This is a guest blog written by Reel Girl fan Nikki Roseworth. Nikki is eleven years old and lives in a small town in Oregon. She has a dog named Charlie and loves rock climbing, archery and fencing.
Five Things I hated about “Penguins of Madagascar”
- The only female, Eva, is weak and quite dim-witted. She relies on males for help, has no brain of her own, and is nothing more then a pretty face. She speaks very little and when she does, it’s in a British haughty sounding voice saying something like “Hello DARRRRRRRLING.” (Not what she really says, what she could say and have the voice fit, if that makes sense.)
- The only other female with a speaking role that I can think of is a skinny, sexed up redheaded woman who screams when the “evil” penguins get unleashed. The ONLY other. She has no name, is not mentioned in the credits, and yeah, she doesn’t really even SPEAK. Just screams. And yes other characters that are males scream too. Still, SEXISSSSST!
- The egg in beginning kinda is a slur to childbirth. See, the males “give birth” to Private. Male childbirth is a thousand year old cliché. In the Greek myths, Zeus gives birth to his daughter, Athena. And Kronos gives birth to his children the gods. All of this is technically correct (I.e Kronos vomits up his children). The only power women used to have was childbirth, and see, we make movies where males take that power.
- I thought the credits could be better, maybe a female artist like Beyoncé or Nicki Minaj doing a quick, fun song? No… The music in the credits is even male dominated!!! It’s Pitbull….
- All Eva does with her tech job is say “Where’s the sound?” Nothing more needed. She’s the tech expert and can’t fix a Skype error?
More Reel Girl posts on these frat boy penguins:
This is… No. I hated the movie, but these reasons are rather ridiculous. It seems like a half baked misandry rant.
Point 1: Eva is in no way dimwitted. Think of it this way. The North Wind is a highly skilled, highly secretive agency, with at least a hundred odd agents. Eva is a member of the central group, the leaders, because of her intelligence. Agent Classified introduced her as “the brains.” This obviously shows she is intended to be smarter than the other members. Also, what’s wrong with having a British accent? If accent is an issue, Skipper mocks Classified for having a Danish accent. Does this mean the movie is being sexist to males in this regard? No. It means they have a flipping accent.
Point 2: Sexed up? She wears nerd glasses and a hoodie, despite being in an obviously warm area. Why should she be mentioned in the credits? She is merely a background character that happened to make noise. In which case, why isn’t there a credit for every single citizen that screamed in the Avengers movie? Because the credits would be longer than the movie. Background characters need not have credits. I noticed many many female background characters. This point is completely irrelevant. And again, why does it matter that she was a redhead? Describing someones appearance or voice is not a point to make during such a review.
Point 3: No, we don’t know who gave birth to Private. It certainly was not the 3 other penguins. They simply rescue the egg. They even deny that they are his family right off the bat, with the quote “We’re not your family and we’re all going to die.” The rest of this point is rather stupid in complete honesty. Kronos did not give birth to his children. His wife did. He ate them. Athena came from Zues’ skull in a full set of armor. Not quite birth, however I see why you would say this. It’s also irrelevant however as Zues had many many children in which the female birthed the child. The only power of females is not childbirth, they had many. Even if it was a situation of them birthing private, good. I’d love to see that situation, it’d be a sparkup for gays.
Point 4: I don’t think I can even grace this with an answer. They have a male singing. Whoopte-do. They don’t have to have a female singer. That’s just insane, to go out of one’s way to find a female, when there is a song that perfectly fits the movie that just happens to be sung by a male. If anything, this point isn’t for gender equality, it’s leaning against males.
Point 5: We’re back to Eva. She doesn’t talk. Who cares? That’s part of her character design. And when she did speak, it was funny. Ferb of the hit Disney show rarely speaks, yet is a fan favourite and no one considers this sexist to the male demographic. This was not an error on Eva’s part, nor the software, it was an error on Dave’s part, Eva could do nothing to fix this.
Do not say “I’m sorry you do not support gender equality” as I do and am a fully fledged Egalitarian. Do not say “You have nothing nice to say about me or Margot” as that is also wrong. I’ve been reading through a fair amount of Margot’s articles and I agree. This article however, is half baked, not thought through and overall, bad.
Well, Eg. I’m sorry to hear how you feel about my article. You have my deepest repesct for being brave to express your opinion.
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Thanks for the repost! I have a Twitch Tv account, which I do gaming live streams and the donations go to Feminist Frequncy. It’s NikkiRoseEPIC. Thanks for reading people. Have a great day.
~Nikki Roseworth
i’m confuse
1. I mean it’s not like it’s necessary for a movie to have female roles with lots of dialogue. The plot of the movie determines the characters. You’re acting like there’s a specific checklist that every movie has to have.
2. What’s your point in this one. “sexed up” like seriously you’re getting mad because of a character design from a character I don’t even remember. besides. there were other female speaking roles. remember the girl who eventually got the snowglobe?
3. First point: They did not give birth to Private. You’re second point makes very little sense. Even if it was a scenario where they did indeed “give birth” to Private, why is that wrong? You’re acting like giving birth is a right reserved for woman and any an who attempts that has committed a sin. “The only power women used to have was childbirth, and see, we make movies where males take that power.” So basically you just called women weak and you’re enforcing gender roles. And how is giving birth a power?
4. Once again, you hate a movie based on completely irrelevant parts. There’s a 50/50 chance of the ending credits being a male or female. Also the ending credits was completely irrelevant to the the plot yet you criticize the movie fro it.
5. This was a comical moment where Eva questions a funny error the villain made. Besides, if you even knew anything about skype, you would know this was not a problem tech support could solve. because it wasn’t a problem with the tech, the other caller simply didn’t turn on the volume or forgot to plug in something.
George, I apoligize that you do not believe in equality and you have nothing nice to say to me or Marget, I hope that you understand that I am using metaphors and nothing reallly direct. Thank you. ~Nikki