It seems the author thinks Phil and Rita had sex on the last night, but she says, "Why weren't you that frisky last night?" I took that to mean they didn't have sex.
posted
I think he meant they had sex in the morning.
If I had spent 10 years in limbo (which is what Harold Ramis estimated Phil's time at), I would also want to have some seriously crazy jungle sex upon escaping.
quote: simpering virginal, yet ready to fall into this booby's arms like any other breeding animal... why doesn't He blast them for it if He's so moonstruck by virginity? He's a hedonist at heart, Wormwood...
From The Screwtape Letters. A little lack of restraint doesn't necessarily mean that Screwtape and Co. are coming out ahead.
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posted
Interesting, but I think that the author made the same flaws of parochial interpretation that he claimed other people did. I think this is best summed up in this:
quote: I should add, though, that the movie is not perfect. Rita’s final “redemption” of Phil, for instance, results in their sleeping together the next morning. (Call it the incense that had to be thrown on the Hollywood fire.) Also, despite promising hints, Phil’s turn to God is underdeveloped and falls short of a full religious conversion.
This is only tenable if you accept that sex is impure (or at least impure in that specific instance). Even other religious contexts where they don't regard sex as degrading could see this sex as a mystical union between the male and female which would serve as the proper consumation of the death-rebirth journey.
Regardless, the central message of Groundhog Day is more catholic than Catholic. Phil changes not out of religious conversion but because after so long in his original way of approaching the world, he sees it's emptiness and discovers a more meaningful one inside himself.
If you asked him why he acts the way he does now, I doubt his answer would reference religion. Rather, he acts as he does because he has learned that it is the way that gives him most joy.
While it may have many meanings, the shadow concept likely references references Carl Jung's shadow archetype. According to Jung, the shadow is the darker side of the personality where the things like hate and violence and (in reference to the sex as degrading/enlightening this) lust reside.
One of the interesting things about shadows, in real life as well as in Jung's thought, is that they affect what you see. Phil's shadow side was extremely strong throughout most of the movie. This not only means that he acts out of lower motivation, but that he sees the rest of the world as acting out of these same motivations. As long as he sees this shadow, he's trapped in winter, frozen, separate, and incapable of the intrinsic central human act of creation (it's no mistake that much of his awakening - or perhaps thawing is a better term - occurs as he is joyfully creating).
What starts him on his path of awakening is that, being held in one place and exhausting his old ways of doing things, he starts to see glimmers of unshadowed sunlight both in himself and in others and he starts to nuture and cultivate this sunlight. Phil turns, not to an external God, but to the light-filled internal parts of himself.
None of this is necessarily inconsistent with a Catholic (or many other types of religious) interpretation, but I don't think that it's suitably encompassed by a parochial interpretation either. Certainly this isn't the case where the intetpretation takes what is supposed to be a beautiful, meaningful sexual act that was all about creativity and absent of lust and makes it into something dirty. It may be dirty in the worldview of the interpreter, but I don't think that this view is consistent with the intent of the movie.
edit: As a sidenote, if there is a purgatory, I think that it will take on a very similar aspect to Groundhog Day and be resolved in largely the same way, not through the expiation of sin through suffering, but through enlightenment to oneself. Such a purgatory is not something that you are sentenced to by an external force, but rather something that your internal makeup has you seeing heaven as. You would be in what could be paradise, but you are not equiped to see it.
quote:the central message of Groundhog Day is more catholic than Catholic
Nice turn of phrase . Of course, a lot of what's good about Catholicism is also more catholic than Catholic, which is why we named ourselves that in the first place .
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posted
Uh, actually I think this article just kind of ruined the whole lightheartneses of the movie that I enjoyed...........
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posted
Now the true deep question is this: Did the writer of the screenplay actually think all this up as he was doing it or did he just write a great lighthearted movie and the theologians have just ripped it into little theological peices? Posts: 832 | Registered: Jan 2005
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but the thing about a truth-telling thing is, that you can use it as a tool to bring out what is true about your worldview.
It's not that Groundhog Day or the Matrix are especially good reasons to believe one way or another... they are great *myths* in the original sense: stories that tell great truths through example rather than theory.
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posted
I pretty much agree with Squick's take on it, and would expand on it to say that most philosophies of life could be similarly found in the movie in some way. The articles would read quite differently, but everyone would recognize the movie in it. And each would leave out some aspect of the movie another would find to be incredibly important and profound. In essence, I think the movie contains a particular reflection of a greater truth. Since most other moral philosophies and religions also contain a particular reflection of a greater truth, the parralells will be present to some degree.
I would assume the writer thought of some of it in broad sweeps - the movies carefully constructed to have Phil move from more self-centered goals through to more others-focused goals, with the odd serve from that course here and there. Such an arc can be reflected in almost any religion or moral philosophy.
Squick: I believe you've mentioned Leaf by Niggle before, yes? The purgatory described there has some things in common with your view. While it is imposed by external powers, and it does have some (mild) suffering, the emphasis is on learning and growth as opposed to punishment.
quote:As a sidenote, if there is a purgatory, I think that it will take on a very similar aspect to Groundhog Day and be resolved in largely the same way, not through the expiation of sin through suffering, but through enlightenment to oneself. Such a purgatory is not something that you are sentenced to by an external force, but rather something that your internal makeup has you seeing heaven as. You would be in what could be paradise, but you are not equiped to see it.
I believe Dante has the people in purgatory leave when they decide they are ready, but I read that long ago and may be wrong.
quote:If I had spent 10 years in limbo (which is what Harold Ramis estimated Phil's time at), I would also want to have some seriously crazy jungle sex upon escaping.
posted
Didn't you guys watch the commentary? They left it ambiguous on purpose. What kind of Groundhog Day zealots are you pretending to be?
The question I thought was interesting, from a Maslow /self-actualization view, is the problem of whether he needed the relationship to be complete. I don't think it was the case that Rita staying broke him out of the cycle. Indeed, she had stayed as an observer previously. But when he is self-actualized, she can't stay away.
But I do think the relationship is central to what happens. In the process of backing up my VHS to DVD I learned that the Rita slapping him montage is the exact middle of the movie. Chaptering the movie also involved organizing the content a bit, and I think there is the confusion/hedonism phase, the initial attempts to romance Rita, despair/suicide (ending with the "I'm a god" day) and finally the self- actualization phase. So I'm not really sure how this relates to Maslow's hierarchy exactly.
But I did have a thought the other day. I don't know if it was Feb 2 or 3, just as I was waking up. It is as though grief comes from the removal of a unit lower on the hierarchy, throwing us back to a prior level of actualization.
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. Of course, a lot of what's good about Catholicism is also more catholic than Catholic, which is why we named ourselves that in the first place ![[Evil Laugh]](graemlins/evillaugh.gif)
