waddling

okay... Moomin waddling through the movie theater lobby with his stuffed baby-penguin puppet... cutest thing ever. He liked the movie.

i didn't like it... what a foul subtext it had. okay I liked the cool closeups of penguins but the grody anthropomorphizing - and the awful prose - unbearable. every other sentence was,"And then, the endless ordeal... ended." "And then it was completely dark, dark, dark, pitch black, no light was anywhere. The moon and stars and southern lights were shining..." hahaha, what? stupid.

Another minor annoyance with the stupid-as-possible rhetoric... at the start the penguins are "now, finally going Home" as they waddle 70 miles to their birthplace on the thick ice. at the end they are "at last, going home to the ocean... blah blah, the ocean, their true home..." etc. ad nauseum. Okay - which the fuck is it?

It was all about an annoying social agenda. And all I coudl think was how people will cite that movie and things like it as "scientific evidence" that "nature" is a certain way, to support their own social agendas or what they think about gender. (social a-genders... er...)

How much more interesting - the last few shots with the closing credits where you see the observers. If the movie hadn't made false claims about objectivity it woudl have been so much better and more interesting. instead there were like 5 facts, which were repeated endlessly until the end. you're supposed to walk out (if you're me) shaking your head and saying, "isn't it a shame how there are so many single mothers these days when those penguin fathers were so devoted." And also perhaps identifying with how the family is all devoted to each other but never get to see each other all together for more than like 5 minutes as the mom and dad exchange places.

The male penguins working together or huddling or whatever was emphasized --- the female penguins were not mentioned as interacting with each other socially. even though they do and there were some shots of the female penguins touching beaks as they stood together with babies on feet. Penguins are such homos. I mean, i odn't know if emperor penguins are. But a lot of them are. And there was mention of the penguin moms trying to steal other penguin babies when they lose their own. But do they adopt lost ones? Do they ever feed a baby that isn't their own? Do they drive away skuas? They might, but that would not fit the story that the movie wanted to tell.

Like I said... if the "story" of the movie were about science and observation, how much more interesting. Because I wanted to know how they were living out there and how they got such cool movies of the penguins and whether they made friends with them, or saved any abandoned babies, or if penguins were curious about them, etc.

In contrast - was reading "Clan Apis" to Moomin in the game store afterwards while Rook shopped - and Clan Apis is just perfect - it take the science about the animal first & then makes the characters & the story. The characters don't behave according to human-social expectations. Hmmph.

Comments

[qp]

I was wondering what you would think of it. I mean, lots of gorgeous snow-scenes, adorable baby penguins, whatnot, but man, you are right -- the subtext... so bad. Why is there a minutes-long penguin nuzzling love scene, with weird music? And then they were like, "The mates form deep, monogamous bonds...uh, at least until next year."
Plus there wasn't really anything to maintain the dramatic tension or whatever they were going for...I was thinking, "y'know, I bet this whole breeding thing works out ok for the penguins, since... I know there are penguins. Living. In the world. The end."

[badgerbag]

I know - and SORT of a moment of penguin sex, but not really. As if anyone above age 5 would not be wondering how they manage to connect anything to anything else when they are so round and unwieldy. I wanted to see penguins fucking, dammit!

Suddenly I recall a bitter argument between me and a high school boyfriend over whether penguins had vaginas. I can't remember how it ended up or who said what, but it turned out that penguins have cloacas; everything comes out the same hole and I don't think there was a vagina particularly. It made for a great library date with they boyfriend as we pored over bird books, encyclopedias, etc. in the N4rrragansett Free Library.

[qp]

yeah, those, like, ten minutes of extended penguin foreplay or whatever made me far more uncomfortable than penguin sex would have. Please, stop zooming in on them rubbing each other's faces, and just show us how they make the babies! I am curious!

Cloacas, eh? Mystery solved.