This last weekend, I took my 8-year-old-brother to see "Happy Feet." On its opening weekend, the computer-animated film beat out "Casino Royale" at the box office by raking in nearly $42.3 million.
But outraged Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto ravedthat the film was pushing a far-left agenda: "I half expected to see an animated version of Al Gore to pop up."
So what's got Cavuto's panties in a twist?
"Happy Feet" tells the story of an emperor penguin named Mumble, born without a "heart song." The entire penguin society depends on song to attract mates. Society claims everything. Dissent causes division and division causes "the Great Guin" to become angry. The Great Guin has the power to giveth and the power to taketh away.
From birth, Mumble (Elijah Wood) has been different. Instead of singing, he tap dances. That's right. A tap-dancing penguin.
All Mumble wants is to belong, but his peers harass him constantly. He is always disappointing his father, Memphis (who happens to have a very Texan accent). Everytime Mumble tap dances, Memphis scolds him: "It just ain't penguin, okay?"
Okay. So far "Happy Feet" supports individuality and showcases the discrimination against those who don't or can't conform. But don't worry. There's more.
A council of elders (who resemble fat old men in robes) runs the penguin society. The council is headed by Noah, an aging penguin who looks creepily like Dick Cheney. Noah and the Elders are absolute sticklers for tradition, blaming Mumble and his "foreign friends" (short penguins with Mexican accents) for the shortage of fish. Divine retribution for Mumble's nonconformity, you could say.
Now we're running into more political themes. The elders encourage and demand blind devotion to the Great Guin and to traditional ways, scapegoating those who are different as the causes of misfortune because they provoke the Great Guin's wrath. They also use mob mentality to ignite hate and anger toward those who don't hold fast to the traditional ways, going so far as to use the phrase "pagan display" in reference to Mumble's dancing.
So maybe the Dick Cheney penguin was going a little far. And the use of Christian doctrine by the elders to control and manipulate the society smells a little of left-wing strategy. But teaching kids that being different is okay and that society will sometimes discriminate against people just for being different -why is that so wrong? If kids are exposed to these issues at a young age, perhaps they will not be so apathetic when they study about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement or the gay rights movement.
Then comes the most political theme of all: the cause of the fish shortage is, as Mumble discovers, AntAntarctic fishing. Whoa, there! Hold up. Let's not teach our kids that depleting the entire fish supply and killing millions of creatures is bad!
But according to Cavuto, it is.
Here's the Cavuto transcript: "What I found offensive - I don't care what your stands are on the environment - is that they shove this in a kid's movie. So you hear the penguins are starving and they're starving because of mean old men, mean old companies, Antarctic fishing, a big taboo. And they're foisting this on my kids, who frankly were more bored that it was a nearly two-hour movie. And they're kids!"
Actually, I sat in a theater packed with toddlers who seemed riveted throughout the entire movie. And yes, the penguins starve because of Antarctic fishing. If you can find a better explanation, then complain all you want. What's wrong with telling kids they can have an impact on more lives than just their own?
"My biggest thing was - you can make a political statement all you want - adult movie and all. I just think it's a little tacky and a big-time objectionable when you start foisting it on kids who don't know any better."
By those standards, kids shouldn't be enrolled in anything that can give them political ideals - be it Sunday school, church, the Boy/Girl Scouts, etc.
Parents want to control the messages kids get from the world. But guess what? Unless you ban them from TV and the Internet, lock them in the house and monitor all their conversations, there is no way you can prevent kids from seeing and hearing outside influences. We should be more concerned about violence and sex in the media than about a tap-dancing penguin asking our kids to help save his friends.
Kids should have a choice in their beliefs, and if they are given more than one opinion on the issue, they can choose for themselves. If one opinion comes from their parents, then the other opinion has to come from somewhere.
"Even more telling to me was the fact that - I thought it was like an animated 'Inconvenient Truth.'"
Exactly. Inconvenient as it may be for the environmentally right-winged, it is a truth. There isabsolutely nothing wrong with introducing kids to a real issue and teaching them that their actions have great consequences on the world.
Apathy is the biggest problem we as a society have to deal with. When we live in a country where young people seem to care more about the next American Idol than the next president, we need to work on inspiring our kids to care. Caring about the world is a lesson America needs to learn, even if that lesson has to be taught by a little dancing penguin that never fully molts.
