I weep for the future

I got the results back for the term paper I posted about last week.

Though I literally had a week to watch the movie and throw 8-10 pages together to fit a contrived premise, it was well received.

Nicely done, expressing how conservatism comes into play.
Your portrayal of conservatism and Phil’s immersion in it (as his salvation), works well. What’s missing is a more definite expression of liberalism, and the logical extension of individualism as expressed through Phil’s earlier behavior.

The “Phil” he is speaking of is Bill Murray’s character in the movie, Groundhog Day, not me.

If you hit the above link you’ll be able to see the list of movies my classmates and I had to choose from. I’m not a big fan of films, so I chose the one I thought I could stand to watch that was in the “On Demand” section from my cable company.

Now that you’ve probably gone back to see what we had to choose from, here is the breakdown of the films selected to write about by my classmates:

Avatar – 9

Juno – 8

Groundhog Day – 3

Robocop – 2

Mary Poppins – 1

The Road Warrior – 1

Yes, you’re reading that correctly. More than two-thirds of the class chose flicks about ecosocialism and feminism. And if you think that is sad, consider that I got the class high of 95/100 and the class average score was 70/100.

Despite the fact that they have a textbook in front of them explaining the tenets of ecologism and feminism, none of them has the writing skills to put 8-10 (or more) pages together in a coherent argument in support of the movies’ premises on those ideologies.

Below the fold is the text of my term paper. Keep in mind that the premise was contrived and that I had to write to fill that premise.

Dig, if you will, a picture, of one day of your life, randomly chosen by “the cosmos”, being repeated over and over again. The same day, the same town, and the same people, you are the only one who knows that the repetition is occurring. There are no lasting consequences to your actions and no way to escape the time loop. What would you do?

That is the situation faced by Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, in the movie “Groundhog Day”. (“Wikipedia”) Connors spends a decade’s worth of days repeating this same day, during which he evolves from an obnoxious and egocentric figure into an eloquent and altruistic person after discovering and using many of the concepts one can find within Conservative ideology.

The introduction to the Phil Connors character during the first section of the movie shows him to be an ego-maniacal and severely self-centered individual. His profession is that of a television weather forecaster in Pittsburgh, PA. Who is assigned to cover the Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney for the fourth time in his career at this news station. Annoyed at the assignment he becomes even more bitter than usual and as he travels to Punxsutawney with a veteran cameraman and a recently hired news producer he punishes them with verbal insults and obnoxious behavior. He even refuses to stay at the same hotel the others are staying at and demands better accommodations because of his status as “the talent”. When he is not within earshot, the cameraman calls Connors a “Prima Donna” because of this behavior.

Connors wakes up the next morning, acting as one could expect the character of Connors would, being rude and insulting to others, thinking only of his own comfort and happiness. After recording his segment at the Groundhog Day ceremony, the three of them climb back into the station’s news van only to be caught in a blizzard that Connors had previously prognosticated would miss the area and they are forced to return to Punxsutawney to wait out the snowstorm. Connors wakes up on what is supposed to be the next day, except, as he soon discovers, it is Groundhog Day again. And thus begins the transformation of Phil Connors character.

After getting over the weirdness of repeatedly reliving the same day, Connors decides to use his knowledge of the sequence of events unfolding in the town to his advantage. Already having been a practitioner of the Cardinal Sin of Pride, he proceeds to get on with working his way through the rest of the list. Knowing that his reports at the festival are never going to be remembered, they become unprofessional and lazy. Knowing that none of the calories or cholesterol will be able to hurt him, he orders enough food to cover and entire table at the local diner. Connors’ greed compels him to steal a bank deposit bag from the back of an armored truck while the guards are distracted. He uses the money to buy a Mercedes he had been envious of.

Later, he proceeds to seduce numerous women in the town using the repetition of days to learn things about them and become their “perfect” gentleman. However, when he sets his sights on Rita, the news producer who came to town with him, he finds that no matter how many of her interests he emulates to use in his attempt to seduce her, he fails. Usually culminating in a slap in the face for his efforts before she leaves him for the night.

This rejection causes him to finally give up on the task of seduction, and he succumbs to the final Cardinal sin: Wrath. His frustration at the limit of the power he took from this repeating of days drives him finally to the ultimate act of Liberal Individualism: Suicide.

He kidnaps Punxsutawney Phil, steals a truck and leads police on a high-speed chase through town and into a gravel quarry, where he drives off an embankment to a fiery crash. He electrocutes himself in the bathtub by stealing a toaster and dropping it into the water, throws himself off the tallest building in town and steps in front of a large moving truck. Unfortunately for Connors, none of these selfish acts stop the repetition of days, and he simply wakes up again to restart the day.

Finally exasperated at the limitation of not being able to control his own destiny, he reaches out to Rita and attempts to explain to her what he has been going through. After listening to what he has to say she states to him that, while not actually believing the story herself, that if he believes this is happening, that maybe he should use the time to become a better person.

While Conservatives dismiss the idea that humans can be “perfected”, they do accept that humans can be improved. This is evidenced in their belief in the authority of “law and order” and the use of lengthy prison sentences in “correctional facilities”. Also the fact that Conservatives trace the origins of immoral and criminal behavior to the individual and not to society. As Andrew Heywood states in his book, Political Ideologies, Conservatives believe that “people can only be persuaded to behave in a civilized fashion if they are deterred from expressing their violent and anti-social impulses.” (Heywood 71) With the repetition of days as his deterrent, Connors comes to the realization that horrible behaviors have done nothing to help him and believing that she is probably correct, he adopts a pragmatic view of his situation.

Because being a altruistic person does not come naturally to him, Connors begins by doing small things, such as getting coffee and pastries for his coworkers, judging their reactions and then making bigger improvements. He takes an interest in music and begins taking piano lessons. He gives his money to the town’s vagrant. A few “days” later, he later takes the man to the diner with him. He becomes so interested in the vagrant’s life that he later spends the day with him and discovers that the man dies on the night of Groundhog Day. Connors attempts to change the man’s destiny by taking him to the hospital, to no avail. He finally discovers that if he introduces the man back to his family early in the day that the man will survive the day.

In this way, Connors receives an introduction to the community and begins to be empathetic to it as an organism, and how, as Conservatives view society, the community can nurture an individual through the bonds of duty to the community. Connors later discovers a child who falls while climbing a tree. Even though he never receives a thank you from the child and injures his back in the process of catching him, Connors makes sure he is there every day to catch him before he hits the ground.

Connors finds that the more he knows about the people of the town the more he feels a social responsibility to help them. In this way he uses the power of his knowledge of the day’s events to gain a certain paternalistic discipline, and he becomes an inspirational leader of the town who provides a direction to them.

In the final scene of the film, Connors meets a number of the people he has affected during the day. One by one they walk up and thank him for what he has done for them. Near the end of this sequence, Connors is auctioned off in a “Bachelor Auction, and Rita, having seen all of these townspeople praise him and what a different person he has changed into from the day before (in her perception), empties her wallet to win him.

They later return to his room at the Bed and Breakfast and fall asleep. When he wakes up, Connors is delighted almost beyond words to find that Rita is lying in his arms and that it is finally the following day.

Connors’ final transformation from an individual to a worthwhile member of society whose attention is focused towards the needs of others and away from himself has appeared to have finally convinced the cosmos to let him continue on with his life.

The film Groundhog Day proves to be an example of that while the permissiveness of Liberalism may seem like fun at the time, it do not make a person truly happy. Sometimes it takes a single day, or in Phil Connors’ example, sometimes it takes a decade’s worth of them to show how some of the most dear concepts within the Conservative ideology to create true happiness.