The Penguin March
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In a dramatic role reversal of genders, it’s the responsibility of the male Emperor penguins to incubate the eggs and protect the offspring (if they hatch) from the severe weather in Antarctica while their mates go off in search of food. The females are completely depleted of their fat store by the time the egg is hatched and need to eat. Before embarking on a journey to the sea (of more than 60 miles) to get food, they pass on the egg in a very delicate maneuver to its mate which in turn keeps the egg tucked inside its brood pouch, an area just above its feet and well protected by fur.
The males are left alone in the bitter cold and severe winds for more than two months. Here, they huddle together to keep warm and survive the winter storms. If the eggs hatch, they cough up a white substance to feed the baby penguins who are still kept in the brood pouch. When the females return, the process is reversed and the eggs or hatchlings are passed back on to them. Now, it’s the turn of the fathers to go eat and the mothers feed their babies by regurgitating the food stored in their stomachs.
All this is brilliantly shown up close in the French made documentary La Marche de l’empereur (The March of the Penguins). With the comforting narration of Morgan Freeman-in the US version-guiding us through the breeding cycle of these majestic flightless birds, the movie flows at a steady pace. I can’t wait for the DVD to come out showing how they made this movie. There are glimpses of this during the closing credits and I am sure I will be as enthralled by “The Making of the March of the Penguins” as I was by the film itself.
For those of you who were impressed with the other recent bird documentary “Winged Migration“, this is a must-see. I am no ornithologist nor am I an amateur bird watcher. I often have trouble identifying even the common birds and rarely watch Animal Planet and yet, I was captivated by this documentary.
These penguins march back and forth (in single file) taking turns to feed their young who are kept in the interior until the summer brings the sea closer. The Emperor penguins are monogamous at least for a year; they may or may not find new mates the following year(s). It’s amazing that they recognize their mates (and later on, their offspring) entirely by sound amidst the cacophony in the colony.
When I was in Tierra del Fuego earlier this year, I was fortunate to see some penguins in the wild. These were the Magellanic or Jackass (who names these things?) penguins. Later on in Chile, I saw Humboldt penguins too. These are much smaller than (as the name suggests) the Emperor penguins. The latter can grow to almost 4ft and are found only in Antarctica. They can apparently live up to 20-30 years. Their major predators are the leopard seal, sharks, orcas and (when young) giant petrels. The movie is G-rated and doesn’t show any of the predators actually attacking the penguins; however, we do see glimpses of this in the form of a menacing leopard seal and a circling giant petrel.
I thought of taking my 5 y.o to this highly acclaimed documentary but was advised against it since “some of the isolation, abandonment and death may not be easily explained to a 5 y.o” (quotes not mine) Can you comment on that aspect of the documentary. Clearly this is on my must see list and I’ll have to wait for the DVD.
Yes, it’s not a very “feel-good” type of documentary. The conditions in the Antarctic peninsula that these penguins call home are very dreary. Despite the cuteness factor of the birds, the harsh reality of the landscape and the challenge of surviving there is shown in all factuality. Though there is no actual gore in terms of predator attacks, they do show dead eggs and baby penguins-perhaps not suitable for young children.
After a night out drinking, maybe this is time for a rant about this whole thing about what can and cannot be explained to kids..why can’t kids be told everything? Isolation = loneliness, abandonment = people and other animals, good and bad, abandon others, subjecting them to loneliness, death = stuff happens, people and other animals die, leaving others very sad, loneliness = being sad because there’s no one to bond with.
The same goes for other supposedly taboo subjects for kids, such as sex and shooting cocaine.
What’s wrong with explaining everything to kids, rather than taking the easy way out and lying outright to them, or telling them to go do something else?
I loved the movie too, but found the narration by Freeman a bit too cutesy. He talks about love, and attachment, and waxes lyrical about the ’special bond’ between the penguins and their offspring. Yet, the movie never adequately addresses the fundamental questions of why the penguins march that far into the ice fields to lay their eggs, or why there is an evolutionary necessity for serial monogamy (now, there’s a fashionable term), or how many of these penguins exist today (seems like a pretty small number), or any of that. It instead substitutes weepy melodrama for hard science and comes off the poorer for it. I find that kind of anthropomorphism misplaced at best and dangerous at worst, and we’ve discussed it in the past.
It’s a good movie, but it could’ve been great.
Children’s minds (including teenagers) simply do not work like adult minds. When they see, say Hurricane Katrina on TV, each new report on the Hurricane is a completely new event. After the tsunami, one of my daughter’s classmates refused to go to the ocean. After the recent earthquake, a couple of younger kids at church cried when someone mentioned it.
Perhaps it depends on the kid, but I learnt the hard way with my daughter. Sorry this will probably be a long story.
The dog in my parent’s house in India that my daughter had seen when she was two died. I casually mentioned it to my wife in a conversation and my daughter must have heard it. We discovered it had been bothering her a week later when she started crying about it. So I did the logical thing and explained to her about death and that everybody dies one day. A week later she started crying about the fact that her parents were going to die. And from there on once every day or every other day. No amount of rational explanation was going to console her. And no - distracting her was not going to work.
In the end, I introduced her to the fantasy that none of us will die and that we all will live forever in a wonderful place. A fantasy I don’t mind believing in myself. Now my daughter doesn’t ask about death. Yesterday she was a little upset about the dinosaurs being extinct and told me they were in dinosaur heaven. Did I do the right thing? Perhaps I have introduced her to a lifetime of confusion, but in my opinion it was the right thing for her.
There is a time and place for everything. It ain’t all so black and white.
Are you suggesting that animals don’t feel love?
Or was the thrust of your criticism more towards the melodrama part?
That is exactly what I’m suggesting. We should be very cautious of imposing human emotions and societal constructs onto animals (especially wild animals) where they simply don’t fit.
In the movie, Freeman’s narration tells us in dulcet tones about how the parents and the children penguin love each other so much (you could play bingo with how many times the word ‘love’ is repeated in the movie.) Yet when the children are a few months old, the parents turn their backs on them and march off, leaving them to brave the icy waters and predators alone. So should we now accuse the adult penguins of child-abuse? Soap operas and science don’t mix.
There is another movie out (Grizzly Man) which I haven’t seen yet, but it’s the true story of a man who thought he could live among Grizzly bears. He apparently sang to them. They killed and ate him. Maybe they didn’t like his singing, or his choice in music. Or maybe they were just wild animals.
No? I thought that the narrator himself explains this; that this is necessary because the ice layer thins out when the weather gets warmer (the hatchlings are still very young at this stage) and also to protect them from a wayward seal or something. In the beginning, Freeman also talks about the shelter provided by the huge ice cliffs you see around the colony. You saw what happens during severe storms despite these walls-imagine the ferocity of the storms and their impact if the penguins remained near the open ice plains near the coast.
As for “serial monogamy”, I don’t know the answer either. Could it be because that the chances of survival of a baby penguin are higher if they are tended to by both parents? The motivation for a random male to take care of another’s baby might not be that high considering the struggles they have to endure. Note that they breed only once a year (or at least that’s what I surmised from the movie). What is more surprising is that sometimes the mates continue their relationship over multiple years. This does seem more bizarre.
I believe they are spread all over the Antarctic coast and the movie just focussed on a single colony. You can find more info here:
http://www.emperor-penguin.com/emperor.html
I don’t quite agree with this. I think this is one of those rare wildlife documentaries which doesn’t shy away from showing the struggle for survival among these creatures. I thought it was succintly presented and Freeman’s narration touched upon both the good (okay, cute) and bad (menacing presence of predators, a dead egg here, a dead old adult there etc.).
You do have a point in your reference to our previous discussion on the portrayal of “cute” animals in the media. Will someone ever go to all this trouble to film the day-to-day existence of (not so cute) vultures? I doubt it.
This is more than a slight detour from my post; however, since we seem to be proficient in these detours…
I don’t think it’s quite that simple in the way you put it. In an ideal world, sure, we can expose our children to all the cruelty in the world and the “jungle out there” early on but I don’t think they are mature enough to handle all that the way adults do (or maybe not).
I don’t have children, so it’s pointless for me to discuss this and since you don’t either, I doubt if you are really in a position to talk about it with authority either. If and when the day comes that we both have progeny, we can re-visit this discussion over a fine bottle of scotch.
That’s precisely the kind of basic fact which the movie completely fails to mention. For all the movie reveals, that could be the entirety of Emperor penguins in the world, which is what I thought walking out of the theater.
And as for the ice cliffs, does every colony walk around till they find a suitable spot? Are the cliffs permanent enough in that shifting landscape to come back to year after year? Do they really have to walk that far to get someplace with shelter (seems like they go over some pretty high ground to get there)? Does every colony exist independently of each other or do they interact? These are all good questions, which the movie does not even ask, leave alone answer.
Oh I am sure it’s okay. We don’t go on believing that there is a Santa Claus shoving his fat arse down suburbian chimneys worldwide every Xmas, now do we? We all know by now that his real name is Kris Kringle and he lives with the lascivious Snow White in North Pole, Alaska.
tansen says:
It is not about lying but making sure that it is ‘age appropriateness’. I believe in helping my daughter with the knowledge necessary to process such information. For the most part the challenge is to give them the necessary vocabulary, understanding and analytical skills to process such complex and emotionally challenging issues as abandonment, death, violence etc. The goal is not to shield but to help them educate and process. There is certainly no lying going on so you clearly made an incorrect assumption there. I believe parents make different choices with varying results.
Indeed we are careful not to lie. If you ask my daughter what happened to grandpa, she will tell you “He died”. On this subject It is even trickier when you don’t believe in concepts such as heaven (note : Heaven is not in my daughter’s vocabulary). Teaching is different than lying. Teaching appropriately is an art I am told. We parents aspire to be good at it.
While the reaction of a mother (or father) penguin to a baby penguin may not be “love” in our sense of the word, there is definitely some sort of emotional bonding going on here. Their minds have evolved until the point that they feel something when a baby dies for instance. This is true for most animal species. As to equating it with our notion of love a la soap operas, that surely boils down to the marketability of the movie.
Timothy Treadwell, who is the man featured in the above movie, was a naive idiot who didn’t know better than to not let the natural order of things be. He died for that. Good riddance, I say. I am surprised that he lasted so long; a tad disappointed that he had to drag his girlfriend down with him.
Coincidentally, today morning while going through my morning rituals, I was reading about another grizzly mauling in Alaska (this time in the now controversial Arctic National Wildlife Refuge)-earlier this year. A couple who did everything that they were supposed to do while camping in bear country, were killed by a rogue grizzly while still asleep in their tents. The article from National Geographic’s Adventure magazine is an interesting read.
Why did you think thus? What would you have them do in the documentary? Go to every one of the 40 odd colonies and film them separately? That would make a very tedious documentary. While I agree that the film didn’t mention that there were other colonies or as you point out, left many questions unanswered, why do you think that they needed to do so? This was merely a study of one colony and some of the hardships they face in their survival. If you want more info, check out the Britannica or something.
Mention how many of the species are left instead of blathering on about love, perhaps? Just an idea.
Ok.
On a similar note, there was a movie titled “Beautiful People”. I recall seeing it as a kid and I learnt a lot about animals and how they survive in the harshest of conditions. Gotta check Netflix to see if they have it in their collection. I remember the commentary was funny too.
I thought the documentary was very well made and did not find the narration cutesy at all. And what is wrong with them showing the cute animals? It’s better than nothing in raising human awareness in the preservation of species.
Very interesting discussion.
I haven’t seen the documentary but looking forward to it. I have also seen different kinds of penguins in the wild though haven’t yet made it out to the ice continent. They are definitely cute and I love the way they walk even if it’s not very elegant. You mention that the movie shows glimpses of seals around the penguins. Do they show them underwater or on land? What do they show the penguins doing when surrounded by these predators?
This comment perfectly tees up Papi’s assertion that “the right to live for any species is strongly related to how ‘cutesy’ they are in pop culture” (I am liberally paraphrasing here).
See this post for details:
http://www.rantlust.com/papi/2005/08/01/eats-shoots-and-leaves/
They only show one particular leopard seal and they show its mouth wide open (must have tried to swallow the camera or something) underwater. They do show the seal catching a couple of mother penguins and dragging them underwater but it’s only a quick glimpse. The other penguins dart up onto shore when this happens or at least that’s how the editing portrays this to be.
I agree more with the societal constructs part and less with the emotions part. As Anup mentioned, lots of animals do feel something. I’d like to think that there are the stirrings of love there - as anybody who has looked into the coochy woochy eyes of a dog can attest
This is exactly what I’m talking about. Instead of saying he’s gone to a better place or he’s around you looking down upon you, etc., etc., stuff that even we as adults would like to believe.
Also, do kids who’re exposed to more poverty, death, etc., grow up more scarred? In that case all of us adults who grew up in third world countries are more scarred? At least the ones amongst us who didn’t get to see Darfur or Liberia or Mao style atrocities first-hand, stuff which can scar adults too? Also, what happens when the kid does get to meet death first-hand? Wouldn’t it have been better that he knows the concept of death, having been told about a dog dying, rather than have to deal with it when his own parents die?
Most of the stuff in this thread, we’re not really in a position to talk about, going by your logic: penguins, Timothy Treadwell, how a moviemaker should make his movies..it’s like saying unless you got an arm cut off in Sierra Leone, don’t talk about it.
You are correct in that none of the writers/readers of this blog have the expertise in talking about the topics you bring up above. That puts us all on a level playing field. Not so for the case of parenting where we have people here who are actually parents and might know a thing or two better than those of us who don’t.
To rationalise further, if one of us (i.e., the known readers and bloggers here) was indeed an ornithologist, I would have perhaps limited this blog entry/comments to mere observations as opposed to pontifications.
I saw this movie and loved it but I won’t let my 2 children (ages 4 & 6) see this until they are slightly older though one has to say that in this age of horrific video games, they probably have seen much worse already.
But that is only discussed in the context of an awareness that death and dying is different from life and living. It took a while to get there and the fact that we had to teach her about it when she was barely 4, because of events, is not something we are comfortable with.
I agree with you on the point that teaching about ‘a better place’ is nonsense. I can’t see telling my daughter that death means going to a better place. Indeed I would want her to appreciate life as we know it and appreciate it and enjoy it. Also, when she cries or is upset about something, I can be heard consoling her with words like “Yeah! I know life is sometimes hard”. It is partially a joke, but it is also an attempt to not sell a bill of goods - I don’t want her to get the impression that life milk and honey all the way despite well to do parents (maybe that should read because of well to do parents).
Now why would you do that? Isn’t that the whole purpose of having a blog; so you can pontificate endlessly on things you know jack-shit about?
Good point
After all, it’s called Rantlust.
So Tanny, I take back my comments about your opinions on parenting. Please continue “pontificating endlessly” as will I.
I will attempt to illustrate the terror that some four year olds may feel when they deduce that their parents death is imminent. The words terror and imminent are deliberate.
Imminent: For most four year olds there is no difference really between 1 week and 50 years.
Terror: If an adult finds out that she has Huntington’s Chorea and that she will be taken care of by complete stragers henceforth, that would perhaps be the kind of terror that a 4 year old feels. In real life, some such adults who have seen relatives with Huntington’s Chorea (being an autosomal dominant genetic disease) have chosen to commit suicide on hearing the news. For a child, suicide is not a concept that exists, so that out is not present either.
The idea of their parents pushing lovely daisies is not particularly comforting, nor will they go ‘do something else’.
Some may like to believe that the one true answer exists in all situations (child rearing or otherwise) but empirical experience shows that such a world is more fanciful than the afterlife.
So I’ll end my rant lust by saying that my favorite answer was the one by Anonymous in another post - ‘Hakuna Matata’. I’ll have to use that more often
Hakuna Matata indeed.
Btw, where the hell do you come up with these diseases? Huntington’s Chorea: you learn new things everyday. Wikipedia, here I come…
Huh - Huntington’s Chorea was something we studied in biology in school (along with Down’s syndrome and Sickle Cell anemia) as genetically transmitted diseases. Though my most recent encounter with it was in DNA, I have a more detailed post I’ve been considering regarding it.
[...] w October is “documentary month” in our household. After the much discussed Penguin film comes Born into Brothels, the Academy Award winning (2005) documentary a [...]
Finally saw the afore-mentioned Grizzly Man. I actually liked the impartial way in which Werner Herzog dealt with his subject. Great scenes of the Katmai peninsula via Treadwell’s own footage. This was a deeply disturbed individual. Fortunately, the documentary does not let us hear (there is no video footage) the final moments of Treadwell and his girlfriend but we can see Herzog listening to the audio and how it affects him.
A friend recently told me about another bear movie called Project Grizzly from 1996. A “scientist” goes about inventing a grizzly-proof suit after surviving an attack.
Finally, last week, I saw this much talked about “March of the Penguins” on Pay Per view. I agree with Papi that this could have been a great movie if they had rid it of some of the ‘pulling at the heart-strings’ narration. I did record it on my DVR and I do intend to encourage my 5 y.0 to watch it with me. If you recall, in October 05, I had expressed some fears based on hearsay and this time I got a chance to check on it myself. Glad to say that I would have no hesitation to allow my 5 y.o watch the movie, hard as it is. I feel confident that I can explain it to her and make it an educational experience.
For some upcoming lighter fare, check out the trailer for “Happy Feet.” Both trailer versions are incredibly funny though they only show Robin Williams’s character. The movie is about a tap dancing non-singer penguin (Elijan Wood). Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman co-star.