.::Multi-Colored-Dreams::.

Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear - Reflections on the movie "Happy Feet"

Before I begin, I want to say that I watched two animations in a row today. Open Season and Happy Feet respectively. Open Season is just another just-for-laugh mediocre animation and I slept like half of the movie's duration. Happy Feet, on the other hand, was not a happy film as the movie title itself literally described. It was sad, tragic and depressing. Somehow, I was awake throughout the entire movie. It's like having insomnia when you are under depression. Sadness prevents you from sleeping.

Happy Feet, on a commercialized level, is another cutesy animation with penguins all around and a wonderful entertaining plot. On a deeper level, it is actually a masked satire of the society. Mumble represents the lot of idiosyncratic personnels in the society where their talents are not recognized and instead deemed as abnormality. It is a big cry out and a slash across the face of the apathetic society, though in a subtle manner. And if you notice, the movie is actually like a modern "Ugly Duckling" tale. The protagonist yearns for acceptance. Even a classic children fable like "Ugly Duckling" holds a deep meaning. Happy Feet is actually reminiscent of the movie Artificial Intelligence - one of my all time favourite movie. Near the end of the movie, Mumble the Happy Feet actually ventured on a nearly impossible quest to prove his right. Just like David the boy robot in Artificial Intelligence. Both yearns for acceptance. For rejuvenation. For revival. For a life.

The Carpenters had a song entitled "Close To You". The start of the song actually begins with "Why do birds suddenly appear?" It is a rather provocative question. You always hear birds chirp early in the morning announcing the arrival of broad daylights. And they go to hide at night. Although in Tekong I have heard the loud chirpings of birds late at night and midnight. It's no longer a dog-eat-dog world. The world has probably evolved into a bird-shoot-bird world. If only humans possess the bird's eye view, they would have seen what has the world really become to. How massacres and unintended warfares are destroying the land just like global warming melting the icebergs, destroying the penguins' habitat.

In Happy Feet, humans are actually described as "penguins with no wings and feathers but four weird limps and an ugly faces". And it so happened that most of the penguins did not even believe the existence of aliens - in this case humans, until the very end when they saw for themselves. It is like they are living in their own utopia, and they thought they were probably the only species on Earth alongside other arctic creatures. What a mockery!

The thing is, humans are very much like birds. We are like birds without feathers, and we yearn to fly before we even learn how to crawl. Greed is one of the 7 unescapable sins that humans possess. And unfortunately, Greed is probably the main mastermind that causes Grief.

In music, we have heard Westlife's "Flying Without Wings", the classic hit "On the Wings of Love" as well as the recent Singapore Idol Hady Mirza's "You Give Me Wings". Oh yes, we need wings to fly. And we need to fly high high high, maybe SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW, WAY UP HIGH...

And one more thing. Penguins are black and white in colour. Extraordinary-ordinary colours.

One last thing, Bird Flu is on high alert.

So, free the birds.