Friday, December 09, 2005

A penguin is a bureaucrat's best friend

I have to admit that I'm rather looking forward to "March of the Penguins". Having been to visit penguins in New Zealand (fairy and yellow-eyed), and being the sort of person who loves to watch them in zoos, the idea that a movie about them could become a hit is perfectly understandable.

Of course, the idea that they all look the same is obviously attractive to a bureaucrat (it's difficult to assign blame when you can't tell which is which!) but I would really enjoy spending quality time with them.

Troublingly, it appears that some people can't even watch a documentary without assigning their rather narrow-minded philosophy to it. The film apparently "promotes monogamy" and is "an affirmation of Christian values". Funnily enough, penguins aren't Christian and I've never seen any at the Catholic masses that I've attended (of course, they could all be Protestant... and, now I think about it, some of the nuns that I've met...). And as for monogamy, how could anyone tell? There are thousands of them, and they all look the same. How could anyone tell if one or two of them sneak off for some illicit non-monogamous sex?

It's just a movie! They're just penguins! They don't have a moral code, or at least, if they do, they aren't about to tell us what it is. At least they don't make reality programmes like "I'm a penguin, get me out of here!". I take it back, they clearly do have a superior moral code...

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