Monday 4 December 2006

Reasons I Don't Understand America Part 11

I find their seeming obsession with penguins quite cute. Sometimes, though, it achieves a certain oddness that is quite unexplainable. Take for instance Micheal Medved's review of Happy Feet. There's much about it that's either wrong or muddle-headed, apparently, but the thing that got me was this:
As in so many other recent films, there’s a subtext that appears to plead for endorsement of gay identity. Mumbles (the voice of Elijah Wood) displeases his parents and the leaders of his community because he’s born different, and makes an impassioned plea that he can’t possibly change – and they should accept him as he is.

I haven't seen the movie so it may be wall-to-wall hot man-on-man love action, but surely gays are not the only people who might want other people to accept them for who they are. To use your own homophobia as a rod to beat those asking for acceptance of our differences is totally perverse.

I'm sure there are plenty of kids, or whoever, out their who would like reassurance that whatever marks them out as different is something that will be accepted by right thinking people. They really don't need that reassurance warped by someone else's guilt trip.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you.

While personally I like to think that gay kids can identify with Mumble's difference, I too have wondered why it has to be interpreted that way.

Like you said, there are plenty of kids who need reassurance that their own concept of reality is acceptable even if different.

Paul said...

I'm sure this happened with Sharks Tale, too, though, again, it's a cartoon that I've not seen. The Incredibles would probably have got the same criticism if it wasn't for all the opinion pieces on how Nietzschean it was.

The really odd thing I think is how a reviewer confronted with a tale about how difficult it is to be different automatically sees it as a gay parable. Surely, even in America, there are ways of being different that can lead to some form of social exclusion that don't involve homosexuality. At my old school in South Yorkshire it was enough to be from somewhere else or just be thought of as intelligent (or, worse, sensitive).