We Have An Obligation To Demobilize Hatred

by Eric Elkin

“So then, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it isn’t an obligation to ourselves to live our lives on the basis of selfishness.”

— Romans 8:12

Frank Capra, where are you when we need you most? Capra's films defined American ideals throughout the 1940s and '50s. Perhaps the only actual contact we have with him now is at Christmas time. He directed the Jimmy Stewart classic, It's A Wonderful Life. Although my children did watch one of his other masterpieces, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, in a high school government class.

Born in a little village outside Palermo, Italy, Capra was the youngest of seven children. His father was a fruit grower who decided to move his family to America when Frank was only 5 years old. The family made the 13-day journey in the steerage compartment of a steamship, a trip Capra would call one of his worst experiences.

Everything about that trip changed when the steamship entered the New York Harbor. Frank Capra remembered the first time he saw the Statue of Liberty. He referred to her as "the great lady…holding a torch." His father shouted to him, "Ciccio, look! Look at that! That's the greatest light since the star of Bethlehem! That's the light of freedom! Remember that." If you ever watched a Frank Capra movie, you will know he never forgot the light of freedom.

“I want to put into your heads that the world is not all evil. Yes, we do have nightmares, but we also have dreams. We do have villainy, but we also have great compassion among ourselves. That’s all I’m here for, really, to try to tell you that there’s good in the world. And that it’s wonderful.”

— Frank Capra

Film critics eventually labeled his movies as feel-good entertainment. Some thought he created a vision of America that didn't really exist. Yet, I think we need his kind of reminder to offset cynicism and despair. People born in America need an immigrant's view of Lady Liberty.

While It's A Wonderful Life remains one of the most popular Christmas movies, so does Die Hard. Die Hard is a movie where terrorists slaughter innocent people at a corporate Christmas party. One New York cop (a good guy with a gun) saves the day by killing the terrorists (bad guys with guns). In the end, a building is blown up, and everyone is happy. Merry Christmas, America.

In his autobiography, The Name Above the Title, Frank Capra wrote this reflection on his own work:

"mankind needed dramatizations of the truth that man is essentially good, a living atom of divinity; that compassion for others, friend or foe, is the noblest of all virtues. Films must be made to say these things, to counteract the violence and the meanness, to buy time to demobilize the hatreds."

Frank Capra was not a saint. He had views of human sexuality that promoted the hatred and violence he sought to eliminate. We as modern critics should use his words to silence his unjust anger and hatred. Like his movies, we need to take the ideals he promoted and apply them to all people without division.

Capra's approach to film appears to be ripped right out of Paul's Letter to the Romans. I can hear his frame of mind in these words, "we have an obligation, but it isn't an obligation to ourselves to live our lives on the basis of selfishness." We, as people of faith and as American citizens, have an obligation to "demobilize hatred" so all can pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Click to read Romans 8: 12-25