Hollywood, Liberalism, and Tap-Dancing-Penguins: Progressivism in the Eyes of a Child

Happy Feet's Movie Poster: Somehow I doubt the studio will mind the free advertising

While Pundits and Politicians alike will fight, tooth and nail, to affix their preferred label, "Liberal" or "Conservative" to the nation's News Media; few will lift a finger to contest the charge of "Leftist" when applied to the star-studded streets of Hollywood California. From George Clooney to Martin Sheen, America's movie stars and even studios represent a full political spectrum – from the left to the far left.

Liberalism, however, has not often found the United States receptive; and liberals have, more than once, felt the ire of a nation in a sometimes violent rejection of their ideology. Yet, with the rare exceptions in the form of persecution under the likes of McCarthy, Hollywood and its collection of eclectic artists receive a pass, after a fashion, from the American people for its often unpopular views.

Perhaps this is because of the nature of Hollywood's product. Though all media, news or otherwise, is, by some measure, fiction, the films produced in the California sun are unabashedly more so; and while politics is a consideration of trade-offs, in a fictional world the costs of liberalism, accepted or otherwise, may be dismissed by a screen-writer with a pen-stroke.

Though the political arena is in its off-season until November of next year, one such utopia is presented on the sterile ice of Antarctica – a tale of difference and tolerance, authority and individuality, and the failings of religion, all supporting an overarching endorsement of multiculturalism, environmentalism, and multilateralism.

All these politics -- packed, wrapped, and garnished with a bow-tie in a film for the whole family: Happy Feet.

Indeed, in such a package who can really object to the endorsement of such unabashedly liberal thought? What parent would want their child to reject Mumble, as his fellow penguins do, for his desire to dance rather than sing? Somehow this sexual deviancy – and it is, in the film, a sexual deviancy – is something few would want their children to reject, much less condemn.

Even the most authoritarian of Americans can find little fault in Mumble's decision to challenge the authority of Noah, the leader of the penguin colony, who tells him his difference is unwanted and demands that he change and renounce his dancing ways. Yet Mumble, like many American homosexuals, is condemned by his leaders, functionally, to a lifetime of loneliness for his unwillingness to submit to their moral authority and he is forced out of his community and into the wild.

Mumble's life of exile leads him across borders, to a foreign penguin colony full of penguins that accept his difference, even embrace it. His happiness at his new-found-friends and their acceptance is palatable, and the audience – Liberal and Conservative alike - rejoices with him. Yet Mumble is an immigrant, a stranger in a strange land. He does not know his new friends' ways and yet rather than condemn him for this failing; the audience can not help but applaud his hosts for their patience and understanding. Such applause is a far cry indeed from the welcome Mexican immigrants (legal or otherwise) receive from those same theater-goers.

In foreign lands and at home, Mumble's encounters with religion leave his questions unanswered. He is spurned by the religious leaders he encounters and the audience feels his disappointment with these so called wise-penguins. It is not until one of these leaders needs Mumble's aid that he finds himself treated as something more than a peon to be dismissed with callous indifference and becomes an individual of worth rather than subjacent. The audience can not help but revile these self-proclaimed holy-men. Yet such dismissal of religious authority would be unthinkable in a less frozen atmosphere; and Americans have before and will again condemn political leaders for far less audacious rejections of religion and faith.

While cultural themes are powerful in Happy Feet, expressly political ones are far more pervasive. The foundational conflict upon which the film is based, the absence of the fish that the penguin colony depends upon, is itself an environmental concern. The problem of over-fishing and the unrestrained exploitation of the environment by the fishing industry are accepted without question as the premise of the film itself. Yet these very problems – indeed the notions that they are problems at all – are rejected by many that brought their children to see the film.

In the form of child's film, it seems, liberalism itself looses some of its stigma. The assumed alliance between Hollywood and the Left, in this sense, seems more than logical; it seems natural. We value, even above our own beliefs and ideology, the innocence and optimism of our children. Though we might condemn others for their difference, we want our children to see them through clear eyes, untinged by prejudice or judgment. In those eyes we would see only hope, only confidence, only the possibility for a brighter future. Though we might value conservatism for its practicality, such fetters would seem intolerable upon the minds and dreams of our children. How then can Americans fault Hollywood's idealism in the face of the rosy cheeked reality that flickers on our silver screens?

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