I saw a post about Groundhog Day being a story of a white man getting infinite chances & still trying almost everything before being good.
But it’s also a wish-fulfillment story for people dealing with those men—imagining how nice it’d be if they were instantly magically better.
This thought brought to you by current discourse about a certain actor who I’ve always been fond of but am 0% surprised to hear bad things about, since he’s always made me think very very much of my terrible dad. Which is also kind of why I’m fond of him… he’s safer in a screen.
You know that first scene in Dana Barrett’s apartment? I loved that scene as a kid; it felt like watching my parents on screen. Yeeeeah.
And it’s not like the comedian who performed that role was likely thinking, “Hey, I’m gonna do a character sketch of a really skeevy guy.”
You KNOW that Peter Venkman wasn’t a self-aware lampooning of the guy’s sketchiness. That’s just not one of the believable possibilities.
We can look at that scene now and cringe, but back then, it just seemed like, yeah, of course, because he’s the hero and she’s the reward.
Anyway, it would take active growth — like the kind demonstrated in Groundhog Day, except in normal life — to go from Peter Venkman to… well anything that’s not bad forty years later.
And the thing about being able to portray that kind of growth in a movie is you only have to play at being good for one acted scene.
In real life, growth is something that’s much harder. I think that’s part of why movies like Groundhog Day and Scrooged are so compelling…
We want to believe people in power will change for the better, because that’s easier than taking their power away.