{"id":24098,"date":"2014-02-02T10:01:28","date_gmt":"2014-02-02T15:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24098"},"modified":"2014-02-02T10:01:28","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T15:01:28","slug":"groundhog-day-when-i-say-that-the-groundhog-is-jesus-i-say-that-with-great-respect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/02\/02\/groundhog-day-when-i-say-that-the-groundhog-is-jesus-i-say-that-with-great-respect\/","title":{"rendered":"Groundhog Day<\/em> – “…when I say that the groundhog is Jesus, I say that with great respect”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg<\/a>‘s 2005 column on the movie Groundhog Day<\/em>, which just keeps repeating:<\/p>\n

When I set out to write this article, I thought it\u2019d be fun to do a quirky homage to an offbeat flick, one I think is brilliant as both comedy and moral philosophy. But while doing what I intended to be cursory research \u2014 how much reporting do you need for a review of a twelve-year-old movie that plays constantly on cable? \u2014 I discovered that I wasn\u2019t alone in my interest. In the years since its release the film has been taken up by Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, and followers of the oppressed Chinese Falun Gong movement. Meanwhile, the Internet brims with weighty philosophical treatises on the deep Platonist, Aristotelian, and existentialist themes providing the skin and bones beneath the film\u2019s clown makeup. On National Review Online<\/em>\u2019s group blog, The Corner, I asked readers to send in their views on the film. Over 200 e-mails later I had learned that countless professors use it to teach ethics and a host of philosophical approaches. Several pastors sent me excerpts from sermons in which Groundhog Day<\/em> was the central metaphor. And dozens of committed Christians of all denominations related that it was one of their most cherished movies.<\/p>\n

When the Museum of Modern Art in New York debuted a film series on \u201cThe Hidden God: Film and Faith\u201d two years ago, it opened with Groundhog Day<\/em>. The rest of the films were drawn from the ranks of turgid and bleak intellectual cinema, including standards from Ingmar Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. According to the New York Times<\/em>, curators of the series were stunned to discover that so many of the 35 leading literary and religious scholars who had been polled to pick the series entries had chosen Groundhog Day<\/em> that a spat had broken out among the scholars over who would get to write about the film for the catalogue. In a wonderful essay for the Christian magazine Touchstone<\/em>, theology professor Michael P. Foley wrote that Groundhog Day<\/em> is \u201ca stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim\u2019s Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos.\u201d Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment<\/em>, has cited Groundhog Day<\/em> more than once as one of the few cultural achievements of recent times that will be remembered centuries from now. He was quoted in The New Yorker<\/em> declaring, \u201cIt is a brilliant moral fable offering an Aristotelian view of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know what you\u2019re thinking: We\u2019re talking about the movie in which Bill Murray tells a big rat sitting on his lap, \u201cDon\u2019t drive angry,\u201d right? Yep, that\u2019s the one. You might like to know that the rodent in question is actually Jesus \u2014 at least that\u2019s what film historian Michael Bronski told the Times<\/em>. \u201cThe groundhog is clearly the resurrected Christ, the ever-hopeful renewal of life at springtime, at a time of pagan-Christian holidays. And when I say that the groundhog is Jesus, I say that with great respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may be going overboard, but something important is going on here. What is it about this ostensibly farcical film about a wisecracking weatherman that speaks to so many on such a deep spiritual level?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And on the subject of the groundhog whose day it is, here’s an old post with a local-ish connection: A tribute (of sorts) to Wiarton Willie<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg‘s 2005 column on the movie Groundhog Day, which just keeps repeating: When I set out to write this article, I thought it\u2019d be fun to do a quirky homage to an offbeat flick, one I think is brilliant as both comedy and moral philosophy. But while doing what I intended to be cursory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,28,11],"tags":[360,122],"class_list":["post-24098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-media","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6gG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24099,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24098\/revisions\/24099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}