One of my favorite traditions is catching the better part of four or five airings of A Christmas Story on TBS. Due to the nature of this marathon, I’ve seen this movie more times than I’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption. Hell, I’ve seen it more times than Anchorman, which shouldn’t be possible. We’re talking about hundreds of times, with no real reason, laughter having long since been replaced with nostalgic head nods. I’m not going to complain about the movie, because I’ve watched it too many times to bitch, but I am going to point out something that I cannot get past: Ralphie is a bully, and the story as told from his perspective of his beatdown of Scut Farkus is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.

Before we continue, I’d like to establish a few ground rules.

1. I am only focusing on Ralphie beating Scut Farkus up. Other scenes of the movie can be used to establish his character, but I don’t really care that a boy in 1940 was obsessed over a BB Gun. It doesn’t make him a sociopath. We’re spoiled today. Those kids didn’t have any of the cool stuff we take for granted, like television, or internet pornography, or the polio vaccine. Given his limitations, if a boy wants to pump a few rounds into a squirrel, I say have at it, you poor bastard.
2. I’m going to avoid calling Ralphie “a sociopath,” because I’m not a trained medical professional, and thusly, not in the business of diagnosing the mental disorders of fictional characters. I realize that there is a good chance that you’ve read a brief description of what sociopathy “is,” but that on it’s own does not make you an authority on the subject. One jackoff writes “actually 15% of office workers are sociopaths” and now every deputized Internet Doctor loves nothing more than to establish that anybody who lies is a true blue sociopath. I can’t tell you that Ralphie is a sociopath. I can however tell you that little Ralphie is a fucking asshole who lies constantly, and thusly cannot be trusted to give an objective account of his actions.

What do we know about A Christmas Story? Well, it’s a comedically aggrandized retelling of one boy’s holiday season, told years after the fact by that boy now as an adult. Trivial matters are made epic as seen through the boy’s eyes. We continuously see events play out in the head of the protagonist that defy normal human interaction. We hear his editorialized inner monologue, spoken in purple prose and know that he is not trustworthy. Everything is exaggerated. Unlike a movie such as The Karate Kid where things are told fairly straightforward from a third person POV, the POV of A Christmas Story is wildly partisan. From the outset, you the viewer are expected to understand that Ralphie is one of the most unreliable of narrators. And given that the only person telling the story has no credibility, nothing is trustworthy.

That brings us to Scut Farkus. Who is he? Well in this telling, Scut is a behemoth who terrorizes the neighborhood with what I’m sure was a very intimidating coonskin cap.

Just look at that tower of power on the left. Leather jacket. Fingerless gloves. His own Joe Pesci type friend. Sorry, not friend. “Toady.” Is he a neighborhood kid or a fucking loan shark for the mafia? This kid is bad news.

Meanwhile let’s look at our protagonist.

Why it’s a young Amy Schumer. Well surely this is a one sided affair. In this retelling there is simply no way the smiling, bespectacled cherub could be anything less than an innocent victim. So after watching scene after scene of Scut terrorize Ralphie’s friends, we are given that climactic moment where Ralphie has to fight back. Ralphie is of course giving up significant weight and reach. No gaming commission would sanction this fight, so surely Ralphie is going to exploit some tactical weakness of Scut. If he’s going to have any chance at coming away from this with anything less than a savage beating he’s going to need to rely on timing. He’ll need to anticipate Scut’s first move. He’ll need pinpoint accuracy when he strikes. Stick and move. Okay. Let’s go to the tape and see what he does.

Okay. So that was less tactical than you might have imagined. Instead, he threw tactics out the window and opted to spear Scut like Bill Goldberg, before dropping a number of hammer fist strikes. Low man wins. Having said that, these punches don’t look quite that devastating. Perhaps Scut backs into some black ice and falls down in the rush, but those are not surgical strikes. One would think that eventually the much bigger kid would eventually push Ralphie off him before unleashing an unholy beating. And yet Scut, the much larger kid, appears to be helpless. He’s screaming in pain and bleeding.

Let’s be real, this is a fight where a much smaller opponent is using brute strength to beat up a person much bigger than they are. It’s almost completely unbelievable. It’s almost as if perhaps Ralphie as an adult is lying his ass off. As if maybe you the viewer wouldn’t be quite as entertained by the story of him bullying some smaller kid, so as the narrator he took a little creative license. Suddenly instead of pounding some scrawny neighborhood kid, he’s heroically taking out a bully.  Perhaps in the retelling Ralphie is giving us a “You should have seen the other guy” story.

Let’s take a step back. How was Scut described, again?

YELLOW EYES! He had yellow eyes. Christ, the kid was probably jaundiced. It’s either that or he’s a Sith Lord. Watch the beating one more time, and tell me if that would take down a hale, strapping young lad, or if instead Ralphie targeted a malnourished poor kid for an easy victory.

Perhaps you think I’m reading a little too much into this. I mean, that’s a theory and all, but what actual evidince do I have that this fight wasn’t as on the level as Ralphie pretends? To that I ask you, how does Ralphie react after the beating? Terrified. He knows he’s in trouble when his dad finds out. Hell, his little brother is terrified that their dad is going to kill Ralphie. But why? Ralphie didn’t fire the opening shot. According to this story, Ralphie was attacked and mocked by a much bigger antagonist. All that happened was that he stood up for himself (even if he does also admit that he essentially went blind with rage and snapped like a goddamn lunatic) and refused to let a bully scare him into submission. Would Ralphie’s dad have been that concerned with his son prevailing as a true underdog? Absolutely not. He would have been thrilled. It’s the 1940’s. If anything was going to upset him, it would have been having a weak willed boy who can’t take a challenge. That dad in the 1940’s would have poured his boy a glass of Cutty Sark and yelled at his wife to fire up the steaks- medium rare- while they had a smoke. He basically gets an erection when he slams a door on a dog’s tail, earlier in the movie. After he gives Ralphie the gun for Christmas, he jokes that it’s okay for him to shoot the Bumpus hounds. But sure, I’m guessing dad is Capt. Use Your Words when his boy is confronted by a bully. Nonsense. But do you know what would cause Ralphie to terror crap his pants over the thought of what his dad would do? If this were the 9th or 10th time he’s beaten up the same weak kid in a fit of rage, and his father has had it up to here with calls from the neighbors, screaming about what a goddamn monster they are raising. None of this is consistent with anything that we know of Ralphie’s dad, or underdog tales in general. These are the very real fears of a bully who is afraid of what his father might do to him later.

So the question is: Would Ralphie lie about the size of the bully and the surrounding details? Absolutely.

I’ll say it again, because it bears repeating: Ralphie is a fucking liar who shows absolutely no remorse. When Flick gets his tongue stuck to the pole, nobody comes forward. Hey, I get it. Being in trouble blows. I don’t recommend it. But what does he do? He just straight up leaves him and goes to class. Christ, even Ted Kennedy went to the police eventually after drowning Mary Jo Kopechne. It isn’t an admission of guilt to tell any adult, “Hey, I was just walking by, minding my own business, when I saw that Flick is stuck to a pole. I just wanted to let you know, so that somebody can get that poor boy the help he needs. Anyway, on to class. I love to learn.” Later when Flick doesn’t snitch, Ralphie’s thought isn’t Man, that must have sucked for Flick. It isn’t, Goddamn, that’s pretty cool of him to keep quiet like that. He’s a really cool friend. It isn’t even, Man, I am human garbage for straight up ditching him like that. No, no. That would require a modicum of self awareness. Instead his takeaway is Fuck you, teacher lady. You have nothing on me and you know it, you dumb bitch. 

But maybe that isn’t fair. Perhaps Ralphie learned something after the fact in a more subtle way. NOPE. Instead he gets caught swearing in front of his dad, and when his mom asks where he learned that word (Here’s a hint, mom: He’s fucking nine. He’s heard the F word before, and that’s a really stupid question), he pointlessly sells his friend Schwartz out when he could have just as easily told the truth and put it on his dad. His mom knows that dad swears. His enabling mother would have both covered for her husband and given him the soap. Or hell, if that’s too scary he could have said he heard some hobo mutter it once. Or his Canadian girlfriend. Who the fuck cares, kid? Just say you’ve heard that word a lot and didn’t think to take notes. But no, he threw his own friend in the mix, and listened as he took a beating. And don’t think I didn’t pick up on the subtext of turning on his friend “Schwartz” In 1940**. And in this retelling, it’s the shifty Schwarz who convinces Flick to lick the pole. Ralphie is completely innocent. Easy there, LeBron. I’m glad the sanitized version of this story doesn’t include any anecdotes from his time in the American Bund, but it’s a little unsettling with how quickly and senselessly the blonde haired, blue eyed goyim blames his own failings on the jews. Again, did Ralphie even briefly feel any remorse for snitching? Nope. He was busy conjuring up blindness fantasies so that he might emotionally torture his parents. Ralphie absolutely sucks.

**Yes, I know that Schwarz is possibly German and not Jewish, but I give Ralphie absolutely no benefit of the doubt here. We don’t see Schwarz talking about what he wants for Christmas.

I get it. History is written by the winners. It’s hard to admit your own culpability in things that happened when you were a child. Maybe he even believes what he’s saying is true. People will perform complex mental gymnastics to justify questionable past behavior. But none of this story is consistent with how things play out in the real world. To recap, I see a person with an obvious motivation to clean up their own story, who seems incapable of telling the truth or admitting even the slightest moral failing, telling the story about how they viciously took down a yellow eyed bully, simply by using brute force, and that the beatdown as so savage that his red blooded American dad of the 1940’s would have instantly transformed into a SJW when confronted with his son’s improbable dominance. I say no. The “Scut Farkus” that you saw was simply an avatar of the victor’s mind. I say if anything, Ralphie was the one who was built like Scut, and Scut was the smaller boy. Ralphie’s story does not check out.

Alternatively, it’s entirely possible that Ralphie didn’t actually kick Scut’s ass. Maybe he’s a fucking liar who got his shit served right back in his stupid face, and this whole thing is an r/thatHappened post gone wild.

Anyway, HO

HO

HOOOOOOOO