another take on the March of the Penguins... somehow i actually
agree with the dude, especially the part in red 
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March of the Morons
The 78th Academy Awards proved evermore predictable this year. Once
again, Meryl Streep was nominated out of pure reflex. Once again,
speeches were cut short by the band. Once again, it was an entire
evening of self-congratulatory dick sucking by people a million
times richer and more beautiful than you or I. Yet, if there is one Oscar tradition stronger than
any other, it is the inevitable honoring of a film or actor "brave"
enough to tackle the subject matter of the mentally
challenged. The illustrious list of trailblazing actors
includes such luminaries as Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, and Sean
Penn. Given this history, is it any surprise that March of the
Penguins took home the gold statuette for best feature documentary?
Thats right, dear reader, I propose you add to that list of
loveable "special" subjects the Emperor Penguin. 2005's most
beloved documentary is, at its core, a movie about retarded
animals.
"But wait!" you cry. "I saw that movie. It was an uplifting
testament to the powerful bonds of family that exist throughout
Nature." Nay, I say! Nay! Hidden behind all the schmaltz is little
more than a glorified Animal Planet special with Morgan Freeman's
magniloquent narration tacked on. Look past the hype and youll
find a documentary containing some admittedly impressive footage of
wildlife survival in the harshest conditions on earth with a
healthy dash of pretension. Then, and only then, will you realize
that the regal penguins it features are in fact quite retarded,
their kumquat-sized brains having hardwired them to follow the same
unnecessarily perilous mating ritual year after year.
The film is perhaps best interpreted as a parable warning against
the dangers of groupthink. The sight of a single file line of
penguins hundreds of tuxedos long plodding towards the worlds least
hospitable breeding ground did not inspire me to think about the
marvelous souls of these majestic idiots, as so many reviewers have
suggested. Instead, I found myself imagining the conversational
exchanges between the birds in the middle of the pack.
Penguin #1: (to the bird in front
of him) Hey, do you know where we're going?
Penguin #2: Don't ask me. I'm following this guy. (flaps a wing
towards the bird in front of him)
After nearly two hours of this, you begin to wonder when the one
smart penguin is just going to tell the group to f**k itself and
say "Screw you guys, Im going home." But no. One after another,
they each follow the bird in front of them to the same bulls**t
mating area 50 miles from the nearest food source. You kind of
start to wonder if there isn't a valid reason to why they are the
only frigging animals in sight for miles. It seems that penguins
have less intelligence than plankton.
It should come as little surprise that my interpretation of the
film is not shared by its many fans. Some groups on the Christian
right have latched onto the film and attempted to make it last
year's Passion of the Christ under the premise that it is evidence
of intelligent design and promotes strong family values. I would
argue that these are merely feeble attempts by so-called "family
groups" to foist their own agenda onto a piece of media - a piece
of media about imbecilic flightless birds - to suit their own
purposes. So, penguins pick one mate per season, hatch an egg, barf
in the chick's mouth for a month, then wait till the baby can take
more than ten steps on its own in polar temperatures before
abandoning it and repeating the process the next year. Theres your
evidence of Emperor Penguins as model family units that we should
all emulate. I, for one, am not convinced.
What if this cursory analysis or cinematic Rorschach test was
applied to other elements of the film? Let's look at the shots of
hundreds of male penguins huddled together against the wind, slowly
rubbing against each other to generate friction and "stay warm."
Does that last shot description maybe remind you of another Oscar
frontrunner that Christian groups have railed against? Transplant
the scene to a tent in Idaho, add flannel, a smoldering campfire
and you've got Brokeback Penguin: a nature doc glorifying
homosexuality with hot male-on-male penguin action beautifully
photographed in the friscalating dusklight.
"Thats ludicrous," you say. It sure is. But no more ludicrous than
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences blindly honoring
every Oscar sycophant who plays a mentally disabled individual. I'd
venture to say the Academy even assumed the filmmakers themselves
were at least partially retarded until we all discovered they were
just French during their acceptance speech.
(source: Steve's
World)
