We are a few months shy of Groundhog Day. However, I thought we could spend some time writing about the myth of the story and how it relates to magical realism.
In the film, Bill Murray plays a lost character -- an arrogant journalist stuck in a repetitive time labyrinth he can't hope to escape unless he solves the emotional puzzle within himself.
The story is a blend of fantasy and reality that supposes we can believe the idea that a man can be trapped in a time-loop until he figures out what is wrong with him. This alone is the fantastic element that the viewer is asked to "buy" in order to make the story work.
In one scene, which turns out to be central to the movie's theme, he expresses his despair to two working class drinking buddies in a local bar.
One of his two inebriated companions then points to a beer glass and sums up the way he is responding to his situation: "You know, some guys would look at this glass and they would say, you know, 'that glass is half empty'. Other guys'd say 'that glass is half full'. I bet you is (or I peg you as) a 'the glass is half empty' kind of guy. Am I right?"
The story is basically about a man who sees the assignment of covering Groundhog Day, in a small western Pennsylvania town, as beneath him. As he lives the same day, over and over, he finally finds meaning in something he used to view as frivolous.
Now, he sees the glass as half full, and the day as a form of freedom. As he expresses it in a corny TV speech about the weather that he gives for the camera, at the umpteenth ceremony he has covered of the coming out of the groundhog:
"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the of warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."
In other words, having accepted the conditions of life and learned the pleasures afforded by human companionship, he is no longer like all those people who fear life's travails, and try to use the weather forecast, by human or groundhog, to control events. He accepts "winter" as an opportunity.
We are going to be watching a piece of this film and discussing it from a few different angles.
Before that...
Today's creative writing assignment is a journal assignment that will be worth 20 points. However, it should be longer than a few lines. Don't go cheap on this one. Really invest yourself in it. In this entry, write about a mortal character who must navigate the trials of a supernatural experience, but must look inward for his/her own escape.
Begin your story with the line: "A minute of failure..."
Often in magical realism, the answers lie within...
You may begin writing now...
