Pop Culture Detective and Groundhog Day

When Phil says to the kid he saves "See you tomorrow, maybe" I took this to mean that Phil lives every single day the way he lived that final, perfect day and has for some incredibly long time. Phil wasn't trying to "pull off the perfect day in service to others" in order to allow the loop to break, he was just choosing to accept his new eternity and spend every day of it in service to others, giving everyone else their own personal eternal bliss. He may have spent a million years living that day, perfecting each little moment so that he could spread joy. He wakes up at the end, and instead of saying "it worked" hes just pleased that it's tomorrow.

Thomas Smith

The assumed antagonistic relationship with the text is similar to what academics describe as a “paranoid reading”. It’s an interesting concept to look into.

Tristan

Cool that you and Jacob Geller both released Groundhogs Day videos this month. Fun little coincidence

Mason Wyss

Gotta push back on this, BJ, not because I think PCD's take is perfect but because I think you've glossed over an important point: Phil keeps pursuing Rita despite her repeated rejection. The movie and the audience know that they are meant to be together. The nature of the time loop means that Rita's rejection is wiped clean every day, her opinions matter in theory but if Phil just waits a few hours then they won't matter in practice. He will get the girl, one way or another. Yes, one message of the movie is that stalking is bad. But it just kind of shows that stalking is bad because the behaviours are creepy and off-putting, not because it's taking away Rita's agency and disregarding her choices. The time loop creates a scenario where stalking only seems a lot less bad because your victim can't remember being victimised. And plus, this point is raised in the larger "Stalking for Love" video, which has lots of other examples. In the broader trend of "the stalker always gets the girl no matter what she says because they're meant to be together", GD is just kind of sanitised by the time loop memory wipe. But it has the same message.

All-Natural Fig Jam

I enjoy you ever so thoroughly

Jacinda

This is dope! Whatre your thoughts on the theory that GD was actually more like 1000 -> 10,000 years. I think it adds a lot of gravity to the movie, also affects how you see phils mental state / relationship to the town.

I have been working on a script for a video essay for quite a while now where I watched every movie in Wikipedia's list of Groundhog's Day Style Time Loop movies, I also refer to this same clip from Pop Culture Detective!

Henry R. Seymour