Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie
stephenfollows.com
stephenfollows.com
To me a Christmas movie is a movie with the spirit of Christmas running through it, however weakly. Another definition I have is this. A Christmas movie is a movie that is fun to watch around Christmas. Die Hard meets both of these definitions.
Die Hard is not, however, a typical Christmas movie. It's a movie more for people who are sick of the normal Christmas movies and want a break. Because of this special status, people who think of Die Hard as a Christmas movie feel a greater camaraderie than people who think, say, White Christmas is a Christmas movie. For example, at a Christmas party one of my friends wore, as his "Christmas sweater," a gray sweatshirt with the words "Ho ho ho" written in red.
Another thing that makes Die Hard special is the thought and care that the director put into it, https://vimeo.com/76739972
Meyers-Briggs has a number of issues[1] and is frankly, unscientific. But because it uses a survey, it evokes feelings of rigor. Sometimes I feel that engineers are so obsessed with rigor, they'd rather use a solution that is wrong but "goes through the motions" than a simpler solution.
For example, whether something is a a "Christmas Movie" is at it's heart, a matter of opinion. To answer it, simple polling a diverse sample of the US population could answer the question. But that's not a "sexy" answer - we want to buy into this idea of One Ground Truth that if we only framed our experiment perfectly, we can uncover.
The real truth is that qualitative research is messy. Doing a "good" job is easy, but doing a "great" job is a still unsolved problem... and sadly all to often we choose the appearance of rigor over actual useful research.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
It's a celebration,societal consensus is not needed to determine how smaller groups of people want to celebrate it. Lets not force our celebrations on each other. My definition is the latter but I don't care one bit if others watch die hard and home alone while I watch the Gospel of John or something that has nothing to do with Christmas.
Aren't most programmers INTJ? Debate about MBTI aside, that's really not much of a difference...
MBTI is a mostly arbitrary and limited categorization system with very shaky psychological/sociological grounding, but it still is grounded on parts of personality / who people are to some degree. There are tons of misuses of MBTI from trying to gain personal predictive insight, adhering to a single "type" because you tested as it once, and the written descriptions of the types themselves on many sites do indeed use tricks used in horoscopes.
However, when you take it for what it is, an arbitrary classification tool with very light social science backing, there are insights you can learn from when it comes to how people interact or at least how they approach different problems/ideas/situations in a broad sense, as well as a few other actual practical but limited applications.
You would never be able to use it to say "I'm high strung because I'm INTJ", but you can use it to the point of "Oh hey person X and Y are having issue Z communicating, perhaps it's explained because one is an S and the other in an N. Not because one is S and one is N, but because, if properly categorized (big if), it would make some general statements about communication that could be applicable to a situation.
All this said, I know MBTI comes up in some offices and I have never once heard of a proper/successful use of it, so it's wide misuse and misunderstanding of its nature probably does make it the programmer's version of astrology. Just wanted to point out that astrology and MBTI, as much as people love to compare them, are quite different.
Wat? For me it was just the constant TV reruns at Christmas that did it, like with Trading Places and Groundhog Day. It just does not feel like Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Plaza and Billie-Ray Valentine sells OJ futures.
Do we really have to slap labels on everything?
But one thing I can say about Myers Briggs is that it allows for variation between introversion and extraversion. First of all, an INFJ will usually seem more extroverted than an INTP. Furthermore, one INFJ might seem more extraverted than another INFJ. So I think Myers Briggs allows variation, not only among all whose type begins with I, but even between two people of the exact same four-letter type. In the end, Myers Briggs calls them "preferences."
Myers Briggs for many years seemed to me simplistic. Actually introversion and extraversion was the only thing that I could put a firm finger on, whether I was one way or the other. I consider it a binary trait, maybe even more so than Carl Jung, Myers, or Briggs. Certainly more than you, it sounds like. But that may be because I use the more narrow definition of each, that it's only about where you recharge.
Anyway, the other letters in Myers Briggs seemed to me naive. Am I intuitive or sensing, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving? Well, I am each of them. It sounded like caricature, not real people. As I read more and more, I found that Myers Briggs meant those words in narrow ways. Thinking doesn't mean thinking, and feeling doesn't mean feeling. Last but not least, not only does the last letter not mean perceiving or judging in the everyday senses, but it doesn't even mean whether you are mainly one or the other. It means which do you extravert? Do you extravert judging or extravert perceiving? Yes, even if you are an introvert, which one do you extravert? And if that's the one you extravert, then the other side is introverted inward, and that's the side therefore that you actually feel is more truly you. Confused yet?
Myers Briggs now seems like some fractal, the more you read about it, the deeper the complexity. There is a whole layer underneath the surface, about "cognitive functions," which is a requirement for even an intermediate level of understanding. It may all end up to be quack science. About the only thing I'm sure of is that we are not blank slates, that at least some of our personality preferences are genetic, and that Myers Briggs tries to nail that down. Whether it nails down too much or not enough or just the wrong parts is another matter.
So here's my vote - arguing ABOUT Die Hard being a Christmas move HAS BECOME a Christmas tradition.
a) Whether the movie is unambiguously set during Christmas, and if so whether that's clearly an artistic choice, or as much of a coincidence as a movie that has nothing to do with the weather being set in the summer or winter.
b) Whether the movie is aimed at the "Christmas movie market". I.e. released around Christmas, this'll usually coincide with a movie being more Christmas themed.
The article weaves between criteria that'll fall under one or the other, without ever really acknowledging the difference between the two.
Die Hard meets a) but not b), but the article doesn't mention whether or not skipping b) was intended.
The studio had a hard time casting the protagonist. Was it initially meant for a Christmas release, but ended up slipping into July without the script being changed to de-Christmas theme it?
More importantly, is there a reason to avoid b) without a)? Do mildly Christmas-themed movies such as Die Hard (it's not integral to the plot) get penalized in the market as a result? Why don't we see more of them?
If it becomes one more of the christmas-centric traditions, then it becomes a christmas movie.
People turn things into traditions simply because they like doing them with some fixed cadence. The rationalisations tend to flow in later.
If "Die Hard" becomes a Christmas movie over time, it's a thing that happens. People are messy. Societies of people, exponentially so.
In Poland, this makes Home Alone and Die Hard both Christmas movies. Ever since I was a kid, I remember both being on TV during Christmas days. Hell, people actually made quite a large uproar couple years ago, when the TV station showing Home Alone decided not to show it on Christmas, and AFAIR they eventually changed the programming to keep it.
The conversations I've had about this with people that do not think Die Hard movies are usually based on this more than a release date or a winter time setting using Xmas deco in the movie. They don't know that's what they are getting at, but it's what I've come up with to explain it.
The plot of the movie would have to be changed substantially if it didn't take place at Christmas, so I think it is integral to the plot.
For me, any movie set in or around christmas qualifies as a christmas movie and my favorite christmas movies are "die hard", "home alone 1 and 2" and "scrooged". They all represent the redeeming christmas spirit in their own unique way.
Rare Exports is undeniably a Christmas movie. One that you should definitely watch, but only after the little ones have gone to bed.
In just a few hours, TNT will begin its annual "24 Hours of A Christmas Story" marathon.
In 2013, each airing had between three and five million viewers: http://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com/a-christmas-story-movie-...
Now that we have kids they are too young for the humor and don't find it as funny. We tried Home Alone but it just doesn't feel right. So I think we settled on Elf as a compromise.
Was it attacked by terrorist/bank robbers?
Metahumor is underappreciated
The article also touches on another meme that has been growing for the past few years, Thanksgiving and its lack of associated songs. I remember first noticing that due to Bob's Burgers mentioning it constantly in their Thanksgiving episodes, but have now noticed that SNL has been bringing up the fact there are no Thanksgiving songs for the past couple years as well.
What is that?