The author is a research associate in the Raoul-Dandurand Chair, where his work focuses on the study and analysis of American politics.
For many, the holidays rhyme with Christmas movies. The same feature films come back year after year and everyone has their favorite.
One of those films, perhaps less obvious than The tree has balls, would instead be more relevant to the time. This is Frank Capra’s classic It’s a wonderful life (Life is Beautiful in French version), published in 1946.
In what forms the core of the story, the protagonist, George Bailey, claims, after experiencing a series of profound misfortunes, that he wished he had never been born. A life of setbacks reminiscent, in some ways, of President Joe Biden, who buried his first wife and first daughter after a car accident, and more recently one of his sons, who died of brain cancer .
In reaction to Bailey’s attitude, a benevolent angel shows him a glimpse of what his community would be like if it weren’t of this world. The local pharmacist is believed to be in jail for manslaughter because George was not present to stop him from accidentally poisoning a prescribed drug. His uncle would have been institutionalized in order not to be able to count on George’s help in the family business. His brother Harry, whom George saved from drowning as a child, is believed to have died, as were Harry’s brothers-in-arms, who in turn saved them during WWII. And George’s wife, Mary, would be single.
The film is undeniably showing its age – the special effects to portray George’s angel are a far cry from Marvel productions – but its heart is timeless. “No man who has friends is a failure,” the protagonist finally understands.
This is perfectly contemporary thinking. The economist Bryce Ward touched, in the pages of Washington Post last month, the portrait of a society increasingly characterized by a sense of loneliness.
Of course, when it comes to loneliness, confinements related to COVID-19 are automatically reported. The impact on youth in the US of extended school closures, in particular, was already discussed here two years ago. I had called this situation the “American tragedy of 2020”.
The effects of the pandemic on the elderly, already evident in 2020, are starting to be better documented: the New York Times recently reported a more than 50% increase in opioid-related deaths among Americans aged 65 and older as a result of the imposition of pandemic restrictions – lives lost often described as “deaths of despair.”
However, as Ward points out, the reality is far more complex.
The marked decline in Americans’ social connections actually dates back long before the pandemic, the economist noted. 10 years ago, people spent about the same amount of time a week with friends as they did in the 60s or 70s. Then, in the early 2010s, it started to wane.
Across the population, time spent with friends is estimated to have decreased by 40% between 2014 and 2019, the year before the first pandemic-related restrictions. The average American teenager now spends about 11 fewer hours a week with friends than they did 10 years earlier. It’s huge.
And it’s all due, according to Ward, to a multitude of factors — he points to one in particular: 2014 was the year in which the smartphone exceeded 50% penetration in American homes…
Taking the subway in Washington, as I was able to do just before the midterm elections in November, is to see cars following one another in which more than 80% of the passengers are glued to their electronic devices. Hardly anyone talks to each other. Hardly anyone looks.
Discerning readers will notice that the phenomenon is not all that new. It was not what, in other words, political scientist Robert Putnam argued at the turn of the century in his classic Bowling alone ? In his view, if Americans had abandoned the community life that had defined their collective existence since the early colonies, it was in large part due to the rise of television…
The problem is starting to resonate in Washington. About ten days before Christmas, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy published an article on American loneliness. His very first possible solution? Focusing on the giants of the web to push them to offer “products that give happiness, rather than anxiety and loneliness”.
The United States is the first world power not only by virtue of its military strength, but by virtue of its power of influence. The latter can be observed both in the field of culture… and technology.
This eternal land of contradictions has served to commercialize and popularize the tools that promise to connect us while in fact further isolate us; at the same time, he also gave us the great cinema classics that remind us, at least once a year, of the importance of our loved ones.
And, as George Bailey learns, our importance, even when we may doubt it, to our loved ones.
