The Pathos of Penguin Masculinity

[lavendertook]

OK, I just came back from watching The March of the Penguins. You know, gotta hand it to these penguins--they do a nice job of egalitarian parenting across gender under horrific conditions--yeah--go penguins! But Cripes!!! The absolute pathos in Morgan Freeman's voice and narrative emphasis on the "father" penguin's plight! OMFG! Geezus guys, give it a rest! The birds look fucking identical, but oh, the plight of the male penguin! The female penguins loss of a third of her body weight and dropping of the egg and waddling back to sea after this task is mentioned all matter of factly, as I would expect in a documentary, but the male penguins waiting while she went to feed is presented like the Greatest Story Ever Told--they're fucking penguins, guy! A fine display of male interest in only what other males do, but doesn't this look ridiculous to anyone else?

Am I the only one who noted this or is it just my homicidal lesbian tendencies surfacing again?

It's a good Discovery channel movie, but now I know why reviewers I heard and read who gave it such rave reviews were male. Patriarchy is sooo stupid. I'll go back to my grotto now.

Comments

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Smart you are--it is just one big Discovery Channel movie of cute penguins with stupid narration. I like Morgan's voice fine--it was just a combo of the script and his tonal emphasis that gave it the annoying slant.

And it's just that I suspect that the reviews I read in retrospect seem to have either over-identified with the male plight and/or the poor reviewers have been sitting thru an awful lot of dogs this summer that this one seemed so epic to them--probably the combo.(-; Over-identifying is fine with me--its just that I'm trained to look for whose story isn't being told, so I view that over-identification as being at someone else's expense--and it ain't about the penguins if they're doing that. So my reaction is to blow a raspberry. LJ makes it fun.(-;

[http://users.livejournal.com/lucid_dreamer_/]

Nice voices are good but if it because irritating-- meh. I can live without the pengies.

I don't pay much attention to reviews...often times they review movies I love as being awful, or review movies I loathe as being wonderful. I prefere to rely on seeing it myself or what my friends say about it. Though I suppose that is another form of review...however, it is a review that I trust more since I tend to know the tastes of those people.