Recently watched Happy Feet and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was (tho to be fair I was actually quite looking forward to it anyway, I do like a good penguin movie – soooo cute etc.) The biggest surprise was in its portrayal of this penguin utopia in which copyright didn't seem to exist. The penguin's songs are all spontaneously created out of elements of actually existing pop music. They are free to perform any song without paying lip service to the concept of authorship.
And yet at the same time they have the notion of the 'heart song' a song which is there own, which is from within, from the soul. This too is likely (some of them being songs I didn't recognise so wouldn't like to comment on) to be an already existing song. So we have a 'heart song' that is both from the soul and yet completely external.
Firstly, I thought it strange to see this type of appropriation in a big Hollywood movie, obsessed as Hollywood is with piracy and respect of copyright (even for numbers).
Secondly, we have a whole issue going on with the interpellation of the subject. At first the heart song appears to be spontaneous, but it's origination is a response to the question “What is your Heart Song?”. This question determines one's penguiness. The only acceptable answer is “this is my heart song...” Which is why Mumble is never fully accepted – he has no heart song and so is not fully a penguin – The elders of the penguins find it easy to exile him because he is already different. In this sense it has the feel of a racist ideology which would posit the other as being somehow less than fully human (or penguin).
Thirdly, the turnaround at the end where it is Mumble's abnormality (his dancing) which saves the penguins rather than their singing (which to humans appears, of course, as meaningless squawking) is particularly interesting: is it meant to be read as a victory for the guy who is different against the conformist society? Is it actually an attack on copyright infringement (they thought the songs they were singing were authentic expressions of there selves whereas they were really owned by someone else – only Mumble's dancing was authentic)? Both these readings seem unacceptable to me, the first because it is only by imposing conformity (they all have to dance in unison) on the other penguins that they are saved, the second because of Mumble's selling out at the end – this expression of the soul is both easily reproducible by every other penguin (and human) and too easily used to pleased, it is as an advert for the penguins rather than as an outpouring of the soul that Mumble uses it (even in the very strange scene in the zoo where Mumble, at the very bottom of his despair, uses his dancing to reach out to the little girl, it is not one last desperate act of affirmation, but one last pitiable attempt to communicate to the humans).
Isn't the only reading that one can take from the film the rather pessimistic one that we will never do anything to stop global warming? The film is of course not directly about global warming (it is about the disruption of the penguins food supply through overfishing), but it must be seen in the context of it, given it is a film about humans interfering with nature. The first thing to note is the return to our rightful place at the top of things that this gives us: after centuries in which human agency has taken a battering we are at last back on top and responsible for something! It might only be the destruction of our planet but its a start! Thus the penguins have to come cap in hand to us asking us to save them. What a pleasant feeling of power (This is reflected by the fact that the elder penguins claim it is the God Guin who is responsible for the loss of fish stocks, whereas it is really the humans). But OK, you want us to save you but what do we get in return? Dancing? Well, I'm not exactly sure, it's not a lot is it? A whole colony of penguins dancing for the cameras? Now you're talking! The pessimistic part of this being that obviously even if nature was going to come up and ask us in this way for help, we wouldn't listen. Indeed, the bit after the Zoo, in which Mumble returns and saves the penguins, should well be considered the mad dream of a dying Mumble, here he is, dying futilely in the zoo, dreaming a preposterous dream of humans saving the penguins...
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