the groundhog day project

There's a bit of brilliance to figuring out the various toys' personalities, except within the text, it's quite limiting for who they get to be. They don't fully have free will, is what it is. Mr. Potato Head is for "Ages 3 and Up" so he's a bit pretentious, full of himself. He's too good for, well, Andy's sister; that's probably the only kid under 3 close by. (He's also both the most expressive and the most... incomplete because of his interchangeable parts.) Rex is not an older kid's dinosaur; he's made for toddlers so he's timid, not even remotely as scary as he wants to be. Slinky Dog can lengthen his body, so he is both literally and figuratively stretched thin by his position as Woody's de facto assistant. Ham is not even a toy; he's made for holding money, but that makes him stingy, selfish, a bit of a know it all because he's not like the rest of them. Mr. Spell is made for teaching so, of course, he arra...

Let us just get this out of the way on Day One. Buzz Lightyear is a cinematic Christ-Figure. Or Woody is... maybe. Buzz is 1 tangible and 2 central and definitely an 3 outsider . He is not, strictly speaking, 4 divinely sourced , but as the toys' primary life (and there's a whole discussion to be had there ) is with Andy and Buzz was given to him by his mother... well, that is an outside enough source to qualify. 4/4 No 4.5 miraculous birth ... that I know of. But, since Buzz never knew his father, maybe there's something there (but that is outside this particular text--the original Toy Story ). Buzz definitely qualifies for the 5 alter ego and 6 special/normal points because of his amnesia. Hell, he almost gets the special/normal point because of the whole "toy" thing, but even more so because he thinks he's really a Space Ranger. 6/6 Buzz definitely has 7 twelve associates . (Remember, it doesn't have to actually be twelve because most movies...

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...

There's danger ahead. See, I want to run Hedwig through the Kozlovic-Black scale, but I know my arguments regarding 15.75 atonement might offend some. Or should . Anyway, let's just do this. Hedwig is quite 1 tangible and 2 central and an 3 outsider . 3/3 Regarding 4 divinely sourced , Kozlovic (2009) explains, "Christ-Figures usually arrive onto the scene through some form of deliberate outside intervention, sometimes by a distant God-figure" (p. 6). The stress there is mine because obviously Hedwig is not in America because of a distant God-figure. He's there because of Luther... who coincidentally shares a name with the founder of a branch of Christianity. There is outside intervention. 4/4 Hedwig's birth is not exactly a 4.5 miraculous birth but Hedwig is born from Hansel because of an accident. I'm driven to Merriam-Webster for what should be a basic concept-- miracle . The first definition is "an extraordinary event manifesting div...

Hedwig. From the Germanic name Hadewig, derived from the Germanic elements hadu "battle, combat" and wig "war". Also, the name of, apparently, two different saints. Plus, on a very simplistic level, there's the pun on head wig . Hedwig is a character in conflict. With Tommy Gnosis. With Yitzhak. With the Angry Inch (the band). With her angry inch. With herself. She has little emotion but anger through most of the present storyline. While Yitzhak listens to Rent and wears a Rent t-shirt and auditions for (and gets offered a part in ) a traveling production of Rent ... Yitzhak is a romantic. He wants more than cold intercourse. He wants love. Or at least some sort of acceptance. On the other hand, Hedwig is stuck. She claims she's looking for her "other half" but she's just stalking Tommy. She cannot see what she has. She is too damaged. And, like another Tommy , she is a bit deaf and blind. Speaking of Tommy (which came up last week ...

(650) I was going to make a point today about performativity and performance... but then I thought maybe I'd already made it. Some scribbled notes on my copy of Brickell's (2005) "Masculinities, Performativity, and Subversion" that I wanted to share, and a quick Google search and I found the blog entry-- Day 557 - i think i hear a footstep --in which I typed up my scribbles word-for-word... I suppose you can go read that entry (which, ostensibly, was about Singin' in the Rain , by the way) but the basic gist was that all performance is performativity. That is, everything we do, even our subversions, our revolutions, are defined and con fined by what the world tells us we can get away with. I just recently started reading José Esteban Muñoz' (1999) book, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics . The gist I'm getting so far to his idea of disidentification is effectively finding your identity in the differences, the opposite ...

I've already pointed out how the musical offers "the greatest illusion of spontaneity and effortlessness" (Feuer, 1995, p. 447). Additionally, it offers timelessness, even in the midst of its story. The stage version of Hedwig , I've heard, is set during a single show, with the asides and flashbacks (and I hope animations) drawing on that. This film version offers several different shows and a linear plotline that covers probably less than half the film, with the flashbacks and asides and animations adding to that plotline even as they pull away from it. Flashbacks as memory--they don't exist in the past, they exist in the present. (I remember in my Media Theory class last quarter, we were talking about Groundhog Day , which happened a few times, and whether or not it was "Classical Hollywood Cinema." The professor had a problem with the nonlinear structure, but I argued that the film is actually quite linear. Phil's story is linear. It's just ...