Groundhog Day: Quick, what's the first idea that comes to mind? It's February, so it's possible that it's Punxsutawney Phil and an implausibly unironic highfalute of Gobbler's Nob village elders in top hats. (I propose "highfalute" as the collective noun for village elders in bombastic headgear.) If you're from New England there's an outside chance it's a quahog predicting the weather before being frittered. But most of the time, for most people, it's an experience of being trapped in a mundane, repeating cycle. That may be accompanied by visions of Bill Murray's sad-sack newsman repeatedly waking up at 6:00 AM to cover the same soul-crushing story and eventually trying to kill himself before turning his life around and triumphantly sleeping with Andie MacDowell. But what's interesting is that there's a good chance it's not.
Every now and then, a bit of pop culture so embeds itself in the collective consciousness that it creates a concept that persists independent of the source material. "Groundhog Day" is such a concept. The monotony of daily life for many people is a phenomenon that needed a pithy term to encompass it, and "groundhog day" fits the bill. One day, perhaps not too far off -- the kids born when the movie came out are applying to college -- people will be using the term in this sense without any idea where it came from.
Your intrepid bloggers have come up with a few other examples of this phenomenon, but we trust that our distinguished readers will come up with many others, and we invite you to share.
Every now and then, a bit of pop culture so embeds itself in the collective consciousness that it creates a concept that persists independent of the source material. "Groundhog Day" is such a concept. The monotony of daily life for many people is a phenomenon that needed a pithy term to encompass it, and "groundhog day" fits the bill. One day, perhaps not too far off -- the kids born when the movie came out are applying to college -- people will be using the term in this sense without any idea where it came from.
Your intrepid bloggers have come up with a few other examples of this phenomenon, but we trust that our distinguished readers will come up with many others, and we invite you to share.
- Bucket list - Another term that brings pith to a somewhat familiar idea, "list of things to do before you die." This will probably be a part of the general lexicon without any association to the movie faster than groundhog day because the term evokes the idea directly, rather than by way of the source material.
- White whale - This phrase may never be truly divorced from Moby Dick, particularly because its users tend to be erudite enough to know where it comes from, but as a term for a self-destructive obsession it has a place in the language.
- Albatross - More likely to be used without consciousness of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to describe a self-created curse or affliction with a karmic dimension.
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