Recommended Reads for September 2013
Recommended Reads is a monthly feature in which the Skiffy and Fanty crew tell you about one thing they recently read that they think you might like too. Here goes:
On Genre’s Surrealist Tendencies
I just finished re-watching Groundhog Day (1993) (the Blu-ray 15th Anniversary edition, if you must know). One of the things that makes this film so fascinating, even upon seeing it more than once, is its remarkably bizarre narrative. You might say it is positively surreal in form, dragging us, and the main character, Phil, into repetitious situations without any way to ground ourselves in the real (pun not intended). There are no fancy explanations for Phil’s “curse,” and in the process of watching him struggle with his identity in this new world order, we get a glimpse into a part of the human spirit that perhaps gets lost in the day-to-day hustle of life, just as Phil does at the start. What may seem monotonous can be changed by human action: we can change what we do,
