Jingle All the Way
Terminator: Rage Against the Machine
Directed by Brian Levant
United States, 1996
Charles Dickens has an awful lot to answer for. Maybe he didn’t really invent the orgy of rampant consumerism we know as Christmas, but he certainly boosted it such that it became the biggest festival of the year. Dickens also wrote a book that spawned that prolific film genre: the one where the egotistical workaholic sets out, consciously or not, to ruin Christmas but just in the nick of time learns about the importance of family values etc. and saves the joyous day.
We are of course talking about Ebenezer Scrooge and A Christmas Carol. Dickens wrote a Christmas story every year for quite a while (he needed the cash), but none of them ever came close to A Christmas Carol. It didn’t take long before the book made its way onto the silver screen, with the silent Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost in 1901. Since then we have had Bill Murray in Scrooged, and that classic The Muppet Christmas Carol. And of course the variants: Nicolas Cage as The Family Man and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way.
Apparently, Jingle All the Way was inspired by the annual rush to get hold of the latest hot toy and the film’s producer, Chris Columbus, references his own odyssey to find a Buzz Lightyear action figure for his son – Toy Story been released just the year before.
So we have Schwarzenegger playing Howard Langston, an everyman (yeah right!) mattress salesman so consumed by his work that he neglects his wife, Liz (Rita Wilson), and six-year-old son, Jamie (Jake Lloyd). This year’s craze is the Buzz-lookalike Turbo Man, complete with jet pack, boomerang (!) and catchphrase… “It’s turbo time!!”. Of course, batteries are not included.
After missing Jamie’s karate competition and a string of other disappointments Howard promises that he will get him the toy for Christmas, only belatedly realising that it is in fact Christmas Eve and Turbo Man has already sold out. All that’s left on the shelves are Turbo Man’s accessories and a sidekick that nobody wants.
Let the hunt commence… but of course, Harold/Arnold has to have some competition, so he’s joined in the race by an alcoholic postman called Myron, played by an actor going by the name of Sinbad.
Schmaltzy, yes… formulaic, yes… and yet Jingle All the Way turned out to be a really enjoyable watch. It made us all laugh at ReidsonFilm and watching it made us feel, as Perry Como sang, that: ‘It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas’. Schwarzenegger can do comedy. His robotic acting technique and heavily-accented use of American slang combine to confuse you: is he actually in on the joke or not? And as we know he can deliver a great one liner.
Of course, the film can be read as a satire or even an exposé of the dark side of the apotheosis of capitalism that is Christmas. In one of many entertaining riffs Myron nails it:
You got these big fat cats sit there using working class just like me and you. They spend billions of dollars on TV advertisement, and then they sit there and use subliminal messages to suck your children's minds out! I know what I'm talking about 'cause I went to junior college for a semester and I studied psychology so I'm right in there. I know what's going on.
Not only that but he also pokes fun at systematic racism with jokes that you would never see in a family film these days.
Don't hit me. I got sickle cell. Don't hit me.
Myron is one of the few likable characters in the film. Contrast him with Jaimie, Howard’s bratty son, sitting in a bedroom that looks like a Toys “R” Us store, so spoiled that it’s no surprise he went onto become Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. And you know what happened to him! We also get a suitably unctuous performance by Phil Hartman, as Howard’s ‘perfect’ neighbour and father, Ted, who has his eyes, and his hands, set on Howard’s wife.
Of course, you know where this is all heading. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger: what is he, with his hyper-muscular body, if not an action figure himself. At one point, Ted quips - almost winking at the camera:
You can’t deadlift your way out of this one Howard
A happy ending for Howard perhaps, but not so for Myron who ends up under arrest on Christmas Eve. I doubt he’ll be giving his little boy that toy on Christmas morning. The paradox of course is that it’s Harold who is the real criminal running amok in the Twin Cities. The charge list is lengthy: assaulting assorted old women and children, destruction of a kids’ play zone in the shopping mall, breaking into his neighbour’s house to steal his Turbo Man and setting the place on fire, impersonating a police officer, and…punching a reindeer in the face and fuelling it with alcohol. But Myron is the one that ends up in handcuffs!
If it’s slapstick humour you’re after there is plenty of that on display, including a diversion to a corrupt Christmas factory. Headed up by James Belushi we witness an array of fake Santas putting together counterfeit goods. The sequence has little relevance to the plot but somehow it works. Then the climax of the film takes amid the great Wintertainment Parade through the city. The funny thing is that although it’s Christmas Eve in Minnesota nobody looks cold. That’s because the parade was actually filmed in Universal Studios, California. Three weeks to shoot, 1200 extras and a roasting 102°F. That’s showbusiness.
And like any good capitalist product Jingle All the Way knows how to incorporate its critique and at the same time use that critique as another branding device – see our take on Barbenheimer. 200,000 Turbo Man dolls were made at £20 each... now selling for £200 on Ebay.
The most deeply psychoanalytic film of this season - C
But what would a ReidsonFilm Christmas review be without a slide down into a Lacanian rabbithole:
Jacques Lacan: Jingle All the Way is a fantasy, an almost complete re-enactment of my psychoanalytical structure. Without the action figure Howard is literally sexually disarmed and vulnerable to the threat of the man who does have Turbo Man safely under his Christmas tree. In order to identify with the father figure, Arnold has to acquire the lost object but here, not only does he acquire the object but he becomes it, achieving transcendence.
CG Jung: But that is clearly nonsense. Howard is clearly desperately trying to project his Persona – the heroic side of himself, but he is in conflict with his shadow archetype, here enacted by Myron/Sinbad. The only possible resolution would be an integration which never ever happens.
Arnold: Come on guys, what is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!
We are nearing the end of 2023, our first year of ReidsonFilm. If you want to know more about how we ended up here you can find out by clicking this button:
Now with the afternoons still dark and not a snowflake in sight (at least if you are in the UK) - sitting on a sofa strewn with Quality Street wrappers and stained with mulled wine we thought we would treat you to some of our cultural highlights of the last year. So here goes:
Callum:
Welcome to Night Vale (podcast); The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century, Olga Ravn(book); New Blue Sun, Andre 3000 (album); Upstream Color (film), Baldur’s Gate 3 (video game); and of course, Exploding Cinema (live show)
Theo:
Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theatre (theatre); Feynman, Jim Ottaviani (book); Aphex Twin at Victoria Park (live music); Succession (TV); Inland Empire (Film); Space Heavy, King Krule (album)
Nathan:
Hollow, Brian Catling (book); The Curse (TV); Again, Oneohtrix Point Never (album); Godzilla Minus One (film); Cool Protrusions, Oneohtrix Point Never (podcast/radio); Aphex Twin at Forwards Bristol (live music)
Steven:
Tár (film), Leopoldstat on Broadway (theatre); The Bear (TV); Again, Oneohtrix Point Never (album); Joy Crookes at Hackney Church (live music); The Shadow King, Maaza Mengiste (book); Empire, Anita Anand & William Dalrymple (podcast)
Jo (an occasional reviewer):
Standing at the Sky’s Edge at the National Theatre (theatre); The Bear (TV); Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (book) Million Dollar Lover (podcast)