Happy Feet: Penguin Gods Not So Happy
By Guest Writer
I took my family to see Happy Feet (2006) over the holidays, expecting a fun, child-friendly animated flick about a special needs penguin.
As the movie progressed, however, I had the uneasy feeling that this movie was another jab by Hollywood at conservative Christians, with the elder penguins stubbornly shunning the quest for "truth" and blindly accepting (in Job-like fashion) the fate handed them by the "penguin god" (shown in the heavens and erupting in the sky to their praises).
Processing the movie after the fact, a different interpretation is beginning to emerge, one I will choose to believe is the more appropriate. I see parallels between the elder penguins and those New Testament Sanhedrin uncomfortable with any new philosophy powerful enough to sway the population, a group committed to quelling a self-styled messiah and the "unwarranted" enthusiasm he sparked with ridicule and their powerful influence. Happy Feet, a penguin who develops a small following among those drawn by his charisma, seems similar to the disciples who followed Jesus only a certain distance before leaving him to continue his journey alone.
Continuing with my allegorical reading, the film's conclusion--in which the elders are convinced by Happy Feet's approach and abandon their own--might seem like a vision of heaven, in which many of those who most doubted The Message at first have come to recognize it's saving truth and now stand in a posture of praise. Either this, or the allegory falls apart, as the Gospel does not ever show the Jewish elders yielding to Christ's message and praising him as Lord. In this case, the film's message becomes rather disturbing . . .
Perhaps this is overanalyzing the film. I know by my son's disinterest in the movie as it progressed, however, that the filmmakers must have intended the complicated plot to speak to older viewers in some fashion. This isn't a film I plan to add to our family's collection, as I am still uneasy about the particular message it was intended to send.
by Sara Holland
Posted by Guest Writer at January 8, 2007 11:19 PM
Comments
I never saw the movie myself, but a friend of mine (a guy named Eric) went to see it and came away feeling very disappointed. He said the first 3/4 of the film were likeable enough in their own right, but he was horrified when it began to turn into a writer-on-board tirade about overfishing and making penguins into an endangered species (which, in the real world, we're not even close to doing), and humans just generally being stupid and horrible. What he told me is that he began to suspect at this point that the writers were vegans or members of PeTA or something of the ilk.
What Eric remembers most clearly about the film, as he described it to me, is what happened in his theater during the whole zoo sequence: There was a little kid in the audience, CRYING. "What is this, Mommy?! Why are they doing this to him?!" And he realized what the filmmakers had done (as he puts it): they'd taught the impressionable youth in the audience to like this character, and then inflicted horrible sufferings on him (by putting him in a zoo) to make the impressionable youth afraid of all the horrible things that HUMAN BEINGS were doing to him.
Direct quote from Eric: "I guarantee you, none of the kids in that audience are going to have any appetite for fish, or any enthusiasm about going to the zoo, for a LONG time; and it's all because they put a guilt trip on these kids."
Posted by: Jacob Churosh at January 11, 2007 2:00 PM
Screw you guys.
May the penguin god smite you with almighty fishy wrath. SMITE SMITE SMITE!!! Muwwahahahahahahahahahahaahahhahahah! Ha!
Posted by: The Penguin God at March 13, 2007 1:18 PM
perhaps you should try read real literature not just the bible - and to get away from religious idiocy for a while - would do you a lot of good
Posted by: Maria at March 28, 2007 1:11 PM
Obviously Maria hasn't read the bios of the writers of this site... if she did, she would realize that most are literature graduate students and at least two are professors of literature at secular universities. Her reactionary anti-religiosity is typical of people who don't bother reading anything.
Posted by: Bill at April 24, 2007 9:41 PM
I saw Happy Feet and really liked it. I thought it sent a good message about how even if you're different you should follow your heart and never give up. Also, it brought me to a hidden problem, overfishing. This has been a problem that fisherman are trying to hide and have been for months or even years. I don't think this movie was bad at all. I am in fact a literature teacher and asked many of my students to go see Happy Feet and then write a essay about how they interpreted it. I have enjoyed reading all of their writing.
Posted by: Timothy at April 26, 2007 9:32 PM