Home Alone: A Marxian Perspective
In the 1990 Christmas classic, Kevin McAllister defends his bourgeois home from incompetent burglars after his family accidentally goes on vacation without him. Though the film seems to be a tale of a child who struggles to be respected and loved by his family, the real tale is much darker. In the space of one and a half hours, we witness the reaffirmation of Reagan-style capitalism and the rejection of two dispossessed working class men. Material culture is taken to an extreme as Kevin devises numerous booby traps and pitfalls using products that can be bought at your local Home Depot. Kevin’s initial wariness of his elderly neighbor gives way to a bourgeois alliance as they work to ‘defend’ their wealthy neighborhood from grease-faced outsiders. We look on in false sentimentality as the McAllisters reunite in their implausibly rehabilitated home, while Harry and Marv’s failed attempt to enjoy at least some of their rightful wealth has put them on the path to a for-profit prison.
The film glorifies generational wealth and the status quo, and the unthinking viewer laughs at the criminals’ attempts to improve their economic lives. The thinking viewer is left with existential dread.
Much like Kevin, Harry, the leader of the criminal duo gets little attention and respect from the McAllisters and their relatives in the opening scenes. This is clearly due to his working class status as a policeman. Scarcely anyone can deign to speak with him. Perhaps if the family were more open and egalitarian, Harry would have decided not to burglarize them. The family’s contempt of Harry is palpable, not least in the shot of Kevin wincing at his gold tooth (why not a porcelain veneer?). Kevin’s father tactlessly brags about the automatic timers running their lights, mocking the dispossession of Midwest manufacturing workers by automation. If only peace officers and food delivery workers could be automated thus.
The film treats our pizza delivery boy slightly less bad, at least at first. Because he is supplying the family with bleached carbohydrates and cheese produced from animal cruelty, the class division is ignored momentarily. The large tip he receives makes him praise the capitalist system in an aside, an absurd outpouring.
A running gag is the statue in front of the home being knocked over by service workers in their vehicles, a symbolic rebellion of the working class. Despite their initial joy in toppling the capitalist metalwork, they nonetheless re-erect it, showing the power of the ruling class.
After a long night of debauchery and excess, including a Coke-fueled brawl, the family tardily prepares to board the airport shuttles they had scheduled. Not only must the drivers suffer the family’s tardiness, they must suffer being distracted and tormented by a next door child. Again, we are made to laugh at the workers’ predicament. John Hughes, a wealthy 1980s filmmaker leaves us no doubt as to his thoughts on the working class.
Later, we again meet the pizza boy. Kevin simulates the sound of verbal threats and gunfire after paying for his meal, prompting the worker’s flight and inflicting him with PTSD. Kevin’s scheme is all the more hurtful given that the delivery boy likely has no health insurance, or savings with which to buy counseling.
As Harry and Marv plan their heist of the McAllister house, Harry expresses reservations over Marv’s habit of plugging the drains of absent homeowners and flooding their properties. Marv styles the duo as The Wet Bandits. Though the film would have us believe this flooding is foolish and gratuitous, the flooding of bourgeois homes is actually masterful symbolism. The working class in America have been up to their necks in the floodwaters for decades. Why not, then, level society? Let us all swim in the current, the better that we may understand our neighbor’s pain. (Really, the burglars should have called themselves The Red Bandits.)
We are then subjected to American imperialism as Kevin’s mother bullies people at the Paris airport and seizes their payphones. Other family members inexplicably speak English (American English at that) to fellow travelers, explaining how their dysfunction justifies these silly Europeans getting out of the way. Later, Mrs. McAllister attempts to browbeat the ticket agent into putting her on a suitable flight home. As an American, she demands service. These scenes echo the 1940s, when Americans barged into France and attempted to run the country. A more offensive film to Charles de Gaulle’s eyes could scarcely be conceived.
Back in America, Kevin’s fright at the sight of his elderly, menacing-looking neighbor at a grocery store prompts him to flee, merchandise in hand. A minimum wage-making retail worker chases Kevin before referring him to a nearby policeman. The second cop of this film to suffer from the protagonist’s bourgeois excess, he ‘humorously’ slips and falls on a field of ice, ensuring Kevin’s escape.
The conclusion the film draws is that stealing, when perpetrated by the poor, is wrong and merits violent correction. When the wealthy steal, it’s ‘humorous’, as the film presents the theft of fine glassware from an airline by Kevin’s aunt and uncle. Or, wealthy people stealing is the understandable and excusable result of being in a bad situation. Wouldn’t it be fine if you, capitalist viewer, forgot what you were carrying if you had to escape an encounter with a scary neighbor at the store?
Finally having returned to the Midwest at least, Mrs. McAllister rides along with touring musicians en route to Chicago. Her discomfort and unease in associating with them is made tolerable only by her plight. She stares, perplexed, at John Candy’s character while he plays some instrument, apparently in exchange for money? How very odd. And this windowless van is quite uncomfortable.
Much like Parasite (2019), the film makes good use of levels. The viewer is made to sympathize with Kevin for being made to sleep in the attic in the beginning, but this moment actually shows the supremacy of his class. The burglars, on the other hand, have to enter the house through the basement, or the ground floor, while Kevin sits on his perch upstairs. Their numerous attempts to go upstairs are thwarted initially, showing the lengths the ruling class will go to keep the lower classes down.
When they finally reach the upper floors, Kevin employs such spectacles as a pet tarantula to distract and divide the working class robbers. Marv’s wonderment of the creature is not shared by his partner, resulting in violence between them.
The burglars eventually capture Kevin, but he is saved by his elderly neighbor, who neutralizes the burglars with a snow shovel, confirming Kevin’s suspicions.
Later, Harry looks resignedly at Kevin from inside a squad car. His vision of a more economically equal world goes unfulfilled another day. And 20th Century Fox laughs.
In the close, Mr. McAllister discovers Harry’s gold tooth on the floor, perhaps Harry’s last item of value. The complete breaking down and domination of the working class is complete.
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