Rodent's Shadows
“What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered?”
-Phil Connors, Groundhog Day, Written by Harold Ramis
For the actual Groundhog Day of Feb 2 (long ago as I write this) I wanted to do the movie Groundhog Day as an example of a Absurdist, or perhaps better, Sisyphean, film.
If you haven’t seen the movie or are not from the USA and unfamiliar with the custom (and I recently found a few people who haven’t), here’s some backstory on the event and the movie.
Wikipedia Page on the event Groundhog Day
The official Punxsutawney Phil website: http://www.groundhog.org/
IMDB Movie Page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/
Wikipedia Movie Page: Groundhog Day
You can pay to stream it on Amazon but I was unable to find a free and legitimate option.
Phil Connors stuck in a time loop until he gets it right. The Wikipedia page indicated that Harold Ramis (May he Rest in Peace) based this on a Buddhist belief that it can take 10,000 years for a soul to evolve. I am a little wary of the source of this, Epoch Times, that didn’t link to the actual article and a quick search didn’t turn it up. But there it is. That’s a long time to be stuck in a loop. The other estimates are hundreds of years or at least 34 based on some reckoning of people who thought a bit too hard about this. I wonder how long Sisyphus has been rolling his rock? At least Phil had a whole city of things to do.
Well, I’m not the first to come up with this idea, even though it came to me I think independently when thinking about this project. In prepping research I googled Groundhog Day Absurdism and got a LOT of results. Some of the better links for your selection:
Philosophy Now (really gets into it):
https://philosophynow.org/issues/93/Groundhog_Day
They explore the concepts of Eternal Recursion from Nietzsche and really get into the depths of the Sisyphus comparison. This section below is pretty great:
“For most of us, each day is only fractionally different from the previous. As we roll out of bed each morning, we set in motion a disturbingly familiar chain of events, often so automatic that we can’t even remember having performed some of the steps. We have the same breakfast, go to the same job in the same office, see the same people, and commute backwards and forwards along the same route, staring into space like zombies. Sure, we can break the routine from time to time by going on holiday or whatever, and we’re always hopeful of radical change, yet these interludes simply reinforce the realization of the grinding routine of the vast majority of our daily activities. Each day, whether we like it or not, we are presented with the same set of unpalatable facts. Only precise repetition is missing.
Are we really so different from Connors and Sisyphus? Like them, we’re plunged into the visceral fact of our existence and have to decide how to cope. Some of us may escape into the fantasies offered by religion, or we may adopt a philosophical position such as Stoicism. Perhaps we will take drugs and drink to shut out the misery and absurdity of our lives.”
The author, Michael Faust really brings home the comparison to the Camus camp in his essay, and relates the acceptance of his fate and the right attitude taken by Connors to the same of that from Sisyphus, making Connors and Absurd Hero in his own right.
Here’s a couple other takes:
http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/groundhog.htm
And some High School students’ take:
https://www.highschoolphilosophy.org/blog/groundhog-day
Mostly I just think it’s a great movie, and I think the phases he goes through closely resemble those of people slowly becoming self-aware or accepting of the Absurd. I can only imagine how I would react in such an extreme situation, except, if the excerpt above is at all true, I probably already am.
-DA
