Alternative scenarios have always exercised a particularly strong grip on the modern imagination; countless of books and novels have outlined counterfactual versions of almost any crucial event in history. Past events generally emit an aura of inevitability, that these events were destined to unfold the way they did; alternative versions remind us that events are often the outcome of arbitrary, contingent circumstances ― for example, a moment’s sudden impulse whose consequences we live with, perhaps suffer from, for years afterwards. The alternative reality genre testifies to something crucial about the nature of fiction, perhaps the very reason why we have fiction at all. Fiction enables us to imagine the “what if” route, the path that never came into existence, but whose haunting irreality evokes the tantalizing spectacle of a radically different world. 

One of the most well-known alternative reality films is Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” (released in 1946), which tells the story of George Bailey, a hard-working resident in the American small-town Bedford Falls. All his life, George has dreamt about leaving Bedford, yet somehow always failed to get beyond the outskirts of the town. When he is about to travel to Europe, his father dies and George is asked to take over the family business, a small bank. Later, George’s dreams of going to college collapse when his younger brother, who was supposed to take over the bank business, accepts another job. And his honeymoon coincides with a bank run that heralds the beginning of the Great Depression. On every occasion, something gets in the way. While seeing his friends find successful careers elsewhere, George stays put in Bedford, loyally running his father’s small loan business which barely makes ends meet.

The Bailey bank specializes in offering cheap loans that enable working class people to build decent homes, much to the annoyance of the Scrooge-figure Mr. Potter, who owns Bedford’s other loan business. Mr. Potter has little patience with the aspirations of working class people; the more profit he can make on his loans, regardless how, the better. Capra’s film thus stages American small-town values of community solidarity pitted against the ethos of ruthless capitalism. When an employee accidentally loses a sum of money, large enough to threaten the existence of the Bailey bank, George finally comes to the end of his rope. Drunk, disillusioned, and disgraced, George decides to take his own life on a cold Christmas Eve.

This is where we meet the angel Clarence who has been sent down from heaven to save George. Clarence shows him an alternative reality ― Bedford as it would have been had George never existed. George witnesses a grim version of a town utterly transformed; the cozy communal atmosphere that characterized Bedford has been replaced by a raw, violent mood, while the small street shops have changed into nightclubs, casinos, and bars. People, whom George knows so well, act cold and hostile; some have become alcoholics, others morally debauched. Even the town’s name, Bedford, has changed ― to Pottersville, now entirely owned by the unscrupulous businessman Mr. Potter. This is a town in which bars serve strong, cheap alcohol for discontent working class men “who want to get drunk fast.” Horrified by this alternative scenario, George begs to be sent back to his old world again. His wish is granted, and the film ends happily with the whole community of Bedford gathering to show support and gratitude to George and the Bailey bank.

At the heart of Capra’s film we find a moralistic lesson about the significance of an individual’s life; while George has come to a point in life at which he feels that none of his efforts in Bedford have had much of an impact, the alternative version shows just what difference George has actually made. It is also here we find the ideological core of the film. For whereas the counterfactual version evidently proves to George that all the choices he made ― to give up college, stay in Bedford, take over his father’s measly business, and fight against Mr. Potter’s business empire ― were ultimately the right ones, since the alternative turns out to be absolutely abject, there is a sense in which the film simultaneously indicates the lack of any real alternatives. While George is presented as a unique individual without whom the entire town would have degenerated into corruption, hostility, and resentment, the film fails to think beyond two extreme scenarios ― “Bedford,” an idyllicized, nostalgic American small-town, and “Pottersville,” a modern, alienated city drained of communal values. By ideologically limiting the range of possible scenarios to either Bedford or Pottersville, the film in reality presents us with no choice, no alternative, at all.

When “It’s a Wonderful Life” premiered in 1946, it was met with negative criticism. Some critics found it too sentimental, others unrealistic and contrived. Only much later was it recognized as one of cinema’s great works. In 2006, it was nominated the most inspirational film of all time in a poll conducted by the American Film Institute. What happened in the intervening years? One reason why the film’s popularity has increased over the years is perhaps that the world has gradually come to resemble Pottersville ― the nightmare capitalist metropolis of alienation and resentment from which George so desperately attempts to wake ― a little too much. In 1946, Bedford may already have looked a tad anachronistic, yet still familiar, whereas Pottersville surely would have appeared outlandish, a ghoulish apparition of an unwanted future trajectory. No such thing could be said about Pottersville’s big business capitalist scenario today; which, on the other hand, explains why we find so much inspiration in this nostalgic, schmaltzy story of Bedford, a small-town which from our perspective looks very much like an exotic spectacle from a bygone world. Once articulated, counterfactual stories take on a life of their own; Pottersville may have been a counterfactual story for someone like George, but the counterfactual story in Capra’s film for a contemporary audience is Bedford. Ironically, for a contemporary audience the range of possible scenarios still seems limited to either Bedford or Pottersville. 

By Eli Park Sorensen

Eli Park Sorensen is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He specializes in comparative literature, postcolonial thought and cultural studies. ― Ed.