Site for Sore Eyes Blog - Berkeley, CA

Site for Sore Eyes Berkeley Claims: “’Tis the Time for Spectacles of the Season!”

Constitution Square is bustling with holiday spirit! With the season in full swing, an interesting realization occurred to the staff at Site for Sore Eyes Berkeley. Let us first suggest…when you watch one of your favorite holiday specials or movies this year, take note of characters who wear eyewear.

Ever since we featured a blog topic earlier in the year that covered Oscar-nominated movies and stars who sported spectacles of some kind or another, it has become a reflex (or, as said before, an occupational preoccupation) for us to sit up and take notice of anyone in popular culture that sports this vision accessory.

We begin with an obvious choice: Santa Claus. In the 1994 remake of “Miracle on 34^th Street,” the late great Sir Richard Attenborough donned a pair of very distinctive and classical-looking specs for his performance as St. Nick. Note how these frames suggest an old-fashioned, timeless look, to suggest the agelessness of Santa Claus.

While we’re discussing Santa, have you seen the Rankin-Bass special, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” this year? He’s not as famous as Rudolph, Shermy or Yukon Cornelius, but we are always glad to see this eyeglasses-wearing representative of the Elf community.

Now, we leave the North Pole and travel to Hohman, Indiana to reacquaint ourselves with the Parker family. In the never-failing-to-entertain “A Christmas Story,” little Ralphie Parker (he of the oversized owl-like tortoise-shell frames) is obsessed with getting a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle, in spite of never-ending warnings of “you’ll shoot your eye out.”

What you’ve seen here is but a sample of pop culture characters that are (for lack of better phrasing) characterized by eyeglasses. We want to finish on a cautionary note about eyewear, and the importance of keeping your prescription up-to-date. 

By now, you must have caught at least a scene or two of Frank Capra’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” set at Christmas time in Bedford Falls (a place not unlike Hohman). Two characters, Henry F. Potter and Uncle Billy cross paths. Potter is a vicious, selfish old man who makes Scrooge look like a choirboy, and Uncle Billy is well-meaning but bumbling. 

As eye care professionals, we sometimes wondered if the problems of these two could have been because they never upgraded their prescriptions. Think about it! If Potter got new spectacles, he would have had better vision and might not have been in a foul mood all the time, and if Uncle Billy had tied another string around his finger to remind him to go to the eye doctor, he might have seen clearer and been more on the ball. (But then…there would be no movie.)

Is there a film or TV special that features some eye-catching eyewear that’s not listed here? Write and let us know!

Hope the season is treating you well, and that all of your holiday shopping and preparations are going smoothly.

Thanks for reading…and keep your sites on healthy vision.