Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto thinks Happy Feet, this season's blockbuster animation, contains 'far-left' propaganda. 'I half-expected an animated Al Gore to pop up,' he said.
Central premise Emperor penguins express themselves through song. If they can't sing, they won't get laid and society will shun them.
Central characters Mumble, who instead of being able to sing, can dance. And Gloria, who can sing like a, ahem, bird.
Message There is a lot, at the start, about self-expression, and how individuality is one's most important gift to society. And yet at the same time, there is all the classic penguin stuff about how they huddle together for warmth whenever it's cold, which is almost always, being as they live in Antarctica. This is a broadly liberal message, containing the anti-totalitarian stress on individuality, while at the same time never using that as a reason to slough off civic duty.
The plot thickener is a shortage of fish. Mumble the non-conformist has seen and heard inexplicable things - a rusty JCB, an eagle with a tag on - and he believes that if he could uncover these mysteries he would know what had happened to the fish. And, of course, he is quite right, because the mystery is mankind, which is the eater of all the fish.
The penguin elders, however, see things quite differently. Whereas Mumble and Gloria are so hot as to be literally sexually desirable, even though they are a) penguins and b) animated, the elders all have hunchbacks. They use a lot of basically Christian rhetoric. They blame the shortage on Mumble, because he is different, and on his friends, because they are foreign penguins (with Mexican accents). They are inflexible, uncurious, savage, Old Testament conservatives. Mumble triumphs. So, er, yeah, I guess you could say this has a leftwing bias.
