1/14/2024 0 Comments Happy feet mumble characterOut on the Arctic ice, there is no room to stray from the flock-metaphorically and realistically. conformity, and the American character, one can discover the implicit and underground messages of this mainstream movie. By taking a closer look at the movie’s portrayal of traditional gender roles, individuality vs. Our dear hero is finally accepted for his “un-penguin” like ways and returns to his home on the Arctic ice with his family. 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. He leaves everything he knows behind, escapes the dangers of Arctic life, and successfully grabs the attention of “the aliens” by his tap dancing. 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. 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. 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. Mumbles cannot sing, but instead shows his passion and life-energy through dance, which is seen as deviant and wrong in his community. We have to find our heart-song ourselves–it is who you truly are” (Happy Feet). 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. 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.Ī 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. 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. 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.
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