the groundhog day project

(A small correction: Clark does wear the Santa hat and coat (open), but not the beard, when he goes a little crazy with the chainsaw and places the burnt gifts under the new tree.) Of course, Christmas Vacation and so many other Christmas movies should be about nostalgia. Our enjoyment of the holidays, really, is about nostalgia. Every holiday celebrates something in the past, and usually a slightly invented version of whatever that something is. But, before we even get into invented history and the celebration thereof, there’s Freud. Hutton (1988) tells us about the “lost self” which Freud believed was formed yet largely forgotten as a consequence of the psyche’s encounter with early life experience. One’s sense of identity is forged out of the behavioral patterns established through the psyche’s reckoning with particular experiences, especially those of childhood. (p. 123) Essentially, our experience of self in the present is built on our experience of self in the past. Ad...

The thing is: he didn’t. Let me back up. The final line in Christmas Vacation is Clark saying, “I did it.” But, really, he didn’t do much of anything. He went to get the tree, forgot a saw, got the tree home, put part of it inside and broke a couple windows. He wanted to prove Santa was real to his niece but even if she thought that plastic Santa flying through the air was the real thing, he didn’t do that. He put up those 25,000 bulbs but without his wife flipping that switch there never would have been any light to them. He only got his Christmas bonus because Eddie kidnapped his boss. Clark accomplishes pretty much nothing in this movie. Even his freak out results not in him getting violent (like in the original) but Eddie. Hell, he breaks a hole through the “floor” of the attic yet doesn’t climb down through it to get out. Instead, he sits in the attic and reminisces about old times that don’t really exist. That last bit is kinda the point, though. Christmas here, is just a...

Weird trivia found on IMDb : there were only two Christmas-themed movies released in theaters in 1989, this one and Prancer (and Johnny Galecki was in both); and there were three movies with animated openers that year— Honey, I Shrunk the Kids , Troop Beverly Hills and this one. The animated opening is odd. On the one hand, it gets us in the mood for a little irreverent and cartoonish humor. But, on the other hand, it, in my opinion, distances the film from Santa by injuring him and sending him flying away in a hurry. But, maybe that’s a) accidental (or at least incidental) or b) entirely on purpose to give National Lampoon some breathing room. After all, Santa doesn’t really appear in this movie except a little plastic version that Clark kicks in the face. This movie leaves Santa to the side—except for Clark’s conversation with Ruby Sue and the flight of Santa and his reindeer at the end of the movie—for something... else. Strangely, this movie does not deal as much in family dis...

Considering Clark Griswold was supposed to be a little more forceful at Wally World and hijack the plane home in the original film (before details were changed), his aggressiveness on the road at the start of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation fits the character. It’s not in any way a realistic take on a human being but for Clark Griswold it makes sense. He’s more of a cartoon character. But, I don’t want to start my week of Christmas Vacation getting into Clark’s character, though I may get into that later; I want to talk about Christmas movies. About Christmas. About meaning. Home Alone is a modern classic among Christmas movies, but it’s barely about Christmas; it just happens to occur around the holiday. Even more so, Black Christmas . The question then is what is Christmas about and, more importantly, what should a Christmas movie be about? Let us jump past the obvious Christian aspects and the obvious pagan aspects to deal with something I think is bigger: capitalism...

A babysitter receives a phone call. The man on the line asks about the children she’s babysitting. After several calls, she calls the police and they trace the next call—it’s coming from a second line inside the house. The version of this story that I know best comes not from someone telling the story around a campfire or wherever but from When a Stranger Calls . Interpretation of this story can go a lot of directions. The babysitter not doing her job thoroughly may stem from fear of such in an age when young women were claiming more independence and, like Jess in Black Christmas rejecting motherhood and other “womanly” ideals. Like the notion (somewhat via Clover (1992)) that female sexuality is being punished in the slasher film, the urban legend of the babysitter and the man upstairs deals in feminine independence (not necessarily or exclusively sexuality) being punished by a man positioned literally and figuratively above her. It’s arguably about patriarchy, paternalism, the punis...

It’s not just feminism that birthed the slasher film. I’m reminded of CNTV 393 at USC, particularly September 27, 1994. Jess’ announcement—“I’m pregnant”—we only hear from outside the window. We are only in the room in time for Peter’s reaction. Essentially, we are with him , not with her. Not right then. That day in class we watched Ten North Frederick , starring Gary Cooper. I barely remember the movie and only generally recall the notion of “male melodrama.” But, fret not, because I still have my notes. Not the quality of notes I might have from more recent forays in the college classroom, but there’s some useful information. For instance, Professor Casper defined the male melodrama as a movie that “traces a series of adventures, professional labors, and sexual episodes of a male protagonist through which the male comes to some understanding about the meaning of life, usually involving spiritual values.” The movie is, on the surface, not about Peter, yet we are with him again—...

Silent Night, Deadly Night is awesome and it amuses me that the main character is named Billy considering how the killer in Black Christmas calls himself Billy*. Silent Night, Deadly Night falls right in the middle of a big wave of slasher films and is full of blood and breasts and stuff actually happens... unlike Black Christmas . While Nowell’s (2010) argument that Black Christmas was a pioneer film for what would become the slasher genre it almost is not a horror film at all. Instead it’s something more of a drama, with hints of melodrama and interruptions of horror. It’s strange amalgamated structure is on purpose, of course. As Nowell describes it, “It was Canadian and it was the product of a complex network of transnational indutrial shifts that had been unfolding in the late 1960s and early 1970s involving the Canadian government, the Hollywood majors, America’s theater-going youths, and independent filmmakers from around the world” (p. 61). Nowell argues that Black Christma...