Editor's Note: Home Alone (1990) was just added to the 2023 National Film Registry. You can view the entire list here.
If it's been a few years since you last watched a young Macaulay Culkin slap his cologne-soaked hands on his ruddy little cheeks, 'tis the season for a rewatch of the Christmas classic. In fact, it's a perfect time to examine Home Alone through the prism of white privilege, especially if you've never realized what a messed up world allows for so much glaring whiteness to go unchecked.
Starting with the cast, which is whiter than a Peleton commercial during a Lifetime movie marathon, one wonders, as writer Olivia Truffaut-Wong has written, "If we believed the movies, then people of color would never celebrate Christmas." From white stars (Culkin, Catherine O'Hara, Daniel Stern, Joe Pesci) to an all-white supporting cast (John Candy for one) to roughly every extra, whiteness dominates.
The irony of a one-dimensional cardboard cutout of Michael Jordan being the most diverse member of the cast is not lost upon us. Inclusion riders, such as the one endorsed by actress Frances McDormand for casting and production and the new diversity requirements for Oscar eligibility are the least filmmakers can do. They are born out of necessity from cast lists such as that of Home Alone.
In our opening scene, we find ourselves in the chaotic foyer of the McCallister family home, the night before the family's big holiday bon voyage to Paris. Pesci stands in the eye of the storm as the burglar Harry masquerading as a police officer. But no one really stops to engage with the officer of the law.
They are too busy, of course, shaming one another in French for being too incompetent to pack their own suitcases. The whole scene depends on a sort of conceit that everyone is feeding right into Harry's ploy to tell him exactly when they'll be gone.
Perhaps when you watched Home Alone for the first time, you thought the whole conceit was a bit over the top. But if you've ever seen your dad smile as he greets a police officer, laughing it off since there's no way he was "in trouble," or if you thought for a fraction of a moment that having a police officer stop by for a "holiday precaution check-in" was normal, your viewing experience is probably different than the 63% of Black Americans who fear police using deadly force on them or a loved one.
Of course, 1990 was 30 years ago. Some may argue this was a different socio-political moment in the U.S. It was before four white LAPD officers used excessive force on a man named Rodney King, who were then all acquitted.
Screenwriter John Hughes was writing from the same Americana that gave Ferris Bueller the day off and Uncle Buck a high five for showing up to babysit. Hughes had already fine-tuned the recipe of white people doing the very least, but with comic flair, to win the hearts of moviegoers. Why wouldn't it work again? This is the chief problem: excusing white entitlement has always been a winning formula in film and offscreen.
As we know, the entire premise of Home Alone depends upon excusing white parents for forgetting the youngest of their five children in their haste to board an international flight. Ask any parents of color who have more than 2.5 children if they ever receive any shade for having produced a large family, particularly if one ever misbehaves in public or goes missing in the pant leg of a department store.
The McCallisters are never questioned about the overwhelm caused by their large brood. The worst anyone calls them is "hyper," and, upon checking to see if Kevin is all right, another police officer presumes to find nobody home, and says, "Tell them to count their kids again."
Mrs. McCallister certainly self-examines how a mother could forget her son at home. Her existential crisis lasts throughout the whole movie, with interludes of obnoxious behavior.
The McCallisters spend a good share of their time apart from Kevin grabbing the payphone out of the hands of a perfect stranger, being irritated that no one speaks English in France, bullying an airline attendant because they can't "bump somebody or ask somebody" to make their lives easier in light of the emergency of their own making, and lamenting that their neighborhood is sooo boring.
I have tried to imagine in my mind's eye if my in-laws, who emigrated from South Korea to Canada and then to the U.S. in the early 1990s, had made a similar mistake. What if they had absent-mindedly left one of their sons behind in their frantic travel to see family back in Seoul? I can only imagine Child Protective Services would be hot on their case.
Given that my in-laws speak limited English, their ability to find a sympathetic police officer to check on their child would be unlikely. I expect news cameras would surely meet them at the airport, touting the headline of the irresponsible immigrants, so focused on their own exploits that they forgot their kid.
But the McCallisters are never vilified as we know parents of color are in this country every day. A recent study of Philadelphia hospital records discovered that African American and Latino toddlers hospitalized for fractures were more than three times more likely to be reported to child protective services than their white counterparts with comparable injuries.
Dorothy Roberts, professor of law at Northwestern University writes, "The racial disparity in the families involved in the [foster care] system, in turn, reinforces a quintessential racist stereotype—that black people are incapable of governing themselves and need state supervision." Whereas the McCallisters are given free passes and free rides in the back of polka band buses. And then they do it all over again in Home Alone 2 with a cameo by Donald Trump if the theme of white privilege wasn't boring a hole in your social consciousness already.
With all of its glaring unchecked whiteness, I am not suggesting we cancel Home Alone. This classic film about an overlooked boy who bears resemblance to many modern depictions of a cherub is part of the American holiday film heritage. It is a helpful artifact in the same way that the presumed villain in Home Alone, Old Man Marley, becomes the unexpected hero.
Marley reminds us of what another white man, much beloved by his own mother, once spoke about when we are in crisis—to be ever reminded of "the better angels of our nature." May we always strive to see them in one another, within our homes and our homelands, as well.
Get your copy of the movie(s) by clicking here: Home Alone Collection Blue-ray DVD
To get a better understanding of white privilege, consider ordering the novel White Out: Understanding White Privilege and Dominance in the Modern Age here.