Politicized penguins

September 14, 2005

I knew March of the Penguins is a popular documentary, and considering that it’s tame content (no profanity, no nudity), I figured it’d be popular among conservatives as well. I just didn’t realize how much the right would embrace the film as its own.

On the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com, an opponent of abortion wrote that the movie “verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it.”

At a conference for young Republicans, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie because it promoted monogamy. A widely circulated Christian magazine said it made “a strong case for intelligent design.”

Michael Medved said, “This is the first movie [conservative families have] enjoyed since ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ This is ‘The ‘Passion of the Penguins.’ ”

I haven’t seen the movie, but I have a hunch this conservative enthusiasm is misplaced.

First, the filmmakers are active proponents of evolutionary biology and the film acknowledges that the penguins have been engaging in the same patterns for “millions of years.” Second, those same filmmakers acknowledge that “it’s obvious that global warming has an impact on the reproduction of the penguins.” Both of these points are completely at odds with the right-wing worldview.

And as for making a case for intelligent-design creationism, we’re talking about birds that can’t fly traveling mindlessly back and forth over 70 miles of ice. This is evidence of intelligent design?

Update: The same NYT piece suggests the penguins help undermine the idea of gay marriage. From comments, there’s reason to believe the conservatives are wrong about this too.

well, lots of michael moore fans thought that “bowling for columbine” was an anti-gun movie too.

  • The other thing they miss is that the penguins do not mate for life. They chose a mate at the beginning of each mating season. I guess it is a fine case for serial monogamy, but I can’t remember James Dobson saying that was allright.

    It is also a pretty crummy argument for intelligent design too. If the creator was so intelligent and benevolent, why force penguins to the brink of starvation at the end of the earth just to reproduce. I mean, they do look cute in those black and white suits, but isn’t this whole survival of the fittest thing kind of Darwinny?

  • PS: Michael Medved is full of crap too. Go look at all of the states where there are hordes of Christian conservative families and I bet that the sales of porn and Disney movies is every bit as swift as in most blue states. The porn is probably just mail-ordered though.

  • What sort of “intelligence” produces a bird that can’t fly and that reproduces by standing around for a month or so with an egg on its feet in the middle of the Antarctic winter? This is an example of “intelligent design”?

    The thought processes of these people argue against the idea that they are a producst of “intelligent design”!

  • They need to support something that is popular. They’ve got the war and the President tanking, so they figured they’d latch onto something with ratings higher than 40%.

  • Conservatives love March of the Penguins because it’s threatening to overtake Fahrenheit 9/11 as the highest-grossing documentary of all time. That’s it.

  • Dillinger,

    That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever read. Wonder how the far right will feel about it, they’re all about “praying the gay” out of folks…..I’m literally laughing my ass off…….whooo. Good one……

  • I despair almost daily at how politicized every aspect of our culture has become — it’s not enough to like a movie or book anymore, it’s got to first be filtered through whether it meets our criteria as a “liberal-affirming” or “conservative-affirming” worldview, or some such nonsense. I’m of the opinion that those on the right are more prone to this, and Michael Medved is a particularly odious offender in this arena, mostly because he used to be a semi-respected movie critic, and now he’s just a hack writer who tries to shape his opinions to an ideological worldview. There’s lots of people out there who believe that “Passion of the Christ” made the money it did because of the views it puts out — and that which doesn’t exist in today’s Hollywood.

    But you’d find a lot of movies that espouse wholesome views that are completely ignored by the mass public (sometimes because they’re dreadfully boring) just as, if Hollywood went about producing epics with religious themes every year, eventually, after the first few, they’d stop making money just because the area would have been mined so thoroughly already.

    All this is coming around to a small point: they’re birds. They’re freakin’ BIRDS. Now, these folks have the right to say whatever they want — but what in the name of the holy Spaghetti Monster made the NYT decide this was somehow newsworthy???

  • More reasons why penguins are the darlings of conservatives:

    Penguin mom’s set aside their careers to care for their children.

    They’re black, but do you ever hear them whining about discrimination?

    If a penguin mom is kept barefoot and pregnant, she doesn’t complain.

    No welfare checks for penguins.

    Did you ever see a penguin camping out in Crawford?

    No abortion for penguins.

    Penguins respect the flag.

    Penguins won’t try to take your guns away.

    So what if there ARE gay penguins? At least you don’t see them taking Holy Orders.

  • an opponent of abortion wrote that the movie “verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it.”

    I’m confused. Does this mean that anti-abortion groups are now working to preserve wilderness areas as part of their “culture of life”? Or maybe they’re going to go to Antarctica and shuffle with eggs on their feet to protect the unborn penguins…

  • The other thing they miss is that the penguins do not mate for life. They chose a mate at the beginning of each mating season. I guess it is a fine case for serial monogamy, but I can’t remember James Dobson saying that was allright.

    DTK beat me to it. In fact, the movie makes a point of showing how a penguin couple that accidently loses its egg is done as a couple. I’d like to see those nitwits explain that humans should emulate that behavior.

  • What they fail to mention, of course, that few Penguins are actually monogamous and fifty percent of baby Penguins die before they reach their first birthday.

    Much like some on the far left, they are trying to impose their utopian ideals onto an often brutal, often indifferent, natural world.

    They communists themselves could not have done a better job at pseudoscience and propaganda

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