Is Die Hard A Christmas Movie?
...And what this question can tell us about the meaning of art
More than 64,000 years ago, one of our Neanderthal cousins created a red stencil of his hand in a cave in Cáceres, Spain. One of their companions no-doubt asked them what it meant, and then, when they explained, probably disagreed. People are like that (and protruding brows notwithstanding, I’m in the camp that thinks Neanderthals counted as people).
The point is that as long as there’s been art, people have been discussing and disagreeing with what that art meant, and how we should decide what that art meant. Broadly, speaking, the thinking here falls into two camps: intentionalism and anti-intentionalism.
Intentionalism says that the viewers and consumers of art should concern themselves with the creator’s intention; absolute intentionalism says that we should consider only the creator’s intention, with their art meaning whatever it was they intended it to mean. By contrast, anti-intentionalism states that the meaning of a work should be interpreted in the context of the work itself, with the creator’s intent having little or no relevance. In this school of thought, a work of art’s meaning can essentially be whatever you, the viewer or consumer, think it is. (i.e. If you think that the Beatles song Helter Skelter is a call to mass murder, then it is, even if Paul McCartney tearfully insists that it’s just a song about a fairground ride).
Similarly, I once read a news story about an artist who’d shipped one of his sculptures, with its stand, to an art gallery for consideration in an upcoming exhibition. Due to logistics, the sculpture and the stand were shipped separately, and the gallery — mistakenly believing them to be two separate artworks — accepted the stand but rejected the sculpture. Even after the artist had insisted that the stand was just a stand with no artistic meaning or intent whatsoever, the gallery stood by their assessment that it (the stand, minus the sculpture it was designed to hold) was a work of merit deserving of display. (The gallery were clearly anti-intentionalists)!
But of course, in our modern pop-culture world there is no greater example of this age old debate than the perpetual question of whether Die Hard is a Christmas film.
Now you might be shaking your head as you read this, saying that of course Die Hard’s a Christmas film. Everyone knows that. Hell, it’s the archetypical Christmas film. But is it?
Take a look at the above image. I believe it’s the original poster for the theatrical release. Is there anything about that image that in any way suggests Christmas?
This isn’t surprising when you realise that Die Hard was released in July 1988 in the hope that it would become a summer blockbuster. It wasn’t released at Christmas, it wasn’t intended to tie into any Christmas spirit or sentiment, and besides the fact that it’s set at Christmas, it doesn’t particularly have any Christmas-related elements. The Christmas setting is a narrative framing device to create a reason for a separated husband to be travelling to meet his estranged wife, and a reason for her company to be holding an after hours party. Bruce Willis himself has stated that “Die Hard is not a Christmas movie”, a sentiment echoed by the film’s director who’s stated that they hadn’t intended it as a Christmas movie (although he happily concedes that it has now turned into one).
So why do people now consider it to be a Christmas film? Well that summer theatrical release was thirty-five years ago, and it now gets shown on TV in the lead-up to every Christmas. Our memories are not of walking into a movie theatre on a warm and bright summer’s day, but of snuggling up on the sofa in a cold December. It’s set at Christmas, so it gets shown at Christmas, and because it gets shown at Christmas, people watch it at Christmas, and because they watch it at Christmas, they associate it with Christmas.
And so it becomes a Christmas tradition, and thus a Christmas film.
So is Die Hard a Christmas film? Well personally, I’m saying no. But feel free to disagree with me in the comments!
The Nexus Files is free to read. But if you subscribe you'll get new posts emailed to your inbox automatically, and I won't feel like I'm pointlessly screaming into the void.