lang Syne together is just to ask for heartbreak and confusion when you turn off the TV and open your front door."
https://www.salon.com/2001/12/22/pottersville/
= new reply since forum marked as read
