the groundhog day project

The movie begins with the song "(Don't You) Forget About Me" over the opening titles. Then a black screen and lines from David Bowie's "Changes" (recommended to Hughes by Ally Sheedy, by the way): "...And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through..." Or think they're aware, anyway. It's a hopeful thought for teenagers--children--that they are "immune" to the actions or words of folks like Assistant Principal Richard Vernon (or Principal Edward Rooney) or teachers or mothers and fathers, or each other for that matter. Those who spit upon them, those who would tell them what to do and how to do it, who to be and how to be it--unfortunately, we are never entirely immune. Each of these characters is trapped in a role he/she didn't really choose. Whether smothered or ignored by parents, pushes around by the admi...

Again, with Prudence. Aside from a few other women in the Vietnam sequence--and, apparently, she's one of them--she is the only Asian in the cast. Jo-Jo isn't quite the token African American, but he's close. And, his introduction plays on his race as a token story inclusion. The cover of "Let It Be" in this movie is amazing but the Detroit riot sequence as an introduction to Jo-Jo, in retrospect, is a bit... trite, obvious, manipulative, and simplistic. Nucho (2007) points out, rightly, that "revisiting the Detroit riots with a gospel version of "Let It Be" blaring in the background; in fact, it's a rather self-serving, arrogant gesture to use a Beatles song to represent the revolution against hundreds of years of brutality and racist oppression in the U.S." The problem is cultural/racial appropriation. There is no in-story reason for Jo-Jo to be African American. Sure, he's our stand-in for Jimi Hendrix, but when your story is stru...