Groundhog Day and the God of Community

It is now thirty years since Harold Ramis’s memorable Groundhog Day (1993) was released. An honor the film garnered a decade after its release was being chosen to open the Museum of Modern Art’s film series on “The Hidden God: Film and Faith” in 2003. The protagonist of the film is Phil Connors, perhaps the world’s best-known weatherman. In his essay on the film for the catalog to the cinematic exhibition Mario Sesti writes: “A hidden god changes the world so that he can become a better person.” And of course, the filmic world of Punxsutawney is changed through a surprising temporal phenomenon and Phil does become a better person. And the “god” is hidden, since we never learn what force changed the world by creating the time loop allowing the protagonist ample time—a couple of critics have noted the narrative similarity to Nietzsche’s thought experiment of the eternal return—to learn from his mistakes in a moral sense. However, the god that Sesti notes is rather a demiurge, hence the lowercase “g” is appropriate. The film invites a variety of interpretations, and a number of interpretations have been made that include a religious perspective. What I wish to explore is the possible presence of an immanent “God” suggested by the film that imbues its world with a sacramental sense.

In the book God at the Movies (2003) that Andrew Greeley co-authored, he sensibly argues that God in the movies has to be a work of the human imagination. He goes on to suggest along the lines of theologian David Tracy, that “the analogical religious imagination constructs a mental algorithm when it wants to describe God (. . .). The specific worldly attributes are drawn from the historical period of storyteller and moviemaker.” In another study, on the Catholic imagination, the sociologist draws even more on Tracy’s conception of the analogical imagination and contrasts it to the latter’s dialectical religious imagination. The dialectical imagination focuses on the transcendence of God, that is expressed in Biblical and also colloquial terms as God being hidden, while in the analogical imagination immanence is stressed. Greeley feels that although both properties of the religious imagination are present in the works and practices of the dominant Christian denominations, the dialectical imagination is prominent for Protestants, who stress the distance that separates people from God, while the analogical imagination is more prominent for Catholics, who—among other things, through their expanded sacraments within their religious practice—tend to sense the immanence of God more closely. In Groundhog Day we have both the hidden God of the dialectical imagination and the immanent one, who may be less obvious in the film. For this reason, I will focus more on the God of the analogical imagination who acts through what can be called the implicit sacramental nature of the filmic community.

Punxsutawney is a small town much like Bedford Falls where It’s a Wonderful Life takes place, a movie that often enough Groundhog Day is compared to: by pundits and scholars alike. Among other things, both protagonists wish to leave the town they feel trapped in. However, Punxsutawney does exist and does host a Groundhog Day festival. Unsurprisingly for a number of years after the film was released the festival attracted considerably more tourists for the event than earlier. But the holiday itself holds its own secret from most people who celebrate or are amused by it. Groundhog Day has a religious origin—the second of February is the Feast of Candlemass, also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, which Germanic immigrants from Europe brought over to the United States together with folk traditions they had associated with the holiday. Obviously, the folk traditions took over in the popular imagination and it is primarily a secular holiday in the country, like a number of previously religious holidays. Yet it can be argued the “holy day” at its origin that is “invisible” to most Americans is in some ways analogous to the powerful but benign mysterious force that controls Phil’s life and leads him to love and renewal.

The journey toward that end is quite long for the weatherman despite the fact that Punxsutawney is so close to Philadelphia that the television crew he is a part of reaches it fairly quickly. It is the inner journey he has to make that causes so much trouble for him. Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love, yet that is not what Phil brings with him to the small town, despite the fact that his name starts the same as the city: what he brings is rather the arrogance of modernity, with its belief in “the creation of one’s self, by one’s self,” as Remi Braque has put it. Not all that long before the movie was released, the self-centered nature of individuals in contemporary consumer society was labeled as a “culture of narcissism” by social thinker Christopher Lasch. The prominent communitarian philosopher Charles Taylor challenged that charge by arguing that members of these developed societies are primarily bound by an ethics of authenticity wherein they aspire to be true to themselves and their originality. He also proffered some ideas about how the ethos can avoid being drawn into a corrupting narcissism and better serve society. More recently, cultural philosopher Byung-Chuk Han responds to these arguments. Upending Taylor’s claims, he simply claims: “The narcissism of authenticity undermines community.” Groundhog Day gives us some idea of how community can be rediscovered.

After experiencing despair in Punxsutawney caused by his own repeatedly selfish hedonistic behavior, Phil finally uses the tactic he has avoided and tells Rita from his crew the truth about his condition and genuinely exposes himself to her. This results in her finally attempting to help and comfort him. As they lie together at the end of a long day, and with her head on his shoulder and Rita beginning to slumber, Phil confesses his love for her. Earlier he had tried to seduce her, now after his conversion he expresses a heartfelt: “I don’t deserve someone like you… but if I ever could… I swear I would love you… for the rest of my life.” In genuine love, we feel we do not deserve the other, but this allows us to transcend ourselves. And that is one of the key modes of creating viable community. The movie at this point suggests that a primary means of building community is one person at a time. At the most basic and profound level, along with love, virtues are a key to this.

Virtue ethicists divide the virtues into intellectual, moral, and aesthetic. One philosopher, Joseph Kupfer, has found all three of these dimensions developed by Phil once he makes his conversion. From a less strict reading of these virtues on my part, his new self-knowledge has been demonstrated in an earlier conversation the same “day” referred to above as his confession of love to Rita when he tells her that he is “a jerk.” But his aesthetic sense is inspired when he detects a divine spark in Rita and tells her he sees an angel in her. Later in the time loop when his virtues are perfected and he practices the art of ice sculpture, he sculpts a beautiful angel, which Rita sees, but does not at this point realize it refers to her. His moral virtue is developed—in a less obvious manner—when he realizes the limitations that accompany the partial omniscience that he possesses in comparison to those who participate in the time loop with him but are unaware of this: he cannot save an aged beggar from his appointed time with his maker. In this Phil learns the deeper truth from the poem he quotes to the sleepy Rita that “only God can make a tree.” There are things he simply has no control over, even when at this point his intentions are not so selfish.

But another mode of finding oneself aside from love and the virtues—not that it necessarily excludes them—is immersing oneself in community. Rituals are important in this context, among other things since they provide structure to essential stages in life and give meaning to time. Rituals, for Han, are symbolic acts that “represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based.” For most Americans, Groundhog Day no longer belongs to the Feast of Candlemass in the liturgical calendar, but in Punxsutawney, the sacred has been partially passed on through the rituals that create a vibrant community. And at the beginning of the last day in the time loop a new Phil finally acknowledges the importance of the ritual giving a sensitive and moving report. Some of these rituals possess a truth not immediately obvious. Early in the movie, one of the townspeople hears Phil talking to Rita in a diner, and upon learning that he has the same name as the star groundhog in the town’s festival the fellow prophetically jokes that he should watch out for his own shadow; this is referring to the folk belief connected with the day. The “advice” is offered just before Phil descends through his “shadow” into the long and dark winter of his soul.

Significantly, it is Rita who immediately recognizes the life in the ritual festivities of the town. This is what holds the community together and through the playful rituals accompanying Groundhog Day, draws its members out of their quotidian labors and routines. With her “twelve years of Catholic schooling” and her virtue Rita intuits the proximity of the good if not necessarily the divine in the community and draws it out from within Phil, also helping him to immerse himself within it.  

A personal God—which seems to be what we have in the film—demonstrates virtually eternal patience with our erring ways that keep us from fulfilling the will of the One who wishes us to become most fully ourselves. Certain contemporary paths such as the narcissism of authenticity, that attracts so many in our societies largely lead us in the opposite direction, which the early Phil Connors demonstrates, admittedly in a somewhat hyperbolic fashion. We are much closer to the right path participating in community. There are no sacred utopias—not to mention any other ones—in this world, yet community seems to be among those social forces that offer the best chances for us to find our vocations, with their sacred source that most are unaware of. Groundhog Day goes some way toward raising our awareness of these higher and more down-to-earth matters and how they are related.

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