You know what the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" is? Go ahead, guess

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Beloved Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” has secret racial and “bigoted” messages according to a Carleton University professor.

Writing in the taxpayer-subsidized, liberal publication The Conversation, Professor James Deaville explores how the 1946 Christmas classic is politically incorrect and has racist undertones.

“Some depictions of music and sound beg analysis around how these reflect racist ideas about ‘proper’ musical, social and community norms,” Professor Deaville wrote on Dec. 21.

A key concerning aspect to the music heard in It’s a Wonderful Life revolves around the portrayal of Black musical forms and practitioners.

Capra’s known racism against Blacks, consistent with racist discourses and practices of the era, is reflected in how jazz and other Black musical forms appear and are framed.

In the iconic Bedford falls dance, the band plays three songs, including African American pianist and composer Johnson’s “Charleston,” which is performed by a white band.

As American journalism professor Sam Freedman notes in a podcast on whiteness and racism in America, the town features predominantly white citizens apart from a stereotypical depiction of a Black housekeeper in the Bailey family.

The professor also takes issue with how the alternative town of “Potterville” is portrayed. This is the alternative universe if George Bailey had never been born.

“The quaint main street is overrun by nightclubs and full of bright lights. Through Pottersville, the film projects a sense of moral degradation,” Deaville writes. “While negatively portraying jazz practised by Black artists, the film simultaneously draws upon and appropriates Black musical forms as necessary and key to popular American life but in a white-controlled version.”

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