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The moral of The March of the Penguins is that we’d all be much better off if the religious right lived in Antarctica.  Discuss.

Posted by on 09/21 at 08:50 AM

  1. After watching that movie I turned to my daughter and said, “I will never whine again.”

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  10:28 AM

  2. Agreed on the point that the religious right should move to the Antarctic. But I’m sure Jamie would agree, we would then have to spare the penguins by moving them to, say, Kansas (necessitating a new answer to the question, What’s the matter with Kansas?  For one, there’s penguin poop everywhere.). Who would want to live in a land where every time you screw up the pass of the egg from the feet of the female to the feet of the male, not only do you lose your offspring to the ice, but you are also brought up on murder charges?

    Welcome back. Hope the wedding was fun.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  11:16 AM

  3. Unfortunately, the religious right will move to Antarctica when hell freezes over.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  09/21  at  11:29 AM

  4. They are not quite done turning America into a frozen, barren wasteland.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  11:29 AM

  5. i would not subject the penguins, of which there seem to be many, who are engaged in same-sex unions, to such an injustice.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  11:36 AM

  6. Not having seen the movie, I can’t comment. Tho I can certainly get behind moving Robertson, Dobson, Falwell and Company to Antartica. Or maybe Iraq, then they and the Islamic crazoids can Jihad until the cows come home, and spare the penguins.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  12:04 PM

  7. Just think how different the world might have been had George and Barbara had to pass the egg between their feet!

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  12:26 PM

  8. I like that moral.  It’ll be our liberal subversion of what has been turned into a conservative film.  Did you read the NYTimes article about the religious right using the movie as political fodder?  It’s here, although you have to be one of those new fancy schmancy Times Select subscribers to read it now that it’s been archived.

    Not that anyone’s interested, but that NYT article came out on September 13.  My friend and I predicted that this movie was ultimately a red state conspiracy in my blog on August 10.  The penguins are just about the damn cutest things ever, that is until the poor bastards have to live with the burden of being turned into bastians of family values.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  12:26 PM

  9. Jihad until the Cows Come Home--isn’t that the latest album from Drivin’ N’ Cryin’?

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  12:31 PM

  10. Yes—that’s what I’ve been saying since the article came out:  fine, wingnuts, live your lives in imitation of penguins and freakin’ move to Antarctica already!

    One silver lining:  we can use this interpretation as an example to our students of how not to do literary interpretation! In fact, maybe *that’s* the moral of the wider story.  Or maybe it’s evidence of why there aren’t more wingnuts in English and Film departments.

    Posted by Tina  on  09/21  at  12:34 PM

  11. Or maybe it’s evidence of why there aren’t more wingnuts in English and Film departments.

    Oh, Jesus’ mother on a breakaway, Tina, you’re not going to suggest that wingnuts are underrepresented in English and Film departments because they produce bizarre, tendentious “readings” of films they haven’t even seen?  (I saw Penguins six weeks ago, myself.) Everyone knows it takes a nationwide conspiracy of liberal search committee members and graduate admissions directors to keep wingnuts from overrunning the humanities.

    Posted by Michael  on  09/21  at  12:43 PM

  12. Finally, a place in the world that’s colder than where I live! Heck, I say we send all the whiners and moralizers there of whatever extremist stripe. But, on second thought, who’d want to inconvenience the poor penguins?

    Posted by Ancarett  on  09/21  at  12:50 PM

  13. Dang it.  I haven’t seen The March either and was waiting for the DVD.  Now, the wingers have spoiled my viewing of it.  They have inscribed their “family values” reading over that of the director himself.  Any reading of the film that I do will have to be against that grain.  They’ve preempted my reading of it.  And that pisses me off.

    I wouldn’t want the religious nuts in Antarctica convertin’ Polar Bears, takin’ over scientific camps and replacin’ ‘em with mall-style churches, so that they can explain to the moose that they weren’t descended from anything ‘cept the 2 moose that were saved on Noah’s Ark some 5000 years ago.

    Send those wackos to an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and give ‘em a lesson first on “fossil” fuels and then the wondrous power of nature in the era of global warming.  Then they can talk to me later about the fambly.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  01:01 PM

  14. Did you read the NYTimes article about the religious right using the movie as political fodder?

    Yes I did, tomluv, and while we’re on the subject:  although that article was sane, I know I’m not the only person who’s appalled and weirded out by the Times’ recent meanderings into Intelligent Design—presumably as part of their new plan to reach out across the waters of the Hudson River and embrace ordinary Americans who believe that God had a hand in their bingo winnings last Thursday night.  Call it the Times’ experiment with Unintelligent Newspaper Design.

    Posted by Michael  on  09/21  at  01:02 PM

  15. I haven’t seen the film.  So, I can’t comment on what the moral of the movie is.

    I don’t know whether we’d be better off if the religious right moved to Antarctica.  Would they try to melt the ice caps?

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  02:10 PM

  16. I guess the first thing to remember when trying to fathom this bizarre phenomenon is that some of these people took young children to see “The Passion.”

    Having seen the movie days before the NYT article came out, I have to confess to being totally confused by the fundamentalist embrace.  Maybe I just have a prurient mind, but I could have sworn “March” included a pretty hottt n’ steamy penguin sex scene—something that would have been rated at least PG-13 (and probably R) had it portrayed humans.  In any event, it was certainly enough to cause a small child to ask “what are they doing?”

    Posted by Nick  on  09/21  at  02:12 PM

  17. I did see the movie months ago.  I thought it was a pure example of Darwinism.  Monogamy after sex, they go off with same sex groups, the father lays the egg and feeds the kid, talk about house dad.  If it was still possible for me to shocked about the wingnut reaction I would have been.  But, I am only a film /cultural studies scholar.  I agree with Tina, we have a new example of an off the wall interperation that the text does not hold.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  02:36 PM

  18. On Mon, Sep. 19, there was a small article by Faye Flam in the Philadelphia Inquirer debunking the praise of the penguins’ family values.  What the filmmakers don’t tell you is that some of those couples are m/m and f/f, who never produce an egg.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  02:40 PM

  19. Credit where it’s due. Dave Noon, last week:

    “Allow me to be the first to endorse Rich Lowry’s suggestion that young Republicans model their existence on the lives of penguins—living on icebergs, swimming in near-frozen water, plodding brutal distances to procreate in a blizzard, and having their offspring dismembered by hungry seagulls.”

    http://axisofevelknievel.blogspot.com/2005/09/wwpd.html

    Posted by djw  on  09/21  at  02:44 PM

  20. Further on the Darwinist implications: as I understand it, the penguins “march” because of changes in the terrain--the nesting area used to be much closer to the open water than it is now. So they’ve adapted, right? And presumably some of them will be more successful at keeping their young alive in these new condiitions, so those young will leave offspring while the less successful ones won’t (or will leave fewer), which is what we call selection pressure… right?

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  04:06 PM

  21. I thought we were going to colonize Mars for the religious right.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  04:27 PM

  22. "Would they try to melt the ice caps?” Alas, Abby, their policies are already doing quite a fine job.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  04:32 PM

  23. I think maybe the North Polar region would be better, since they are so certain that global warming is a liberal hoax.  They can learn to ice fish until they get open water.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  06:24 PM

  24. Oh, Jesus’ mother on a breakaway...

    ROTFLMAO.  I love that image, Michael.  Next thing you know, the wingnuts in the Catholic division of wingnuttery will say they see such images in the film!  Lady of Antarctica, Queen of the Ice Flows, intercede for us!

    Posted by Tina  on  09/21  at  07:03 PM

  25. Um, according to the film, the penguins hook up, have a baby together, and then split up. This is exemplary how?

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  07:58 PM

  26. It is conservative because it emphasized the importance of fathers. Fathers Fathers Fathers. Liberals hate fathers and mothers and little babies. I know I do.

    I saw the movie and everytime a little baby penguin was killed I took a shot of whiskey and shouted “Natural Selection at work, BITCHES”.

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  08:32 PM

  27. I keep thinking of, ehm, Graham Chapman as the scientist whose survey spent months “living like penguins… and consequently dying like penguins… thus proving that the penguin is a tricky little sod on his home turf.”

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  09:37 PM

  28. I can’t wait to see the DVD using the latest CleanFlicks and ClearPlay versions and software.  I bet then those pesky scenes of penquin lust and that not so fundamentally sounding notion of serial monogamy will be lost forever in the howling jet streams of the Antarctic midlands.  today’s Independent Online:
    http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article314002.ece

    Posted by  on  09/21  at  10:33 PM

  29. No, silly. The message of this movie is that male penguins have an evolutionary imperative to kick the eggs of their feet and run off to find a younger girl penguin.

    That’s why penguins no longer exist in nature.

    Posted by julia  on  09/21  at  11:45 PM

  30. I don’t think the same sex relationships of penguins prove anything about the naturalness of homosexuality.  I think it just shows that it’s really hard to tell the difference, even if you’re a penguin.  They are the “Pat” species.  I imagine many penguins are frightfully embarrassed after months of fruitless mating.  “I thought YOU were the male?!?” is often overheard on the pack-ice.

    Posted by  on  09/22  at  09:47 AM

  31. Oh, but I was hoping one day to live in antartica. But no, not if the fundies are going to be there. Never mind.

    a modest experiment

    Posted by Bob Davis  on  09/22  at  04:50 PM

  32. Sorry to just drop in like this, but there’s a nice piece written by a friend on mine on the penguins (and the movie) at http://www.printculture.com/item-331.html ...

    Posted by Eric  on  09/22  at  08:51 PM

  33. Gosh, don’t the penguins have enough problems without having to take a position on the “culture wars”?

    Posted by  on  09/23  at  12:57 PM

  34. You must read Anatole France’s novel, Penguin Island.  It is a gas.

    Posted by  on  09/24  at  04:27 PM

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