What the Infinite Time Loop in “Palm Springs” Can Teach us about the Current Pandemic

Let me set the scene: It won’t be hard since we’ve all been there—some cocky, smirking white boy approaches you on the day of your sister’s wedding and “accidentally” gets you embroiled in his drama. And your really can’t refuse because, as I’ve mentioned, it’s the day of your sister’s wedding (and since this is like the fourteenth month of the pandemic you’ve probably re-watched the Godfather at some point, right?), and also because as a feminine presenting person you’ve involuntarily internalized the aspects of the patriarchal system of which you are indelibly intertwined. All this is to say, you’re used to doing all manner of emotional/ existential/ theoretical physics-adjacent labor for men who think they are too cynical and cool and quirky to actually give a damn.

Anyways, I digress. You end up stuck in an infinite time loop à la Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog Day” (1993), although unlike Bill Murray’s weatherman, you are not alone. You are accompanied by an irreverent, tropical shirt wearing Andy Samberg look-alike named Nyles (presumably a nod towards the Nihilist philosophy that serves as the foundation to his character for the first half of the film). Oh, and you are not stuck in some frigid small town—oh no. You’re trapped in Palm Springs—the go to spot for gays (I can say this, I’m gay and therefore an authority), millenials (also one of those), and retired rich people who want to play golf and have expensive saltwater-pools they never actually swim in (admittedly I am not yet part of this elite class, but hope to be so lucky in forty years). Also, you are way more attractive than Bill Murray, no offense to him.

The movie is obviously a bit of a genre bender, much like the current state of affairs: part romantic-comedy, part science-fiction, and then like a hint of “Waiting for Godot” and a few random dashes from the existential works of Soren Kierkegaard. Cool, it thinks it’s sophisticated, and it kind of is. At least, for a film that is completely centered around linear chronology, or the suspension thereof, it manages to get its timing absolutely perfect. Of course director Max Barbakow could hardly have anticipated a global pandemic when he was embarking on his directorial debut—but the fact that the movie became available on Hulu on July 9th is interesting, cosmically speaking.

I was actually supposed to be in Palm Springs on July 10th, getting sunburned in the deep end of some chic motel pool with my ex-girlfriend, before everything went to shit. I have never really been a fan of Palm Springs, the town, because from my earliest recollections it has symbolized a kind of perverse purgatory. Part of this has to do with its being centered in the middle of a desert expanse (I despise the desert because it is barren and flat and dreadful and reminds me of infinity, which in turn reminds me of death—which is a highly relatable experience, I’m sure). And part of this has to do with my childhood memories there—whenever I went, I was under the guardianship of an abusive older guy, and was made to stay with fairly well-off distant relations in their cold, carefully curated mansions. I wanted nothing more than to return home, which of course was never an option. Hence, Palm Springs became for me, synonymous with the experience of being trapped. When I learned about the premise of “Palm Springs” the film, I felt quite certain that despite it’s on the nose setting for a state of indefinite and dreadful suspension, I would not be watching it. No thank you, I said, to the traumatic past memories veiled behind an elegant veneer of colorful pool floaties and cacti. But my ex was rabid about the place. And so we had made it a frequent get-away destination. I was learning to appreciate it, in a forced, halting sort of way. And then Covid-19 made travel seem rather perilous, and so there I was, in my pajamas at home for the fifth day in a row, shoving Doritos down my throat, clicking play on the Hulu movie I had sworn to avoid.

Now to the point of this article: the nihilistic cynicism and existential despair, which initially plague the film, are perhaps not so foreign to the average viewer, who is presumably experiencing their own kind of personal suspension. For most of us, life as we know it has shifted drastically, in a matter of weeks. Suddenly we are confined to our cramped studio apartments or childhood homes, as the world goes up in flames around us and family dynamics spin out of control. Perhaps we are trapped with roommates that we never intended to learn this much about. Perhaps we are once again under the watchful gaze of family members, which is as unnerving as it is nostalgic. Perhaps we are alone, truly alone, for the first time in our lives.

In any case, the concept of time has been thrown out the window. No one knows how long we will be stuck in quarantine. We begin to realize there are other ways of measuring our experience. We lean into the sudden uncertainty and accept it for what it is—something we cannot possibly comprehend. Or else we are bent on challenging it.

As our dauntless and absurd protagonists navigate their new surreal condition, in which they are effectively trapped in November 9th for eternity, there are varying stages of acclimation. In the beginning, for Sarah (portrayed by the captivating Cristin Milloti) at least, is panic-induced rage (I am thinking of that one scene where she throws beer cans at Nyles until he ducks under the surface of the pool to escape the barrage), followed by grief (the tears and various attempted suicides), and then bargaining (her unsuccessful attempts to escape the vortex through acts of selflessness), before finally settling on something which superficially resembles euphoria (cavorting with Nyles in all manner of ridiculous time-wasting enterprises). What stages have we gone through as we began to register the full extent and ramifications of Corona? If we’re lucky, we haven’t lost a loved one. Perhaps we deluded ourselves into thinking that the problem would solve itself—that things would return to normal in a matter of weeks. Now that they have not, and scientific projections indicate a continuing trend of increased cases and fatalities in the United States, what are we are we going to do with ourselves?

Maybe we are doing some thinking, or falling in love, or slipping farther into an isolated depression, or just struggling to make rent because we’ve been laid off. Maybe we’ve been protesting, or writing a novel, or posting old bikini photos on Instagram taken in a much simpler time, with captions like “Take me back”. Take me back to what, exactly? What was there to begin with?

This is the glory of “Palm Springs”. Everything is the same as ever. Yes, you are trapped in a time loop. Whatever. You are still you, life is still happening; nothing makes any sense no matter how you tilt the frame. And this is what makes Corona so uncanny—in some ways it seems like we have collectively undergone a radical shift—and in other ways we recognize that this is something that has happened before (not just historically, in the sense of other pandemics or influenzas, but also philosophically). The human condition is the human condition. And whether you “escape” it with acts of selflessness like in “Groundhog Day”, or by attaching dynamite to a goat and blowing it up inside a mystical space cave like in “Palm Springs”, or just keep existing day after quarantine day like in this particular timeline, you are probably valid because honestly none of us have any idea what we are doing. Life is a surrealist masterpiece, hence that one scene with the dinosaurs—it is telling that the whimsical heard of brontosauri are not merely confined to the time loop but also exists outside of it as though to say: nothing is quite what it seems and maybe things in this reality don’t need to be as coherent as we’ve previously imagined. And maybe that ambiguity is okay. Maybe we should all be sitting in the discomfort for a moment, even if we are not sure that time exists.