happy feet

we also went to see happy feet, which, shut up, i really enjoyed. i totally related to what i found as a gay parallel- while not as overt as say, xmen 2, was definately there. mumble is shunned by penguin society because of his differentness- his disinterest and untalent in the essential love act in the emperor penguin world. while his peers are by turns baffled, mocking, and accepting, the elders of the community think that different is bad and he needs to be exiled. that it is this sin that is bringing the hard times to the land. hello, fred phelps? i guess the underdog and the different one can always be seen through rainbow-colored lenses, but i thought the whole religious aspect (plus of course his differentness tied to a mating ritual) was what made it more so than your average tale of a kid who doesn't belong. or i could just be reading into it.

the other thing i really enjoyed was introduction of live action people at the end, though reviewers hated it. i thought it totally made sense logically, and i thought the forshaddowing lead us right there. it showed that these are real creatures and had a good environmental message- cause it's so easy to imagine antartica and cutsie penguins as characters soley in a cgi world, not realizing that it's a real live place here in our very world. i llked the shift, so there.

there were some things i hated, of course. your basic cartoon standbys: mysogyny and the hegemony of american (AND HUMAN!) beauty standards. why do the women characters only sing and go fishing? why are there no women on the adventure? this does not reflect penguin culture- women go off to get fish while the men sit on the eggs, for goddesssake! there were 2 main women characters and about 10 main male characters. was it necessary for all those roles to be played by men? i don't think so. and i was FURIOUS about something ch first pointed out in the ad- the women penguin's yellow coloring is a triangle lower than the coloring on the male's necks- and the animators used it to emphasize the appearance of breasts. there were all these curvy women penguins! it was pretty disgusting- why can't even PENGUINS be short and squat? that's REALLY how the goddess created them. there wasn't anything else physically antromorphised. it was really bad- even d mentioned it afterwards.

and my final question- why didn't this movie come out in time for me to write a paper on it in culture, race and media class? cause i think i've said more in this blog entry than everything i could dredge up about a bug's life, which was the cartoon i actually wrote the paper on.