Repeating Lessons

The film Groundhog Day needs no introduction. It is a classic comedy that nearly everyone has seen, and it even holds up to Aristotle's definition of comedy. The main character Phil, played by Bill Murray, begins the story with a very bleak and worn down personality. He's fed up with how life has been treating him through his life. The film follows him repeating the same day over and over again until he comes out much better than he was before in an almost overnight transformation to those around him. Ignoring the considerable humor packed into the film, Phil's transformation rise alone is enough to classify Groundhog Day as a comedy.

Groundhog Day fits into two sub classes of comedy, the romantic comedy, and the black comedy. While it may not be as clear cut of a rom-com as other films, the film does present an interesting take on uniting a couple that winds up being surprisingly well matched. It starts with the couple essentially hating each other and it ends with them falling in love. This fits the standard outline for a rom-com, but the added twist is that Phil only has one day to get Rita Hanson to fall in love with him while he has over eight years (according to some) to fall in love with her. He employs various methods to reach his goal, each failing until they reach the "happy ending" and he breaks out of the time loop. The black comedy becomes more clear from seeing his attempts to escape the loop in more violent ways, usually through his suicide attempts, whether those be a more traditional bath electrocution, or engaging in a more numerous car chase with a groundhog resulting in an explosion.

Now the real question, is there any value to films like this other than a simple laugh? I would argue that they can teach us a lot. Groundhog Day especially carries a few good messages for people to take with them demonstrated in the positive shifts Phil displays. Groundhog Day models many of the behaviors that most people would agree should not be displayed including theft, manipulation, and all around reckless behavior. However after Phil moves past these behaviors and takes on more altruistic behaviors, his life begins to pick up. In a way Groundhog Day is a movie about comparisons. There is as close to a controlled environment as you can get so Phil can test out how living in different ways can affect others and himself. The comedy helps to show us how making more thought out careful choices leads to a better life than more immediate instant gratification type behaviors. Part of how Groundhog Day and many other comedies successfully present enhancing lessons for society is by presenting us with a relate able average character and how they can move to a higher state of being without being special. In the end it falls down to the writers and directors of comedies to create good messages, but in good comedies that follow the rules, with a bit of analysis, it is not hard to find deeper meanings that show us interesting facets of human society.