March of the Penguins: Animal Rights or Christian Right?

Abstract

Taking an animal-rights feminist approach, this paper explores how the 2005 film The March of the Penguins has been used in the United States as a tool to reinforce values of the Christian right. Analyzing the role of the documentary form's perceived objectivity, the author demonstrates how The March of the Penguins' anthropomorphization of its subjects denies penguins' subjectivity and turns them into little more than mascots for theories of intelligent design and life beginning at conception, as well as heterosexuality as natural. Finally, the paper looks at how the film refuses to acknowledge its own complicity and the complicity of its viewers in the destruction of the emperor penguins' habitat due to climate change.