Samantha Vice
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195320398
- eISBN:
- 9780199869534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320398.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, General
This paper explores the nature of ideals and their role in living a moral life, through a reading of Frank Capra’s 1941 film, Meet John Doe. The film deals particularly subtly both with the moral ...
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This paper explores the nature of ideals and their role in living a moral life, through a reading of Frank Capra’s 1941 film, Meet John Doe. The film deals particularly subtly both with the moral benefits of ideals and their potential dangers. It shows how we can be attracted to and motivated by an ideal through the physical presence of a particular admirable person, but it also shows the moral dangers of confusing the person who embodies ideals for us with those ideals themselves. I argue, further, that Meet John Doe is more than an illustration of the claims made about ideals. Rather, the film enacts the relation to ideals that we have in the non-fictional world and is for this reason of philosophical interest.Less
This paper explores the nature of ideals and their role in living a moral life, through a reading of Frank Capra’s 1941 film, Meet John Doe. The film deals particularly subtly both with the moral benefits of ideals and their potential dangers. It shows how we can be attracted to and motivated by an ideal through the physical presence of a particular admirable person, but it also shows the moral dangers of confusing the person who embodies ideals for us with those ideals themselves. I argue, further, that Meet John Doe is more than an illustration of the claims made about ideals. Rather, the film enacts the relation to ideals that we have in the non-fictional world and is for this reason of philosophical interest.
Jeffrey Knapp
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190634063
- eISBN:
- 9780190634094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190634063.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
“Masses is a herd term—unacceptable, insulting, degrading,” the film director Frank Capra once proclaimed, yet his 1941 Meet John Doe seems to tell a different story about the masses and the ...
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“Masses is a herd term—unacceptable, insulting, degrading,” the film director Frank Capra once proclaimed, yet his 1941 Meet John Doe seems to tell a different story about the masses and the entertainments they consume. In that film, the fascist owner of a media conglomerate promotes a folksy character named John Doe whose vague and sentimental platitudes win him an immense popularity, which the media titan hopes to exploit in order to propel himself into the presidency. Yet the seemingly witless man who masquerades as Doe ends up getting inspired by the part he plays, and Capra similarly transforms Doe’s career into an implicit argument that his own “Capra-corn” is inherently on the side both of democracy and of the individual.Less
“Masses is a herd term—unacceptable, insulting, degrading,” the film director Frank Capra once proclaimed, yet his 1941 Meet John Doe seems to tell a different story about the masses and the entertainments they consume. In that film, the fascist owner of a media conglomerate promotes a folksy character named John Doe whose vague and sentimental platitudes win him an immense popularity, which the media titan hopes to exploit in order to propel himself into the presidency. Yet the seemingly witless man who masquerades as Doe ends up getting inspired by the part he plays, and Capra similarly transforms Doe’s career into an implicit argument that his own “Capra-corn” is inherently on the side both of democracy and of the individual.
McBride Joseph
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604738384
- eISBN:
- 9781604738391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604738384.003.0015
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter, which focuses on Capra’s career after severing ties with Columbia in October 1939, describes the making of the films Meet John Doe and Arsenic and Old Lace. On December 12, 1941, five ...
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This chapter, which focuses on Capra’s career after severing ties with Columbia in October 1939, describes the making of the films Meet John Doe and Arsenic and Old Lace. On December 12, 1941, five days after Pearl Harbor, Capra agreed to join the Signal Corps with a major’s commission. According to Capra, joining the army not only enabled him to avoid signing “enslaving” Hollywood deals, it also “gave one a superior aura of patriotism and self-sacrifice.”Less
This chapter, which focuses on Capra’s career after severing ties with Columbia in October 1939, describes the making of the films Meet John Doe and Arsenic and Old Lace. On December 12, 1941, five days after Pearl Harbor, Capra agreed to join the Signal Corps with a major’s commission. According to Capra, joining the army not only enabled him to avoid signing “enslaving” Hollywood deals, it also “gave one a superior aura of patriotism and self-sacrifice.”
Joseph McBride
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604738384
- eISBN:
- 9781604738391
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604738384.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra’s life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the ...
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Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra’s life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs! But as the author reveals in this biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. Using newly declassified U.S. government documents about Capra’s response to being considered a possible “subversive” during the post-World War II Red Scare, the author adds a final chapter to his portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.Less
Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra’s life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs! But as the author reveals in this biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. Using newly declassified U.S. government documents about Capra’s response to being considered a possible “subversive” during the post-World War II Red Scare, the author adds a final chapter to his portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.
James Chandler
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226034959
- eISBN:
- 9780226035000
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226035000.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter looks at how Mr. Deeds Goes to Town remakes Platinum Blonde, to decisive effect for the account of Capra's sense of his medium, and at how Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in turn remakes ...
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This chapter looks at how Mr. Deeds Goes to Town remakes Platinum Blonde, to decisive effect for the account of Capra's sense of his medium, and at how Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in turn remakes Mr. Deeds, with an unprecedented focus on the issue of “film power” and his own wielding of it. It analyzes how Capra's relation to the film medium in these films and Meet John Doe is astutely registered in Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941). It concludes by examining the multiply recursive aspects of It's a Wonderful Life.Less
This chapter looks at how Mr. Deeds Goes to Town remakes Platinum Blonde, to decisive effect for the account of Capra's sense of his medium, and at how Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in turn remakes Mr. Deeds, with an unprecedented focus on the issue of “film power” and his own wielding of it. It analyzes how Capra's relation to the film medium in these films and Meet John Doe is astutely registered in Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941). It concludes by examining the multiply recursive aspects of It's a Wonderful Life.
Holly Allen
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453571
- eISBN:
- 9780801455841
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453571.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter examines how woman blaming and nation saving came to be intertwined with the rhetoric of emergency relief during the Great Depression. The intersection of gender, race, and politics in ...
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This chapter examines how woman blaming and nation saving came to be intertwined with the rhetoric of emergency relief during the Great Depression. The intersection of gender, race, and politics in the 1930s resulted in official and popular practices of woman blaming. Just as the forgotten man functioned as a nationally central figure for white breadwinning manhood, the shrewish wife and the job-stealing woman worker were figures of disorderly white womanhood. This chapter considers the interrelationships among woman-blaming narratives, the broader public climate of hostility toward women, and the distinctly punitive features of federal relief policy in the Depression. It asks why punishing women was so cathartic in the 1930s and how that catharsis was harnessed to the nation-building project of the emergent welfare state. It also discusses the Works Progress Administration's reliance on a gendered politics of exclusion to mark its difference from earlier relief experiments. The chapter concludes by offering one final, late Depression scene of woman spanking, one that takes place in Frank Capra's 1941 film Meet John Doe.Less
This chapter examines how woman blaming and nation saving came to be intertwined with the rhetoric of emergency relief during the Great Depression. The intersection of gender, race, and politics in the 1930s resulted in official and popular practices of woman blaming. Just as the forgotten man functioned as a nationally central figure for white breadwinning manhood, the shrewish wife and the job-stealing woman worker were figures of disorderly white womanhood. This chapter considers the interrelationships among woman-blaming narratives, the broader public climate of hostility toward women, and the distinctly punitive features of federal relief policy in the Depression. It asks why punishing women was so cathartic in the 1930s and how that catharsis was harnessed to the nation-building project of the emergent welfare state. It also discusses the Works Progress Administration's reliance on a gendered politics of exclusion to mark its difference from earlier relief experiments. The chapter concludes by offering one final, late Depression scene of woman spanking, one that takes place in Frank Capra's 1941 film Meet John Doe.
