the groundhog day project

You know what else Hedwig atones for? All of America's sordid history. Seriously, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is all about things divided, how we repair the damage, or cover it up. From the Civil War to Civil Rights, we've got a rather fucked up history full of divides and differences. And, however much we think we've got (metaphorically, of course) a good wig and makeup on, we're still split down the middle in so many ways. Hedwig tries to make up for that. Hedwig's at 17/15 by the way, on the Christ-Figuring scale. And, the completist in me wants to finish off the list. I also want to talk about America, about history, about life, about who and what we are. I would also love to write all about Hedwig's one liners and puns. Or the fact that Hedwig's mother's job in East Berlin was teaching sculpture to limbless children, which is immensely sad (unless they are all Buddhists or something and it's imaginary sculpture, like internal mandalas, and t...

I’m home from a spontaneous trip to the Hollywood Hills tonight. Went up there with my son, and we hiked around in the dark and took some cool photos of the city lights. It’s the kind of spontaneous trip that makes life quite interesting. The kind of trip that slows life down so you can look around. Ferris’ philosophy, which he relates at the start and end of the film, is like the thesis statement for the Groundhog Day Project . For Groundhog Day . For Phil Connors. I think of my WWPCD? bracelet and the answer is simple—take whatever Ferris Bueller would do and shave off a little dickishness. But, there are some other things to get out of the way on this, Day 7 with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off . The lost topics. i.e. the topics I could get to if I had more days. I mean, if I had another week or more with this movie, I could do an entire series of entries on German-American immigrant history in Chicago and how this film is a celebration of their contribution to America—you think it’s a...

I watched The Wizard of Oz synced up with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon today, and I toyed with the idea of syncing it up with Groundhog Day tonight, see what happens. I was operating, I think, under the assumption that I needed some new approach if I was going to watch this movie again. Another month of... other movies down, now Groundhog Day one more time. The thing is, I don’t need some novel approach, some clever take on the film using some new piece of research. Like I argued slasher films were like going home at one point in this past month of slasher films, watching Groundhog Day —well that is like home for me. It occurs to me that I have not indexed this blog in a while . It also occurs to me, I do not feel like grabbing all the links to the past two month worth of entries. Oddly enough, I’ve been indexing titles and links (but not descriptions) for all the blog entries lately, preparing for work on my thesis. (And still, I can notice something new. Namely, the gu...

The first bit I've got highlighted in Benesh's (2011) dissertation is, "such an iconic film can be seen as contemporary myth proposing an interpretation of the culture from which it originated" (p. 1). This is the kind of argument I will have use as justification in my own thesis as to why I am using this particular film, Groundhog Day as my case study. Fueling this mythic notion would be the addition of "Groundhog Day" to our lexicon for any situation mired in repetition and getting nowhere (some examples here ). The next highlight-- and I realize this might be too "systematic" an approach --is, "The film has been adopted by 'Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, and followers of the oppressed Chinese Falun Gong movement,' as well as Platonists, Aristotelian(s), and 'countless professors use it to teach ethics and a host of philosophical approaches' (Goldberg, 2005, para. 3, cited in Benesh, 2011, p. ...

I like that Gregory Solman, writing for Film Comment in November 1993, agrees with me that Phil Connors merely “memorize[s] French poetry” rather than the usual interpretation people make—that Phil actually learned French. I, of course, also contend that Phil didn’t necessarily master the piano either—we only see him play two songs... but there’s a problem with cynicism on that second bit. See, presuming the Phil doesn’t learn French but merely memorizes enough to impress Rita fits with the flow of the story; at that particular point in the time loop and in the filmic representation of Phil’s journey through the loop, it makes sense that Phil would take the shortcut. But, later, on the final day of the time loop, it doesn’t make as much sense to assume Phil isn’t really making the effort. But, that’s just the obvious take—that Phil improves himself in act three and that’s a bit of the lesson he learns: bettering himself makes him worthy of release from the time loop. Of course, there...