America’s Mass Shooting Groundhog Day
The beauty of Bill Murray’s 1993 classic, Groundhog Day, is that it never explains why he gets stuck reliving the same day.
Murray’s character, Phil Connors, wakes up over and over again in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, at 6:00 am, and it’s always February 2nd. Groundhog Day.
He can’t leave town, he can’t call for help, he can’t even die. And worst of all, nobody tells him what to do about it. Instead, as the film progresses, we, along with Phil, have to intuit it.
At first, he indulges his most selfish, narcissistic instincts. He robs banks and punches childhood friends, he goes on thousands of dates with the same woman until he figures out to seduce her, but as time goes by, Phil begins to make different choices. And modifies his behaviour based on the outcome. Eventually, all by himself, he discovers the value of putting other people’s needs before his own.
Unfortunately, this epiphany takes him the equivalent of 10,000 years.
The news that there’s been another mass shooting in America has, for a long time now, felt like reliving the same day over and over again.
America wakes up to news of 10 African Americans shot dead in Buffalo, NY or 14 murdered high-school students in…
