the groundhog day project

Two things: 1) after getting all serious yesterday with Barthes and punctum , today I'm going with a movie I remember as fairly ridiculous and 2) for a ridiculous movie, this opening music and closeup on Scott Howard (Michael J. Fox) all sweaty and about to shoot a free throw is, well, far too serious, and a little full of itself. It has been a good long while since I'e seen this movie but "pretentious" is not at all a term I might be using watching it again. Anyway, Teen Wolf . I'm figuring this is going to be all obvious with the metaphor (like Ginger Snaps )--lycanthropy as puberty. (Or vice versa.) In a DVD extra with (I think) the third Ginger Snaps film-- Menstrual Monsters --Tanya Krzywinska, Reader in Film, Brunel University, references "old myths about transformation into animal form, and [how] a lot of those myths are about what it is to become uncivilized." In terms of the puberty metaphor, it is the hormonal teenager who is uncivilized. ...

We open on Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson) playing the drums, then a little montage, Keith (Eric Stolz) walking along the tracks, past a factory, past Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson) making out with Hardy (Craig Scheffer). Establish our characters, establish the setting--got some class issues coming, but they probably will remain mostly subtext as usual. For example, Keith's father (John Ashton), who didn't go to college, wants Keith to go to college because, you know, that means he can have opportunities he (the father) didn't have. By the way, it's Some Kind of Wonderful . Amanda Jones is not the same sort of character as Cindy Mancini in Can't Buy Me Love or Maggie in Lucas ... Actually, I'm not so sure those two are even that much alike. Cindy's mother has money, but I think they are still far from upper class. Maggie seems a bit more working class, though obviously above whatever Lucas is. Amanda Jones, here, is like a rich girl, but that's "guilt...

The nerd and the cheerleader--a classic 80s setup. So many love stories cross class (and clique) divides; it's a variation on the Cinderella plot, of course. One party gets prettied up to be with the other. In Can't Buy Me Love , Ronald (Patrick Dempsey) pays for the makeover, and a month of pretend with Cindy (Amanda Peterson). Roger Ebert makes a point in his quite negative review about how these two are "materialistic twits" or at least make teenagers look like as much. But, as I bring up his review to see what he has to say, this exchange happens (as Ronald washes Cindy's car and she sits and watches): CINDY You know, when I offered you a ride home, it wasn't to get you to wash my car. RONALD I don't mind. Actually, I kind of like it. CINDY You're a hard worker. Work's not really my thing. RONALD Cheerleading's hard work. You do it well. CINDY I guess. But, what I mean is that I don't do much else... except for shop and hangout. ...