Groundhog Day. A critique of American culture.
A seemingly innocent 30-year-old movie exposes the depth of corruption in America’s culture.
A marathon. All day long, every two and a half hours. The same old movie about Groundhog Day, which is celebrated in the USA every February 2. If the groundhog comes out of his hole and sees his shadow, this greatest of all prognosticators will have predicted six more weeks of winter.
If a major television network can run the same movie for over 12 hours straight, the message of this movie must capture the heartbeat of a major portion the American people. But what is the message? What is it in this movie that defines a heartbeat of American culture today?
The formula is very simple. Have a negative attitude toward all of life, and everything will go bad for you. Change your attitude and your actions to a positive perspective on all of life, and you will be a person filled with happiness and joy. You will live “happily ever after.”
A simple formula. Everyone can understand it immediately. Change your attitude and your accompanying actions, and you can have a happy, happy life.
So how does the formula play out? Despise your work, despise people, despise even God’s little creatures like a groundhog, and you will be miserable. Bill Murray, the lead actor, has been cast perfectly for this role. While looking miserable, he ignores a poor old street beggar. He scorns an old high school friend. He rudely turns down a nice lady’s offer of the best coffee she can produce. He mocks a small-town community’s joyful celebration.
But these bad attitudes foster grosser actions. He deceives an unsuspecting young woman by lying about their previous fictitious high school years together. He lures her into sexual immorality. He schemes and commits a bank robbery. He steals an automobile and leads small town police through a life-threatening high-speed chase.
In terms of openly and convincingly demonstrating that “out of the heart proceed the issues of life,” the movie does an excellent job. Bad attitude invariably leads to immoral conduct. Unintentionally the truth comes out. A bad heart leads to a miserable life. It even gets so bad that the main character makes many efforts to take his own life. He drives an automobile over a cliff, with the car landing upside down and bursting into a consuming ball of fire. He steps directly into the path of a moving truck. He leaps from the top of the highest building in town. He electrocutes himself in the bathtub. But he cannot succeed in destroying his life. Every morning he wakes up again on February 2nd.
Inadvertently the truth comes out once more, though in distorted form. Question 19 from the child’s catechism simply but profoundly asks: “Do you have a soul as well as a body?” Answer: “Yes, I have a soul that can never die.” You cannot kill your soul, no matter how hard you try.
The second half of the movie tells a different tale. What is this tale? “Do just a few good deeds, and all your life will suddenly become beautiful.”
The total idolatry of the movie becomes apparent when the hero declares himself to be a god. Because of the time loop he is caught in, he is able to anticipate future events, and so he declares that he is a god. It is indeed true that if you can declare the specifics of the future, even the distant future, with unerring consistency, you must be God. For in real life the only way in which a person can absolutely know the future is for him to control the future. Is that not the whole point of Isaiah’s constant challenge-to-prophecy, in which he shames Israel’s deaf and dumb idols, and then names Cyrus, Israel’s deliverer, 160 years before he is born.
But not only is the central male character in the movie declared to be a god. The central female character also appears godlike. She is absolutely virtuous. She is kind, gentle, encouraging. She has no faults. The actress cast into this role is a perfect choice. She looks so sweet, so innocent, so godlike. But in the climax of the movie, she has no problem whatsoever entering into a bed of sexual immorality with her male “god.” This climactic act appears in the movie as a perfectly innocent, even beautiful, relationship.
By her “divine” virtues, she miraculously transforms this grossly decadent man into a courteous, sensitive, generous person. She is his savior while at the same time presenting herself as his consort.
Once the male hero has experienced his radical transformation as a consequence of her virtues, he also can do nothing but good. He gives money to the poor, aging transient. He visits him in the hospital. He grieves over his death. He determines to help other street people desperately needing food and clothing. He gives an engaged couple wise counsel. He learns to love his job. He determines to please everyone by learning to play the piano. He learns to love the town that he previously despised.
A total transformation, an amazing salvation from a cynical and cranky spirit. By the godlike virtues of an unvirtuous woman, his soul is saved.
That’s the gospel of today’s culture. The number of people who watched, identified with, and enjoyed this marathon showing of a classic movie must have been countless. For the movie confirms their perspective on the whole of life. No doubt the television channel that ran and re-ran and re-re-ran the same movie every 2½ hours from 11 am to 11:30 pm through the whole of Groundhog Day, February 2, 2024, were well rewarded for their promotion of today’s prevailing culture.
What’s wrong with this perspective on human life? People everywhere in America agree that a bad attitude in life brings bad results. But the biblical perspective strikes deeper into the fallen nature of humanity. Bad attitude embodies sin – sin against God the Creator, and Christ the Redeemer. The movie also communicates the idea that doing good things with a good attitude will bring good results. But no example by a fallen human being has the power to transform even one person to have a purified heart. Nothing short of the miraculous, creative work of God’s Holy Spirit has the capacity to change the nature of a single soul. Only the forgiveness of sins that comes through trusting in the sacrificial death of Jesus, the Son of God, whose blood was shed for corrupted, guilty sinners can open the way to a transformed life. The hope has been there for all people of all nations through the gospel for the past 2000 years. It is available to you on Groundhog Day in 2024 and every subsequent day. Jesus Christ in his life, death and resurrection, in his ascension to the right hand of the Father and his pouring out the renewing Holy Spirit on all flesh can truly transform your life. Simply becoming aware of a grouchy spirit will never produce the radical transformation required. Only acknowledging that every sin deserves God’s wrath and curse both in this life and in that which is to come, with a true spirit of repentance and sorrow, along with turning from sin and looking to Jesus for total forgiveness of all guilt can bring about the necessary transformation. But so long as people make a god of themselves and present themselves as saviors of other sinners, deliverance from the deadness of sin will never happen.
May the true gospel be broadcast to all nations and all people, including a corrupted culture as found in America today.
Groundhog Day, 1993 movie