Sources must be scholarly, peer reviewed.
Question: What do these three films say about the nature of morality?
Texts: Groundhog Day (1993), No Country for Old Men (2007), and Joker (2019).
Summaries:
Groundhog Day:
Phil is put into a day prison. Where he is repeating the same day over and over again. Giving him, in a sense, immortality and eternity. And he isn’t released from this until he gets this girl he fell in love with to fall back in love with him. Throughout the movie, the longer he repeats the same day over and over, the better a person he becomes. Due in no small part to the confidence he gets knowing that no consequence will last more than the rest of the day. This implies two things: One, that love is the ultimate goal of being human, both giving and receiving. And two, that there is good in every person waiting to be released.
Phil at first takes advantage and lives like there’s no tommorow, being reckless, and exploiting his restarting ability to experience new thrills everyday. But eventually he gets bored of it and starts chasing greater fullfillment. In this sense the movie also refutes hedonism. Implying even when you can fill your life with pleasure it won’t actually be filling.
No Country For Old Men:
No Country For Old Men communicates just that; that this is no country for old men. It captures in both word and scene the changes in society and the chaos that growingly becomes more normal, a chaos and lack of values that young men are familar with and have adapted to. There are three main characters, each representing an aspect of this direction of society. There is Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh, and Ed Tom Bell. Llewelyn represents the young men that have to grow into the world darker than that of their fathers, the men that have to chose whether to adapt to the chaos and evil by fighting against it, or let it run you over. Anton Chigurh is the chaos, the newer or perhaps newfangled attitude of society, behaving as if humans are merely animals, Anton only seems to exibit two values: survival and his word. Ed Tom Bell is the old man, disheartened by the darkness befalling a nation that he once believed to be mostly pure. The old men that, being toward the end of their lives, can do little more than watch as bad men flood the earth, and good men are forced to choose between succumbing to the evil, or be victim of it.
No Country For Old Men primarly does two things: Affirm the fears of old men, and make young men aware of a choice they will have to make: They can be a moral victim, or an immoral victor.
Joker:
“What do you get when you cross a mentally ill child with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? I’ll tell you what you get; you get what you fucking deserve!” (*shoots gun)
The above quote is actually a decent summary of the movie. This movie wants to expose what it’s like at the bottom and where monsters come from. “Society made me this way.” It’s the cry of someone abandoned and treated like trash. The writers wanted to, other than tell a story, tell a society that they have no one to blame but themselves when chaos ensues.
I believe all people are inherently bad long before society touches them. However, society can easily be the microphone pressed against the speaker of a person’s evil.
This film is worth watching because it provides a self-explanatory example of this phenomenon. One thing that’s important to remember is that the movie highlights many extremes. In real life, the things that push us closer to the brink are more subtle and hard to notice, and perhaps even harder to notice are the things we do to others that push them.
Identification of arguement:
Groundhog Day depicts morality as selflessness, and that a selfless life is the only fulfilling life. This is shown by Phil not winning the movie (getting the girl, and being released back into normal time) until he becomes selfless.
Groundhog argues that it is good/ moral to live a life filled with loving others.
No Country For Old Men depicts morality as good traditional values. However, illustrates that being moral becomes less and less safe as time goes on and evil grows. This is shown by Llewelyn (who represents young men) being killed By Anton (who represents the growing darkness in our country).
No Country For Old Men argues that being moral is good, but can be dangerous.
Joker depicts immorality as abandonment or bullying of the weak and less fortunate. Indirectly depicting that morality is kindness and help for the weak. This is shown by Joker becoming a remorseless murderer in response to being constantly beat down.
Joker argues that it is good/ moral to be kind to those who are hurting, and warns that hurt people will hurt people.
