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December 16, 2021 08:30 AM

Kickstart: It's a wonderful plastics life

Rhoda Miel
Managing Editor
Plastics News Staff
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    It's a wonderful plastics life

    Let's talk about movies and plastics. No, not The Graduate yet again, but instead the seasonal classic It's a Wonderful Life.

    In case you somehow haven't seen it, in a pivotal scene, the character of George Bailey is visiting Mary, the woman who soon becomes his wife. The date isn't going well, though, and he storms out, only to return for a forgotten hat. Another of Mary's suitors, Sam Wainwright, at that point is on the phone with her and asks her to put George on the phone.

    You can just take a moment to find the scene on YouTube — and the movie is streaming on Amazon Prime — but if you don't have time to watch, Sam asks George if he recalls when George told him about someone who was using soybeans to make plastics. He then notes his father's company is about to create a plastics manufacturing company, but in another town. George convinces him to invest in his hometown instead.

    There are a lot more details involved in plastics and the movie plot, of course (and you can read more of my take from this week's Viewpoint column), but one key question I had is why were plastics highlighted in this movie from 1946 in a scene from the early 1930s?

    Maybe part of the reason is that director Frank Capra studied chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. (He'd later refer to film as "a wondrous peel of limber plastic.")

    But Jeffrey Meikle, a professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin, has another take, writing that plastics actually plays an even bigger part in the story of It's a Wonderful Life, thanks to the money Sam Wainwright makes.

    "At the end of the film it is [Sam] who rescues Bailey's collapsing bank — and the citizens who had put their trust in it," Meikle writes in his 1996 book American Plastic: A Cultural History. "Although Capra's sympathies lay with small-town life, the progress of the outside world as exemplified by the expanding plastic industry clearly stood for other positive values."

     

    Viking Plastics
    A different riff on a Christmas classic

    If you prefer your holiday entertainment to be more directly about business — and, let's just say, featuring a more amateur acting style — you can follow Viking Plastics' LinkedIn page where "Ebenezer Prindle" is learning all about "The Ghost of Wasted Products."

    While Ebenezer would like more products on shelves to sell, his staff points out that he would lose money on stock just sitting in warehouses.

    Only one part has been posted as of Dec. 15, but Viking, a molder based in Pennsylvania, has done a holiday-themed video series in the past. In 2020, the series followed the 12 Days of Christmas theme, featuring products made by the compay.

     

    Freezin' for a Reason

    And while you're on social media, you can also check out Wittmann Battenfeld USA's post on Facebook about how President David Preusse spent another year outside in chilly December weather to support a homeless shelter backed by the YMCA of Northwest Connecticut.

    This year — the 10th Freezin' For a Reason — Preusse was joined by IT support staff employee Xavier Rodriguez.

    The Dec. 3 overnight event in Winstead, Conn., aims to raise at least $15,000 to support 75 men, women and children and help them find permanent housing.

     

     

     

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