the groundhog day project

I wrote about Footloose --my first film for 1984 in this childhood deconstruction--once before in this blog. I used it to begin my Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon -inspired month back in February 2016. And, speaking of tying things together--the title of that entry, taking its title from a line from the film, was " all of our lives are ties up with each other "--the film begins with random pairs of feet dancing to the titular Kenny Loggins tune. No characters, no faces. It's deliberately universalizing in its fun. Those feet could be anybody, any of us. And then, there's the preaching, and then high school girls being bad (and doing dangerous things; at least Ariel (Lori Singer) risk serious injury, anyway). I wrote before several attempts to link the characters to The Tempest through the name Ariel. I didn't write much about religion, but religion is all over this film. From Reverend Moore's (John Lithgow) opening sermon to the oppressive atmosphere all over the...

There's a poster on James' (Kyle Mooney) bedroom wall in his... captive home? It says: CURIOSITY IS AN UNNATURAL EMOTION If you could ever actually convince someone of this, you would certainly be able to imprison them and control them... And, yes, that was leaning into a rant about religion or politics, but instead I wanted to concern myself with something closer to the actual text (or at least its subtext) of the film today. James has been held captive since he was a kid, but he thinks his captors his real parents, he thinks the world full of toxic air so they cannot go outside without protection. He only knows the underground bunker in the desert where they have raised him, and the worlds of Brigsby Bear , the TV show his father has produced just for him over the years--25 volumes, 736 episodes. He has these on VHS and has watched them time and time again. They are, in many ways, more real to him than his own monotonous life inside the bunker--his Groundhog Day Effect, i...