My mind v Groundhog Day

This is a warning that the following post is me battling myself in trying to understand Nietzsche via the lens of Groundhog Day. If this post could be transformed into a thing, it would be a wrestling match between two ill-equipped and equally strong monkeys. In my attempts to understand both Nietzsche and the general commentary of Groundhog Day, I have yet to find a resolution.

But here we go:

Watching Groundhog Day as an eager student does, I tried to pick apart every line of every scene to find the ~true philosophical meaning~ of the film. This got exhausting after the first 10 minutes and so I told my anxious self to calm the f down.

People have bad consciences (which Nietzsche argues is our animal instincts turned inwards) that they suppress in order to be functioning members of community as a way to repay our debts to the community for supplying us with shelter and security. But what happens when there are no consequences to the release of our animal instincts? When we can finally kill whomever we want and wreak havoc with no punishment in exchange? Phil shows us one way.

Nietzsche argues that law and order in society exist to facilitate the exchange of promises via the creation of predictability. In Groundhog Day, Phil is faced with literal predictability – time and place repeats itself. With a life so predictable, he no longer needed the laws and rules of society. He knew exactly what was going to happen, every day, and whether or not laws existed didn’t affect his reality. The predictableness of life existed because it was a literal repetition. So maybe this movie argues that we do, indeed, need laws in society, and that only in an exaggerated context where everything (including time) constantly repeats can we be freed of society’s constraints.

Yet, Phil starts to see life as meaningless once he’s lived out all his animalistic dreams – does that mean there’s a limit to how outward we can project our animal instincts, and that as humans we’ve evolved past being capable to live solely off animal instincts? Are we now as humans evolutionarily-wired to be robots of society? Have we lost our capability to be truly “free”?

But then again, Phil wreaks more havoc then he ever would in a normal scenario exactly because of how predictable life is. Or no, because he could predict that he would receive no punishment for acting on his bad conscience. Or maybe it was a combination of both, that in life being predictable/a literal repetition, he had to entertain himself somehow, initially through havoc and then afterwards via a path of self-betterment (piano + ice sculpting = self-fulfillment)

So in a society where time and life is normal, laws and order are necessary to create a code to living that makes society member’s actions more or less predictable, in order to ensure that promises are fulfilled.

And then in a society where time and life are not normal and constantly repeating like in the film, where predictability cannot be attributed to something else, and exists as its own phenomena, there is no necessary code. For actions are predicted and parties engaged in a promise are certain of the future, regardless of the existence of laws. But then would promises even need to exist? If things were as predictable as they were in the film? That all parties involved already knew what was going to happen in the next minute or hour, and no affirmation made in the morning would change the events of the evening regardless of what’s said?

Though that line of logic (or more like illogic, as my questions are confusing me and probably you) assumes that all members of the society are experiencing life as Phil did. But then if an entire society experienced the same day every day, there would be no point in existing. There would be no growth, people would know their efforts make no difference, that at 6am all their work would go to waste. There would be no happy ending like Phil had, where he has one romantic connection with a woman who has known him for a day, and then BOOM! Back to normal! Because that is the power of love, people! Be an aging man with bags under your eyes, charm a naïve and younger woman who works under you, and there we go! Your existential problems are gone, and you are no longer scarred by your dozens of suicide attempts!!

But I digress…

Do we need laws or not? Is it good to release your animal instinct, like Nietsche suggests? I still have no idea.