the groundhog day project

In my Oral Communication class, there's this bit in the book about how we use narratives to communicate. It's not that important to the overall curriculum, isn't on the final, but it makes for a fun lesson for the class. I ask for a story that everyone knows. We usually end up with a few fairy tale kind of stories-- Cinderella , Snow White , Little Red Riding Hood ... the latter works the best. With a little guided interrogation, I get my class as a whole to figure out together what sort of metaphors might be in the story. Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves is a great elaboration on what eight classes have now come up with. Short version: it's all about sex and what a proper girl should do. Long version... well, read on. Movie starts with Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) asleep, supposedly with a stomach ache, and it seems like an occasion is coming--she's got a new dress hanging in her room and her older sister has just arrived. (I think it's her sister's ...

I found it amusing, reading Benesh (2011), that she only watched the (entire) film 8 times over the course of 2 months (p. 65). In describing how she collected images and symbols within the film, she also suggests that "even after multiple viewings, it is impossible to list every image and object and less so to analyze such" (ibid). If nothing else, the purpose of The Groundhog Day Project is to prove that statement false. For example, Benesh does list the snowman, though she deals with it in terms of the color white and spheres--I've already suggested that "snowmen and snowballs" are "perfectly reasonable objects to have in a story set in midwinter." Same for the color white. The color blue, in which Benesh also sees significance-- obviously I think there's something going on there. But, with white? I don't think so. As for the snowman (or snowmen, really, since we see two of them... sort of), I think there's a better line of symbolism...