ELFISH, NOT SELFISH

DECEMBER 26, 2020 – My mother never failed to make me laugh when she laughed at the joke about the guy on the bus with carrots sticking out of his ears and who says, “I can’t hear you, I’ve got carrots sticking out of my ears,” when a fellow passenger tells him he has carrots sticking out of his ears.

It’s a joke our five-year-old grand-daughter could understand, and yet, my scholar-mother thought it was the funniest joke ever told.

Accordingly, perhaps our kids will cut me some slack for laughing so hard at the movie Elf, which we watched Christmas night. Of course, I’d seen it half a dozen times over the years, but on the occasion of this year’s screening, the irony and satire of this classic holiday film seemed ever so clever and amusing.

On the surface, the movie is silly and borderline slapstick.  This quality is enhanced by the mere fact that it stars Will Ferrell, whose patented role on film is typically silly and slapstick. But as Charlie Chaplin established in The Little Dictator, “silly and slapstick” works best when infused with satire.

Elf gets off to a jump-start with a little narration by “Papa Elf,” played by Bob Newhart. The understated comedian who gives any work respectability, informs us of “Buddy’s” improbable but eminently credible arrival at Santa’s North Pole. (While Santa was helping himself to milk and cookies at a Catholic orphanage, baby “Buddy” espies a little teddy bear  peeking from Santa’s bag on the floor. “Buddy” frees himself from his crib and crawls to the teddy bear. After Santa re-nourishes himself, he sweeps the bag—and “Buddy” inside the bag—off the floor and later in the night, arrives back at the North Pole.)

At Santa’s request, “Papa Elf,” agrees to raise “Buddy”—a name assumed from the “Buddy Brand” label on the diaper of the new arrival.

From this point forward, the movie is a non-stop festival of the absurd wrapped in satire and enhanced by a perfect story about the Christmas spirit—and lack thereof—as it plays out and rebounds against cynicism and skepticism.

The main setting—Manhattan—(the North Pole is critical too, naturally) is the perfect backdrop for epic clashes between Buddy’s wholesale innocence and humanity’s unlimited cynicism. Dressed in full elf costume and exuding childlike behaviors, Buddy is indistinguishable from many a person with disordered brain chemistry living in a crowded metropolis. This feature is central to the film, and the irony, of course, is that Buddy’s brain chemistry is perfectly normal—however distorted now and again, perhaps, by his prodigious sugar diet.

Buddy’s biological father is the ambitious ogre (again, ironically and satirically, given that the enterprise of his ambition publishes kids’ stories), who finally busts free from his shackles, thanks to a burst of Christmas spirit, brought to him by . . . Buddy, the unwitting iconoclast!

Especially in these times, all of us could use the wit and wisdom purveyed by . . . Elf

(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)

© 2020 by Eric Nilsson