march of the penguins

i am sure that we all know that if the protagonists of this documentary were not anthropomorphic birds whose journey up and down from the freezing ocean to a place where they rear their young reeks of sentiment of the ‘american family value’ kind; and if the entire journey was not punctuated by a ‘voice of god’ voice-over by none other than morgan freeman over a lush over orchestrated soundtrack that tell us the emotion that the penguin ‘feels’ at different stages of a coming-of-age drama that might have starred julia roberts, nick nolte and lindsay lohan; or if the movie did not have a budget of a zillion madhushree dutta bombay films; it would not have ended being as popular as it did.

on the other hand it did, and maybe i am merely being churlish by pointing out that it was the most manipulative and cheesy kind of film making i have ever seen. penguins fight off tears as they brave the winds, they tear themselves away from their young chicks when they have to go find food, the chicks run around like there are playing american football. disgustingly cute, made cuter.

we project ideas of normative human relationships upon the lives of birds and are delighted that they (almost) fall in line with them. its regressive film making at its worst and should not even be seen on tv. even though it comes with bundled with other channels free.