the groundhog day project

I rethink things. Too much sometimes. For example, I had intended to revisit the TV Time Loop episodes I'd watched before ( here , here and here ) for this blog when summer break came. Watched two off the top of the randomized list yesterday and then looked back at the previous entry that included those two and I'm not sure I really added anything especially notable in the more recent discussion. Rethinking my actions, or worse yet, overthinking actions before I've even committed to them--this has been a problem of mine for a while. Today we--the speech team--had our first of four planned summer practices. One of the team-building exercises we did involved "fear rocks." Basic idea, at the beginning of practice everyone got a rock--mine was particularly big and kinda wedge shaped, the kind of thing that would cause blunt force trauma a bit too well if it came to that. On that rock, we each wrote a fear we had regarding the upcoming year in forensics. Then, we...

So, we have Phil Connors, "arrogant, self-serving professional climber" in one corner, kindhearted, open Rita Hanson in the other. It's therapy, it's character growth, it's a cycle of birth and rebirth and rebirth and rebirth for Phil... what is it for Rita? Todd May, at The New York Times writes about Phil's passion, or rather his lack thereof in the middle portion of the film. Phil demonstrates passion early in the film, May argues, and has a different sort of passion at the end of the film, but after his pursuit of Rita, there's no passion. May's explanation: "Murray's character has come to terms with his situation. He alone knows what is going to happen, over and over again. He has no expectations for anything different... He radiates warmth and kindness, but also a certain distance." Again, I ask, what is there for Rita in the end of Phil's story? She can't remember their dates. Just yesterday, from her perspective, this j...

( Enough about religion... for now.) Let's talk instead about something light: psychoanalysis. In the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (87 (2006), 1387-98), Richard Almond tells us that "[i]n the paradigm of the therapeutic narrative, a troubled person plays out his/her typical pattern in relation to an other who is more anonymous, a foil who is depicted in idealized and/or mysterious terms." This "other" is Rita, and Phil is the one undergoing the therapeutic process in Groundhog Day . As I've mentioned before, Claire S. Bacha, in Psychodynamic Counselling (4.3 (Aug 1998), 383-406), claims Rita as "the object of Phil's desire exactly because she seems so much his opposite." Both Bacha and Almond are putting the onus for Phil's transformation, at least in part, on his attachment to Rita, whether it's idealization, attraction, or both. I think I'd side with Almond on this one. Almond tells us that Groundhog Day is of ...