Ebenezer Scrooge is the victim in ACC, not the villian.

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I am going to challenge a long-established viewpoint that Ebenezer Scrooge was the bad guy at the beginning of "A Christmas Carol".
But first I must identify what made him considered a "villian" in the first place.

Ok, so-
He is a grump. He yells at kids. He does not donate to the poor. He is unkind to his employee. He hassles people about money that they owe him. He is the epitome of a miser.

That about sums up Scrooge at the beginning of the film, but I just gotta ask myself.... so what? After all-

Most old men are grumpy. Those kids were following him around and insulting him, if I was an old man I'd yell too. He has no obligation to donate to the poor. He may seem unkind to Bob Cratchett, but at the end of the day he pays him and even Cratchett himself is grateful for it, and as for Tiny Tim- Scrooge did not know how severe his illness was, and he had a soft spot for him even at the beginning. The people he hassles for money are people that voluntarily agreed to borrow it, and it is only fair that they give it to him back. And if he is a miser, well, that only really effects him, right?

My point is, Scrooge never really commits an offensive act against anybody. He is a businessman, he does his business voluntarily and aside from those that owe him he does not give them any trouble. In the end all he wants is to be left alone, and that's alright in my book.

But what of his detractors, what did their "benevolent" acts sum up to? The kids follow him around and insult him. The spirit of Marley (and the ghosts) essentially threaten him with hell, and whisk him off to put him through a night-long guilt trip where they show him convienently selected memories, then show him how his family mocks him at the dinners and Cratchett's wife trashing him (but NOT Cratchett himself), then they show him a future where everybody CELEBRATES HIS DEATH AND TAKES ALL HIS STUFF.....

and for what?

To coerce him into giving people money and forgiving debts for no reason whatsoever. Scrooge was never coercive without a good reason, but these ghosts and everyone but him seem dead set on forcing him to make him give up his cash to uphold a pointless societal norm.

And the end result? Scrooge, not in his right mind, gives away a ridiculous sum of his wealth in a manic frenzy, and, I'd guess, fueled more by fear of what the ghost of the future showed him than actual caring.

I'd say that he was the one who was screwed here.

I think that's a good reading. There's a long tradition in literature and literary criticism of anti-business, anti-market, anti-commerce. It an aspect of the Romantic movement of the 19th century but goes back well before and continues to the present. I think there have been a few people who have attempted a kind of libertarian literary criticism that turns this stuff upside down.

"there are two types of killing.. the implicit, business type may belong to the latter type .. "

Hurt people hurt people.

http://ronniekroell.com/about-ronnie

http://ronniekroell.com/peoples-party

http://ronniekroell.com/meet-me-in-the-middle

http://ronniekroell.com/behind-the-smile-autobiography

http://ronniekroell.com/the-artist

"A Christmas Carole" exemplifies two things (possibly more): 1. An anti-hero. Scrooge is the man we love to hate, yet his background shows how he became the lonely curmudgeon, so he was by no means always that way. 2. The Hero's Journey. If you examine Scrooges background in chronological order, you will see that he actually changes..

I don't understand why anyone would consider him a "villain" -- mean, miserly, uncaring, impious, and borderline blasphemous, but not one to deliberately set fire to orphanages or demand sexual favors in exchange for a reduction in debt.

[quote="ollychan"]"there are two types of killing.. the implicit, business type may belong to the latter type .. "




[/quote

This picture and sentiment does not accurately depict capitalism. Those men can always quit if they want to and find a less difficult job (believe me there are many) and if they cannot then it is slavery and not capitalism, which is a voluntary endeavor.

I am poor, I do not make a lot of money.... but I personally have a job at a private business that I am paid to do and I can say that it definitely does not "implicitly kill" me, but rather explicitly improve my life. If you want to see true implicit killing, look at a Venezuela and North Korea; places that neo-Marxist would have us be more like.

Having never read a Christmas carol but only being familiar with its million retellings, Scrooge can no more be considered a victim than a villain.

The ghost of future shows him a future in which he is reviled after his death. He decides to give away money to reconnect with the community and "buy popularity."

Scrooge is not a victim here, because he chose to give away his money. No one forced him to do it. He could have kept it and died a rich miserly old man.

I agree Scrooge is not a villain, as long as his business practices are fair. Nothing wrong with being a rich miserly old man who deals fairly with people.

There are several things to this story:

First off, you may dislike giving charity to the poor (or paying higher taxes) for the welfare of the poor and disadvantaged, simply because:

A: You are rich, and of course you don't want to give money away that means you have to lower your standard of living.

B: You believe you are a "billionaire in the waiting" - similar to the first, but you could be wrong about that in your own future.

If you are poor/disadvantaged and your only chance of survival is charity or welfare (tax) money, you'd be a grumpy man if YOU had to obey all sorts of requirements taking away your personal freedom, just to make you survive or keep yourself away from having to live and sleep in the streets.

What I'm trying to say is that the view on Scrooge is all about your current or estimated future position in society.
I call that hypocrisy.

I'm not a fan of charity myself. I never give charity money to the beggars or homeless.
I never support charity organisations. But what I do is to vote for certain political parties who wants to raise the taxes, even if that means I'll have to pay more taxes as well, in order to spend more on welfare - to help people not becoming homeless in the first place and to lower the requirements of those receiving welfare benefits.

If you're going to give people a chance, 1 dollar to a homeless is not going to do any difference anyway.
What makes a difference is organized leadership, in what is known as State & Government.

It's like all those who say they don't eat meat to save the Earth from climate changes. It's not going to help one bit. What you need is internationally organized climate policies.