the groundhog day project

A couple things... First, back in my Day 52 - if you only had one day to live entry, I explained how this blog is about me as much as it is about... then, I was talking about Groundhog Day , but I suppose whatever movie I’m watching this particular week fits. So, today, this blog is as much about me as (if not more so than) it is about Singin’ in the Rain . I’m of two minds about blogs at the moment (and only at the moment, future me, looking for something to quote in your master’s thesis): 1) blogging is an entirely selfish enterprise. Clearly, I don’t do this for the audience, though I know there is a small group of dedicated folks who check in regularly or semiregularly. If I wanted a bigger audience, I’m sure there would be some way to promote this blog much more than I do now. Just last week, my numbers jumped for a couple days; between Schulman’s “ The Accidental Swami “ and it being Groundhog Day, people were looking up my blog. And, maybe they were intrigued, but that doesn’...

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...

In 1950, 3.8 million households in America had TVs, roughly 9% of homes. By 1952 that number was up to 15.3 million, roughly 34% of households. Fully one third of homes had a television, so film had clear competition. This is just one context in which Singin' in the Rain was released. Like in the film, musicals had emerged almost as soon as talkies had. Feuer (1995) explains: "during the talkie boom that followed [ The Jazz Singer ] (1929-1930), a large percentage of the early musicals took for their subjects the world of entertainment: Broadway, vaudeville, the Ziegfield Follies, burlesque, night clubs, the circus, Tin Pan Alley, and, to a lesser extent, mass entertainment media in the form of radio or Hollywood itself" (p. 441). This is another context in which Singin' in the Rain --or better yet, The Dancing Cavalier --was released. Musicals tended to look at the world of entertainment. Feuer continues: "By the late forties and into the early fifties, a ser...

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...

Yesterday, I shaved. That hasn't been a usual thing for me for a while. I actually was thinking it had been a year and a half since last I actually was clean shaven--I trim the beard from time to time so I'm not sporting a Z Z Top beard or anything. But, Victor (former speech team president, now a fellow coach and grad student) reminded me of something I hadn't realized. Hadn't remembered . About this same time last year, I was in a photo with another coach, and I was clean shaven. Not sure why he's keeping track--though he says when I'm clean shaven I look to be about 12, so I guess it's memorable. Anyway, the thing is, my birthday was last week. And so, last year, I shaved off the beard around my birthday. Maybe--and this is a stretch, now that I think about it--I just grew out the facial hair so much through the California winter that I just needed to trim it. Or maybe, just maybe, I was feeling old. I mean, there are (were) grey hairs in my beard. I don...

Something I love about Singin' in the Rain is that for a movie that is essentially about the use of sound in film, it constantly draws your attention--if you're paying attention--to the moments where sound and image do not really go together. In the Cosmo and Don flashback at the beginning of the film, for example, they are so obviously not playing those fiddles--that's part of the fun of that performance--that at first you might not notice that the tap noises you're hearing do not match their steps. Those sounds weren't recorded on set but added later; just as the fiddle music is not coming from those fiddles, the tap sounds are not coming from those shoes. And, this is what film does. It gives us sounds and images that are not real. Characters that are not real. Stories that are not real. Except, all if it is real, if you're like me. Sitting in the darkened theater, or the living room, the sounds and images become real, the characters become real, and the ...