Dec 21 2006 - Happy Feet

OPM*
Presents – Happy Feet OR God knows



When Charles Darwin wrote his ‘On the Origin of Species’, he would have thought it would lead people to rethink notions of creationism and kill legends of lake monsters like the Loch Ness. Instead, almost a hundred and fifty years later, we live in a world that abounds in theories about both.

One such legend is about Penguins; a fictitious species of animal/bird/mammal that live in Antarctica. Antarctica is a fictitious place, which is supposed to be covered in ice as it is at the bottom of the Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere, in turn, is not really at the bottom of the world, as the world does not have a bottom at all. This is because the Earth is a ball of rock that circles the sun in a universe where left, right, bottom and top are only points of view. So it doesn’t matter a hoot if one is on the top or the bottom of a pyramid or whether one is on top or bottom during the three-letter word we do so much of. (I mean eat, you sick people!)
Yes, so Antarctica is a fictitious place that no one has actually visited. Since it is below the equator and New Zealand is pretty cold during winter, people have assumed that this fictitious place has a lot of ice since cold air settles on the bottom while hot air rises. (Observed in top b-schools as well. Hot Air usually lands prime consulting jobs)

As opposed to Penguins in Antarctica, fictitious Polar Bears inhabit the fictitious Arctic region at the North Pole (a large proportion of people in Northern Poland are called North Poles too). It is easy to see that Polar Bears and Penguins are improbable since both are supposed to survive on a diet of fish, and fish are improbable in areas covered in ice! As if fish were some kind of easily available SeaBiscuit! These anthropologists must really stop horsing around!

There is another set of environmental yahoos who claim that many ages ago Polar Bears won in the Arctic while the Penguins won in Antarctica. Won the evolutionary war, that is. These Intelligent Design advocates claim that a great battle was waged between the species, where to keep the balance, the Intelligent Designer helped each species win in a different place. Remember that, according to these Intelligent Design proponents, as India is losing a game of cricket, they are wining another elsewhere, as per the grand design of the Intelligent Designer. The wondrous miracles of the Grand Intelligent Designer or GID (pronounced as in 'Gideon' or ‘giddy’)!! As a side note it must be incredibly boring to be GID on a Saturday evening because he not only knows what programmes are playing on TV but also knows what happens in each one of them.

If there is a GID as most of humanity claims, then he (notice the male chauvinism in this) must have a life very like our own when we produce and create Cartoon films. Characters in cartoon films feel and think like we do, or just like the script we provide them with, as indeed GID in all his omnipresence and omniscience has supposedly given us scripts. It is a wonder then, that ID proponents, instead of claiming that they have figured out the mysteries of Life, the Universe and Obesity by becoming one with, or praying to GID, don’t go a step backward and wonder if GID himself is operating on a script or searching for those answers. But heck, how would I know? GID only knows!

Let us ignore existential questions though, and take a look at tomorrow’s release, Happy Feet, a cartoon film about Penguins and GID.

In the cold fictitious land of Antarctica a bunch of Emperor Penguins are feeling very disenchanted with their circumstance. They are emperors without any subjects. They try going to school and taking on as many subjects as possible, but this does not satisfy them. They go back to their usual habit of hunting down and devouring schools. Schools of fish, that is. Each of these penguins has a special heartsong, which is sung to express love at appropriate social events. These social events are rather drab as many penguins are tone-deaf and none has hands/wings/flaps long enough to clap. What they need is a cultural revolution of sorts. Into this socio-cultural background is born little Mumble who can dance, but cannot sing. He is the greatest tap dancer born to penguin parents, which is not difficult considering that he is also the Only tap dancer born to penguin parents. At parties he is a great hit when he tap dances to everyone’s heartsongs.
This annoys the powers that be and they accuse Mumble of creating the troubles the penguins are having with food supplies, branding his tap dancing evil. Mumble is thus exiled and has to face the fictitious cold of Antarctica alone.

Will he manage to mumble without shivering? Will he find out that the fish supplies are dying out as part of GID’s intelligent design? Will Mumble find GID and wring his neck? Does GID stand for Grand Incompetent Designer, since we live in a bloody incompetently designed world full of silly things like snot, murder, disease and George Bush? I can’t wait to find out tomorrow!


* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release