Talking Pictures: 'It's Christmas Eve!' — Christmas, Commercialization and Media Critique
- conference
- cinema
-
exhibition
Lecturer: Yves Steichen
Language: Luxembourgish
Free entry
Catering and beverages will be provided.
---
Christmas has long been more than just a religious event; it is a global media phenomenon navigating family rituals, societal expectations, and consumer pressures. This lecture explores how cinema depicts, questions, and employs Christmas as a canvas for desires, fears, and critiques of capitalist structures.
Christmas films typically narrate stories of transformation and reconciliation, yet they also often reflect and critique our consumer and media realities. Iconic commercials—from Coca-Cola's glowing trucks and polar bears to emotionally driven John Lewis campaigns—and modern Hallmark and Netflix Christmas movies shape our notions of family, warmth, and community, turning Christmas into an emotionally charged consumer promise often detached from reality.
The lecture examines the narrative and aesthetic strategies employed by cinema (and advertising) since the 1980s to portray Christmas as a ritual intertwining emotional longing, economic calculation, and media criticism, and how these images influence our understanding of community and festivity.
---
Following the lecture, we will screen the media satire 'Scrooged' (1988), retelling Charles Dickens's Christmas tale from a biting perspective on our media and consumer society.
Good to know
Lecturer: Yves Steichen
Language: Luxembourgish
Free entry
Catering and beverages will be provided.
Where does it take place?
National Audio-Visual Center
1B rue du Centenaire
3475 Dudelange
Luxembourg
by 
Weather forecast ()
Otherwise… check out the agenda
see all the things
to do around you
Hey, don’t go away...
Get the best
outings around you
All the best deals
events
spots
