How Old is the Hallmark Christmas Movie

The answer is kind of surprising

Good Evening:

Last night, a #SpecialMilitaryOperation took place. I teamed up with a young Ukrainian woman named Anastasiia Panchenko, to project on the walls of the Russian embassy an essay Nastia had written. Nastia came to the United States alone two years ago as a 15-year-old. She has been living on her own since. I have just finished editing the video I made of her projection. I will release it after some additional refining tomorrow.

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Important scheduling note. Tomorrow’s #DogShirtTV will take place at a special time to accommodate our guest. The show will take place at 12:30 pm, not at the usual time.

As a reminder, we will be joined by the estimable Gary Marcus, emeritus professor at NYU and author of the new book, “Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure that AI Works for Us.

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Today on #DogShirtTV, I was only a student. The estimable Anna Bower and the estimable Katherine Pompilio joined forces to tell me about a specific pair of Hallmark Christmas movies based on the romance between Taylor Swift and Travic Kelce. Because I know nothing, this required that they first explain what a Hallmark Christmas movie is, and that they lay out Taylor Swift’s entire romantic history. It took a while:

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The Situation

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Trump

In my column today, I present four “baskets of activity” in which to place news about the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump: the “Midnight Judges basket,” Joe Biden’s final actions as president; the “Nominations Basket,” Trump’s controversial nominations to his administration; the “Day One Basket,” the significant policy changes Trump will bring about in his first days in office; and the “Longer Term Basket,” the drawn-out reforms for which “Trump and the cadres around him” will begin to lay the foundations:

A great deal of noise will accompany this change. The Situation on its own generates a huge amount of noise. And the furious response to the Situation generates a great deal more. An entire industry has grown up around commenting on the Situation—kind of like Taylor Swift only angry. Really angry.

Isolating the signals amidst this noise can be a tough business.

And I am here to help.

Here’s the trick to it: You only really need to focus on four baskets of activity over the next few weeks. All the rest is noise. And you can ignore it.

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Today On Lawfare

The Year That Was (2024)

The Lawfare Editorial Team reflects on 2024’s biggest issues, including the war in Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East, cybersecurity, the end of the Trump Trials, challenges to democracy, and the rule of law.

In short, it was a long year—and we covered it all. Here’s Lawfare’s editorial team on the major events across the diverse range of the security landscape. It’s The Year That Was: 2024.

We’ll see you next year.

Well, now it’s next year. And I see you.

Why AI Did Not Upend the Super Year of Elections

Kevin Frazier considers why predictions that artificial intelligence (AI) would greatly disrupt and propagate disinformation in 2024—a “super year” of elections—turned out to be wrong. Frazier explores AI labs’ efforts to mitigate electoral disruption resulting from AI misuse, responses to disinformation, and the future prospects of AI-induced election disruption.

At the outset of 2024, the so-called “super year” for elections (given the number of major countries hosting national elections), many election watchers and everyday people feared that AI tools could flood public and private information channels with dis-, mis-, and mal-information. In the lead-up to the U.S. elections, for example, a majority of Americans worried AI would be used to “create and distribute fake information about the presidential candidates and campaigns.” These fears were not without cause. AI tools capable of creating and spreading convincing content had become broadly available and easier to use than ever.

Introduction: The Russo-Ukrainian War as a Site of Global Memory Contestation

Patryk Labuda introduces Lawfare’s new essay series, organized by the "Memocracy" project, on collective global memory and its impacts on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has brought to the fore contested memories of the past. These narrative struggles have real-world impacts. In particular, divergent memories of the Second World War, Cold War, and the Soviet Union have shaped global responses to the invasion, ranging from voting patterns before the UN General Assembly to litigation before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This series focuses on how scholars, the media, governments, international organizations, and other actors narrate the Russo-Ukrainian war’s origins, justifications, and consequences, and what those different interpretations reveal about how deeply ingrained collective memories shape contemporary events.

The Russia-Ukraine War and Historical Memory in the Global South(s)

In the first essay of the series, Dovilė Budrytė and Violeta Davoliūtė explore how historical memory in the Global South(s) has influenced policy responses to the Russia-Ukraine war. They disaggregate different state responses in the Global South, consider the motivations driving varying attitudes, and discussed the role of memory:

Kuleba’s point is well taken. Reactions to the Russia-Ukraine war in the Global South have varied, and it is crucial to acknowledge the existence of multiple Global Souths with conflicting perspectives of the war. Examples from Peru and South Africa demonstrate that historical memory plays a major role in shaping policy responses to the Russia-Ukraine war and in framing dialogues between the Global South and Eastern Europe. Sensitivity to historical memory and understanding of the different perspectives of colonial legacy are essential for starting and continuing such conversations.

Missing Histories in the ICJ’s Ukraine v. Russia Case

In the second essay of the series, Anastasiia Vorobiova discusses the recent ICJ ruling in Ukraine v. Russia, critically examining several assumptions within the judgment, including the misconceptions surrounding the habitation of Crimea by ethnic Russians, whether all Russian speakers in Crimea are actually ethnically Russian, and Russia’s attempts to erase Ukrainian and Moldovan identity:

While the decision raises awareness about Russian discriminatory practices in occupied Crimea, there are certain omissions that may reinforce Russian historical propaganda tropes. First, for those who read the judgment without any prior knowledge of the region’s history, it might seem that the prevalence of the Russian language on an occupied peninsula is a natural phenomenon, rather than a consequence of centuries-long colonial practices of Russian imperialism. Second, the ruling implies that everyone speaking the Russian language is automatically considered an ethnic Russian. This article critically examines these assumptions.

Podcasts

We’ve had a few Lawfare Daily episodes since I last posted, so here’s a roundup:

The Lawfare Editorial Team answers questions on a range of topics, including presidential pardons, the risks of AI, domestic deployment of the military, and others:

Kevin Frazier talks to Daniel Holz about Holz’s work as the founding director of the Existential Risk Laboratory. The discuss existential risks, the need for greater awareness and study of those risks, and the purpose of the Doomsday Clock operated by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

Frazier sits down with John Bridgeland to discuss the United States’s preparedness for a large-scale conflict, its culture of service (or lack thereof), and ongoing efforts to reform and expand military, national, and public service opportunities:

Chinmayi Sharma sits down with Catherine Sharkey, Bryan Choi, and Katrina Geddes for a conversation on how traditional legal doctrines tackle AI:

And on Rational Security, Scott R. Anderson is joined by Alan Z. Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic for an end-of-year discussion of the latest national security news, including the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the enforceability of the pending TikTok ban, the Tornado Cash decision, and which national security story from 2024 deserve the most attention:

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Tell Me Something Interesting

The question was raised on Dog Shirt TV today of the age of the Hallmark Christmas movie.

EJ Wittes investigates:

How old are Hallmark Christmas movies? Well, it depends on your definition. If what you mean is “when did the Hallmark company first make a Christmas movie?” the answer is 1951. Amahl and the Night Visitors was a one-act opera and ballet depicting the story of the birth of Christ, which Hallmark released on TV as the beginning of an anthology series called the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

But that’s not what we mean when we say “Hallmark Christmas movie.” We mean “Christmas themed heteronormative romantic schlock,” a category which definitely does not include operas about the Three Wise Men. So what’s the first movie that should actually count? To answer this question, I decided (somewhat quixotically) to go through the entire list of Hallmark movies one by one, reading the synopses and looking for reviews, until I found a movie which I thought should count. I didn’t think it would have taken very long, but as a matter of fact, it took more than 200 movies released over 50 years.

Hallmark Hall of Fame started by releasing movie adaptations of stage plays. The first few were all Shakespeare, and it took them a while to branch out. There’s a bit of romance, often rather odd—1955’s Dream Girl, for instance, is about a woman desperately fantasizing about her brother-in-law. There’s also a fair bit of Christian content, some of which sounds pretty interesting—1957’s The Green Pastures had God and a number of biblical characters played by Black actors, which apparently provoked press backlash in the South. But most of Hallmark’s movies were pretty normal, with some emphasis on historical fiction. In the first 30 years, there are at least four separate movies about Abraham Lincoln, for instance.

In fact, I was struck, in my (exhaustive and, frankly, exhausting) survey of Hallmark’s work, by just how well-regarded Hallmark movies seem to have been up until relatively recently. To take a random example, a Montreal Gazette review of 1998’s Grace and Glorie says of Hallmark that, “The Hall of Fame imprimatur is a guarantee of intelligent scripts, first-rate actors, and stories that will enlighten and entertain viewers of all ages.”

So, um, what the hell happened to Hallmark movies?

Cable. Cable happened. In 2001, a cable channel which Hallmark had part ownership of was rebranded as the Hallmark Channel, and from there, at least in my judgment, the schlock began instantly. To be fair, the schlock was not being made as “Hallmark Hall of Fame” movies, but rather as “Hallmark Channel” movies. The “Hall of Fame” brand even continued separately for a while before petering out. Meanwhile, the “Hallmark Channel” brand released increasingly similar movies at a quickening pace, eventually beginning the “Countdown to Christmas” cycle of movies annually in 2009.

I can’t say exactly why this happened. I’m guessing there was some judgment about cable audience as opposed to broadcast audience or about the advertising demographic the company was aiming at, but I have no insight into the corporate decision making here. All I can say is that, in 2000, the phrase “Hallmark movie” meant a made-for-TV movie of genuine quality, and, by 2010, that same phrase meant, well, you know.

I don’t think there’s a lesson in this story. If I were a fascist, I would say something about the increasing degeneracy of modern culture, and if I were a communist, I would say something about how capitalism inevitably destroys even the worthy products it creates in its relentless pursuit of greater profit. But I’m actually just a history nerd who was presented with what seemed like it should be a fairly simply question, and turned out to be sort of complicated, as these things so often do.

Hallmark movies used to be good, actually. Who knew?

The Hallmark Christmas movie in the modern sense of the term dates to the early 2000s, and, as far as I can tell, the first true example of the genre is the 2001 film The Sons of Mistletoe. I haven’t seen it, but it looks like it sucks.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is a very sleepy bat. I have no particular commentary on this bat. It is sleepy. It’s a new year, and everyone’s sleepy. This bat represents our somnolent unity. Yawn like the bat, whimper, cover your face with your wing, and sleep. Video from escuerzoresucitado: