the groundhog day project

Hedwig. From the Germanic name Hadewig, derived from the Germanic elements hadu "battle, combat" and wig "war". Also, the name of, apparently, two different saints. Plus, on a very simplistic level, there's the pun on head wig . Hedwig is a character in conflict. With Tommy Gnosis. With Yitzhak. With the Angry Inch (the band). With her angry inch. With herself. She has little emotion but anger through most of the present storyline. While Yitzhak listens to Rent and wears a Rent t-shirt and auditions for (and gets offered a part in ) a traveling production of Rent ... Yitzhak is a romantic. He wants more than cold intercourse. He wants love. Or at least some sort of acceptance. On the other hand, Hedwig is stuck. She claims she's looking for her "other half" but she's just stalking Tommy. She cannot see what she has. She is too damaged. And, like another Tommy , she is a bit deaf and blind. Speaking of Tommy (which came up last week ...

A good chunk of what I am about to write, I figure, goes out to near-future me, writing away on his master's thesis. Don't fret. Don't be discouraged. This writing thing, after all, is what you do. My week with Across the Universe and my month with movie musicals comes to an end tonight. And, a part of me kinda wants to stay here, tucked away in the fantasy of it all. In the world of the musical, anything is possible and even heartbreak comes with a nice song and dance number. Well, maybe not dance. Three of the four musicals this month were built on existing songs, existing thoughts and feelings, existing emotional experiences... well, really, all four were built on existing thoughts and feelings and emotional experiences. Every movie is, musical or not. We can live vicariously in a film best when more parts of it are just close enough to be relatable to our realities. And when it's a musical we get to relate ourselves into, to commit a sort of method participation...

A long day today. We co-hosted a speech tournament this weekend and today was our half. Got to campus at 6:30 in the morning, didn’t make it home until almost 10 at night. Though there was conversation here and there about movies, I didn’t get much chance to think about this movie— Singin’ in the Rain —or to do any new research. In looking at Cohan (2000), though, I noticed a line I hadn’t included when I was talking about gender . Cohan writes: The paradoxical basis of Kelly’s star image, then, is that while he expresses his virility through a dance, he also worries about losing it in dance. His typical pairing alongside a more effeminate co-star such as O’Connor gives Kelly’s masculinity its social inflection of gender—the working-class man, psychologized by his dependence on post-adolescent male friendships—while allowing for the erotic spectacle of his dancing. (p. 71) Cohan goes on to talk about Kelly’s athleticism as a sort of counter to the “erotic spectacle” but that’s...

I'm trying to think if the quest to make The Dancing Cavalier counts as an external quest or an internal quest. In Doughton's (1996) terms, that is (or really, wherever she got those terms; she didn't invent them). Is starring in a musical--for Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor, Don Lockwood or Cosmo Brown-- masculine ? Singin' in the Rain certainly upholds binary gender roles, pairing off men and women... well, man and woman . If we ignore Cosmo for a moment, at least. Cohan (2000) suggets that several "binarized terms... dominate the entire narrative: body/voice, image/sound, naturalness/engineering, innovation/obsolescence" (p. 56). Cohan hints at some of the issues with gender later but doesn't list male/female among the binarized terms. But, clearly, the genders are distinct and unequal in the film. Nevermind the stereotypical gender roles in the films-within-the-film, The Royal Rascal , The Duelling [sic] Cavalier , and possibly even more so,...

Yesterday 's entry was, I think, incomplete. And, I think I did that on purpose. When writing about becoming something, becoming someone , it's hard to put a finishing touch on the piece. Like life itself, it's open ended. Even after you die, if there was anyone who knew you, who you were changes depending on who's looking back, and in what context. Don Lockwood actually doesn't change a whole lot over the course of the movie. He begins as a star and ends still as a star. The guy in his Dora Bailey story--as opposed to the guy he presents himself as--that guy seems like someone who could already appreciate a girl like Kathy. What really changes about Don is his public persona. Maybe. Similarly, though Cosmo's job changes, from humble piano player to the guy in charge of music, Cosmo himself--he doesn't really change. He's still the same guy at the end of the movie that he was at the beginning of it. Lina gets the opportunity to be pushy, but her per...

John McClane is "a New York Cop." His label makes him who he is. It defines him. It keeps him from moving to California to be with his wife. His wife's label: "Gennaro, Holly." (also, Genn e ro, movie mistake.) Her label paints her as a single woman, available to do business with Nakatomi clients. It also invites--even though he actually knows better--Harry Ellis to hit on her. The reality of her being married is less important to her day-to-day life than the "reality" of who she presents herself as. Goffman's presentation of self or something similar that I've referenced before... Insert that here (as I noted yesterday , I'm away from my binders and working on two devices which limits on-the-spot research.). We are who we say we are, until our actions prove otherwise. Through Die Hard , McClane remains a New York cop. Holly, on the other hand changes, giving her name as McClane at the end of the movie... which is actually rather wro...