Happy Feet: A Penguin’s Tale of Conformity the American Way

 

The Penguin’s Life for Me

          Take the flightless birds from March of the Penguins, the jukebox pop-song remakes from Moulin Rouge, the green message from The Inconvenient Truth, throw in a self-discovery theme and package it in computer animation and you’ve got the Academy Award winning flick: Happy Feet. Riding off the coattails of America’s recent penguin fetish, this movie tells the story of a young penguin’s journey of trying to fit in-well, that’s half of the story anyway. Battling a conformist society, and the need to breed, the young penguin discovers “aliens” who are stealing their fish and sets out on a journey to set the food chain right.

A penguin named Mumbles is the movie’s hero and protagonist, and struggles with being different from the rest of the penguin children because he does not have a heart-song and cannot sing. The importance and normalcy of having a heart-song is reified by his school teacher who tells him: “Without our heart-song we can’t be truly penguin. We have to find our heart-song ourselves–it is who you truly are” (Happy Feet). Mumbles cannot sing, but instead shows his passion and life-energy through dance, which is seen as deviant and wrong in his community. The plot unfurls to reveal how he copes and overcomes the challenges of being the outcast, but the movie takes a sudden turn when we meet Lovelace, a sexualized guru who adorns a plastic soda can holder around his neck. This “necklace” eventually begins to choke him to death, and the movie is propelled towards implicit questions of the environmental impact of “the aliens,” which are humans.  Mumble leaves the self-discovery/love plot behind when he tells off Gloria, his life-long crush, and sets off on a journey to find out who or what put the plastic soda can holder around Lovelace’s neck. He leaves everything he knows behind, escapes the dangers of Arctic life, and successfully grabs the attention of “the aliens” by his tap dancing. The aliens become aware of the destruction their fishing and pollution has had on the penguin colony and after watching the entire colony perform a choreographed routine for them, they outlaw all fishing and the penguins are saved. Our dear hero is finally accepted for his “un-penguin” like ways and returns to his home on the Arctic ice with his family. By taking a closer look at the movie’s portrayal of traditional gender roles, individuality vs. conformity, and the American character, one can discover the implicit and underground messages of this mainstream movie.

Traditional Gender Roles

          Out on the Arctic ice, there is no room to stray from the flock-metaphorically and realistically. Male and female emperor penguins have strict binary roles to play if they wish to survive the harsh cold environment. The film does not drift from the factual roles of real-life emperor penguins, but plays on these roles with our culture’s stereotypical views of gender. The very beginning of the film opens with the mother penguin crooning, “You don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on” (Happy Feet). Of course, in real life penguins do not sing songs coded in sexual innuendo to attract their mate, but in the world of this film they do. This penguin, named Norma Jean modeled off of Marilyn Monroe (”Trivia for Happy Feet”) is sexy and has a feminine shape with yellow markings on her chest that oddly enough resemble cleavage and a decorative black mole on the right-side of her penguin “chest.”  Her voice is quiet, soft, sensual, seductive, and breathy. During the opening sequence when Norma Jean is singing, a male penguin jumps up from behind some snow and begins to sing to her: Memphis, modeled off of the mysterious and cool image of Elvis Presley, begins to sing heart-break hotel. The two penguins sing in a love melody to each other as the voice-over informs us that these penguins “met in the usual way. Their song became love” (Happy Feet). In this penguin culture, the norm is to be a rock star singer, full of energy, pizzazz and talent. To be otherwise is to be unsuccessful at attracting a mate of the opposite sex and raising an egg and family. These binary gender roles are strictly adhered to throughout the entire film, and subconsciously teach children viewers of the right way to act and be according to their culturally assigned gender.

Individuality vs. Conformity.

          There is an interesting contradiction in this film concerning the goal of being an outstanding individual within the society’s strict conformity rules. This reflects our own culture: to be outside of our cultural norms is wrong, but if one plays by our society’s rules yet is still able to stand out, they are seen as successful. A person who lives outside a society’s hegemony is only accepted if they contribute something profound or new to the society. We see this happen with Mumbles. He continues to dance even though the elders of the colony and nearly everyone else has discouraged him to do so. The elders, sick of Mumbles’ dancing, strange friends and crazy ideas, decide to ban Mumbles from the colony. Mumbles is then free to truly be himself and seek out answers to the question of “the aliens.” He only becomes truly accepted when he brings back these “aliens” to the colony and thus frees the penguins from starvation. Not only is Mumbles accepted, but his way of expressing his heart-song is accepted, and the movie ends with the entire colony, elders including, tap-dancing away on the ice.

To be a successful penguin in Mumbles’ culture, one must be a talented singer and adhere to the binary male/female roles. He learns at an early age how important it is to be a successful singer within the conformist society. Mumbles is sent to a special voice teacher, and when he begins to dance she threatens him: “You want to meet a beautiful girl? You want to make an egg? Well, sing! And no jiggy-jag. Do not move a muscle (Happy Feet)!” Because of Mumbles’ failure to conform, he is not allowed to graduate with his class and is kicked out of the graduation party after he tries to sing. Luckily, Mumbles has his talent at dancing to fall back on-at least he has that. But I wonder how horrible Mumbles’ life would be if he could not sing and did not have a talent in something else. The implicit message is that we all must be good at something-we must all have a talent, whether it is traditionally accepted or not.

 American Character

          All the examples given thus far can also connect to the American dream and the traditional American character: to be happy one must find a mate of the opposite sex to raise a family with, one must be talented and wanted, one must conform yet stand out within a society, one must stick to gender roles, one must be a strong individual who can pull themselves up by their bootstraps because adversity is what makes us strong as Americans! Our class text, Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society, tells us that our American culture works based on individualism and meritocracy, which are based on the assumptions that “everyone has the opportunity to be successful if they just work hard enough” (34). Mumbles is expected to just work hard to overcome his vocal weaknesses and just learn to suppress his natural urge to dance. The penguins do not accept him as he naturally is, and because he is not willing to work through his differences, he is cast out from the society.

          Mumbles’ journey embodies the American value of individualism as he must “shed” his friends and reject his love to seek out what he truly wants: answers to the question of aliens. After he leaves behind the few friends he has left, we see him flying through the ocean as epic music plays in the background, determined to find answers and create change all by himself. He overcomes all obstacles and saves his colony-yes, one little penguin completely shunned by his entire society single-handedly found the strength and power to do this work all on his own. This is the great American façade: he found his bootstraps, overcame adversity, and saved the community that treated him so unfairly his entire life.

A Family Movie?

          With the underlying sexual innuendoes and strange political message, it is apparent that this movie was created with adults in mind. This movie does not do much to challenge our culture’s ideas of normalcy, besides perhaps the fact that we are over fishing our oceans. This paper has only scratched the surface of this film, as there are many issues or race, religion, and traditional vs. progressive ideas to analyze as well-watch this movie with a pen and notebook in hand and I’m sure you will be able to uncover some hidden messages yourself.

           

 

Works Cited

• Gollnick, Donna, and Phillip Chinn. Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society: Seventh Edition. Ohio: Merrill Prentice Hall, 2006.
• Happy Feet. Dir. George Miller. Perf. Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman. 2006. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007.
• “Trivia for Happy Feet.” Internet Movie Database. 11 January 2008.                       < http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366548/trivia>

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