the groundhog day project

“You can’t poop in this town without everyone knowing what color it is.” – Lou ( Doc Hollywood ) I find myself coming back to Groundhog Day tonight. I just watched Ringu and now The Ring is on and it occurs to me that both of these films (one being a remake of the other, there should be no surprise there) and Groundhog Day involve a sort of romanticization of the small town, or at least the rural, as opposed to the larger urban environment. I had to throw in that “sort of” because the romanticization in Ringu and The Ring (and to a lesser extent in The Ring Two ) is actually a bit negative, a hint of the invasion of the city, the crowding leading to a dangerous environment. It’s interesting that I cited Gerbner et al (1986) yesterday because I’m reminded of Gerbner’s mean world syndrome in which our viewing of (the violence in) television (and movies) leads us to conceive the world around us as more dangerous than it actually is. The cursed tape in Ringu and The Ring cou...

I don’t mean to talk about television again. I really don’t. But, there is more to say. Regular reader of this blog, Maolshechlann, for example, wrote in his blog a couple years back about television , specifically about being “brought up by television.” An idea I can relate to. An idea I’m sure Samara Morgan in The Ring can relate to, though for her it is almost forced upon her in her loft high up in the barn. Maolsheachlann writes, So when I claim that I was brought up by television, I really mean that everybody my age was brought up by television... TV was out first window onto the wider world, and one’s earliest influences always imprint themselves upon the imagination. The blank slate is gone forever... Even all my romantic notions of the simple, the pre-technological and the traditional were supplied by television. In setting myself against the cultural influence of television and popular culture, I am in a sense like some post-colonial African leader who was educated at Oxf...