Best Feet Forward

(As though, once the sea levels rise, the poor helpless innocent Conservatives will be left to drown while the cheerful conspiratorial immoral Liberals will have acquired all the high ground.)

Cf. the recent news, reported in Grist, of the Florida mega-church evangelical pastor, who was offered a position of high authority among evangelicals, but had to turn it down.  He was as committed as The Board in turning a face of flint towards the primary rights-related concerns, abortion and same-sex marriage.  But he would have liked to add to the agenda some other big issues: social justice, care for the poor, care for the environment.  And that was just too much to ask.

It seems, the evangelicals were not judging those issues on their merits.  They were judging them solely with respect to how they would look, among Conservative Christians, and the Conservative talk-show audience.  That is: "Liberal" is so horrible, dreadful an epithet, that any self-respecting Conservative Christian will do everything he can to avoid looking like he approves of any cause whatsoever, no matter how virtuous, that is associated by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk with "Liberals."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

However, Fern Gully, a hotly debated movie in its time (my elementary school years), was one of my favorites. It had a lot of fanasy and was probably not incredibly accurate as to what might really be happening while logging forests, but I LOVED IT. I watched it over and over and now I'm a thoughtful environmental activist who educates herself on the issues.

So, my point is:
Even if movies like "Happy Feet" enforce stererotypes, at least they exist. Let' be thankful for that.

I used to think that if I cared about one thing, I would have to care about everything. Now I know I do.

You mean: it is a falsehood that storks bring babies?  Check!  (Or, so I am led to believe.)  It is a falsehood that Columbus is a hero?  Triple Check!  Disgrace to the Roman Catholic Church (he used to pray the Office daily!) and to us Italians, who would be well advised to disavow him, no matter his navigational skills, and push him off on the Catalans and the Portuguese and the Provencals and whoever else may want him.

"Fern Gully" is rather before my time (ha ha, ha ha, ha ha ha!)  And I never saw it.  I believe you.  And sympathize.  I definitely understand liking a movie that all the world as though in cohoots hates.

E.g., I think I am the only person in the world who liked Bo Derek's "Tarzan, the Ape Man."  That scene, by the shore of a central African pond, with poor Miles O'Keefe konked out on the beach, lying there, so helpless, belly-side up, the lamb!, and Bo happens upon him, and touchingly relates to him abs-wise, very slowly, very sensitively, then loin-cloth-wise: etc.: is surely a Hollywood treasure.

With respect to animated stuff, there was a lovely, much-hated thing called "Road to El Dorado," in 2000.  Crazy story; very cute guys, daring, dashing, barely within the line of injustice; curious anthropology, with lots of credits to Tikal and Copan and Palenque; some theological imagination; but, of course, nothing racist: needless to say, I loved it.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

i felt as though "happy feet" had a strong negetive message towards militant and evangelical religious-types - as seen with the elders of the tribe.  to me the film said, not only that humans are having a negetive impact on our environment, but that evangelicals are in extreme denial about the state of our world and won't accept non-conformists or changes in our culture and society (which might be so, but does that need to be part of a children's movie?).  i agree with yolanda crous when she mentioned "footloose," it was very much like that but even more extreme in its message and packaged as a movie about happy dancing penguins.

"fern gully" did come up in my conversation with my viewing partner (as in the above comments).  we both spoke about how we enjoyed the film, but agreed that it was promoted as a film that had an emphasis on our negetive impact on the environment.  "happy feet" is being promoted as a happy-go-lucky film about dancing penguins . . . a little misleading . . . i, personally, had no clue about the film having an environmentalist message until i received the "grist list" last week and did some research for myself.

in terms of the environmental message and the cute dancing penguins, i enjoyed "happy feet" ans thought it was very educational.  hopefully kids will walk away, at least, planning on cutting their coke can rings.  maybe kids will think about the ramifications of polluting.  maybe they'll ask questions about the importance of our ecosystem and the damage that is done when it's disrupted.  this is all very important.  in terms of the other messages that were so blatently obvious, i was disturbed and rather shocked.  for the fact that the film is marketed to children who aren't at the development stage where they can truly form thoughts of their own and separate fact from opinion, "happy feet" is extremely misleading.

It is useful to remember that children are individuals, and react in unique and personal ways to the same stimuli.

The only stereotypish comment that I am prepared to make is that because "Happy Feet" has a "kind of" happy ending, most children are not likely to leave traumatized, no matter what kinds of disturbing or frightening things they saw.  I was pretty terrified by the sea leopard scene in the TV preview, in fact; and I do indeed hope that the penguins get away OK.

And whether any of the children comes away with some new environmental sophistication, that would be good, but is in a way incidental.  At least the makers of the cartoon feel that they have delivered some important truths in the telling of this story.  In that regard their cartoon is far superior to the scientifically minimal "March of the Penguins," beloved by the family-values crowd, which told us little or nothing about the state of Antarctica, and the new added difficulties faced by the emperor penguins and other animals that live there.  I hate dissing that movie, because the cinematography is stunning, and must have been achieved only with extreme personal hardship.  Really, it would be preferable to re-release the same movie, only with a new and scientifically sophisticated voice-over.

On happy endings: Many parents are leery about showing their small children "Bambi."  It is possible that some children are very disturbed by it.  In my case, I remember being impressed and fascinated, but not traumatized, probably because the young animals survive everything and grow up.  It never occurred to me that Bambi grown up, sporting his antlers and puffing out his chest, was now the most desirable target for hunters in the forest.

And I did not come away with any strong prejudice against hunters.  Being a city-dweller, not knowing any hunters, I understood that what hunters did was unnecessary and cruel, and that was that, a judgment of no consequence.  But by the same token, I was very fond of Peter Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," in which the hunters are the secondary heroes who restore order, sort of like the "woodsman" in "Little Red Ridinghood."  Of course, "Peter and the Wolf" ends with a curious ambiguity: the Wolf is not killed, but captured (by Peter and the Bird), and at Peter's request the hunters transport it to a zoo; and the fate of the poor Duck, still alive in the Wolf's belly, remains uncertain.

On the other hand, one cartoon which really did bother me, precisely because it ended simply in death, with no younger generation rising up to take over, was the sequence of "Fantasia" about the dinosaurs, illustrating Igor Stravinsky's magnificent "Le Sacre du Printemps."  (Wow, a Russian classical music synchronicity!)  I love dinosaurs, and dinosaurs were my playmates.  So, to see them in that final scene, plodding across the desert in search of any remaining water source, all kinds together, one dying after another, was bitterly painful.  It made me think more, and more deeply, about death than "Bambi" ever did.

Notice, by the way, the cartoon tradition of showing many animals, of many species, moving together across a landscape, preserved in "Lion King" and "Ice Age": in both cases, much more up-beat.

On hunters again, and human beings killing animals: One of my very favorite feature-length cartoons is "Brother Bear."  The religious element, involving the Native American concept of the kinship between humans and animals, is just right.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I have friends who watched Shrek II and became so focused on Pinocchio's hot pink g-string that the rest of the film went right past them. Forget broader messages of things like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and or "a friend in need is a friend indeed." This kind of change of focus reminds us we all have choices. Why is it that you focus on what you do? What do your emotions and preoccupations tell you? Food for thought.

Positive change begins with each of us