Tag Archives: Penguins of Madagascar

Five Things I Hated About “Penguins of Madagascar”

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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”

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  1. 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.)

 

  1. 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!

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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….

 

  1. 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:

Only girl in ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ is love interest

Sexist Penguins of Madagascar shouldn’t get their own movie

‘Minions’ and ‘Penguins’ star multiple males, no females

‘Penguins of Madagascar’ preview gives female one line: ‘Where’s the sound?’

Only girl in ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ is love interest

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After writing numerous blogs about the sexist penguins of Madagascar, I finally saw the movie today. I don’t think my 5 year old stopped laughing once during the first 20 minutes, a period of time in which also featured almost no females, just like the rest of the movie. I deduced this sad ratio from the preview (not to mention the 3 previous Madagascar movies.) What I didn’t know was that Eva the owl, the Minority Feisty in the North Wind  group of 4 males– not to be confused with the Penguin group of 4 males– would be the love interest of Kowalski. He goes ga-ga when he sees her for the first time just as Emmet does when he sees Wyldstyle in ‘The Lego Movie.” At the end of the movie– surprise, surprise– Eva and Kowalski kiss. Typical of a new trend I’ve noticed with Minority Feisty, Eva has the impressive title of intelligence analyst, but we don’t see her actually use her skills much at all.

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Why couldn’t the head of the North Wind, a male fox, have been female? Half the members of the North Wind? All of the members?

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Why couldn’t the villain, an evil scientist octopus, Dave, have been female? What about all of his octopi underlings who also had male voices?

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Technically, Eva is not the only female. There are a few others in the long line of penguins at the beginning of the movie. There are 3 mermaid penguins who have a small part, shells covering up where I suppose their breasts are supposed to be. These mermaids are so insignificant, I can’t find a pic of them on Google images to post here. There a couple human girls and women with tiny parts. As far as gender stereotypes, the best thing I can say about this movie is that evil Dave is purple, a girl color you know. That’s something my 5 year old pointed out to me, telling me that at least I could blog about that. So there you have it.

Reel Girl rates “Penguins of Madagascar” ***SS***

‘Minions’ and ‘Penguins’ star multiple males, no females

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Before I saw “Big Hero 6” today with my 2 daughters, ages 5 and 11, we saw ads for “Penguins of Madagascar” and “Despicable Me 3: Minions.”

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There are no females starring in these movies. While this is sadly not unusual, it is striking that “Penguins” stars 4 brothers while Minions stars 3 male, um, what are they, clones? Are there any female minions at all? A minionette? They don’t show up in the preview.

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In the “Despicable Me” 1 and 2, I remember the males dressed as females for laughs, one in a maid costume ha ha ha. Can you imagine a movie marketed to boys and girls starring 4 sisters, not a male in the preview? Can you imagine a franchise built on hundreds of all female yellow banana goggle cyclops creatures? How do they reproduce?

‘Penguins of Madagascar’ preview gives female one line: ‘Where’s the sound?’

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Last week, my 3 daughters (ages 5, 8, and 11) and I saw the preview for Dreamworks upcoming “Penguins of Madagascar.” A female has just one line in the entire preview. Ironically, she says: “Where’s the sound?”

Even before seeing this, I had an issue with the ubiquitous frat boy penguins. In the earlier film “Madagascar 3” (yes, three) one of the 4 brother penguins (yes, brothers) chides the others: “You pillow fight like a bunch of little girls.” Here’s that preview:

As I blogged after my kids saw that preview:

Why would kids need to hear a line making fun of how girls fight? What writer or producer or director could possibly think perpetuating that stereotype would be funny for girls to hear? Or were they, more likely, not thinking about little girls at all?…“Madagascar 3,” by the way, features the same 4 main characters as in 1 and 2. Guess how many are female? One, Gloria the Hippo.

 

Does Gloria get her a spin off movie where she is the protagonist? No, DreamWorks decided that the 4 penguin brothers should star in their own narrative., captioning their story: “When the world needs saving, heroes become legends.” I have a special sore spot for sexist spin offs. This is because, so often, when I write about the lack of females in movies like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Tintin, Superhero sagas, the list goes on, commenters invariably write me that the girls gone missing is nobody’s fault, it’s how the original story is. With a spin off, Hollywood has a clear an opportunity to create a new narrative with a female star, but what does it do? Manage to be even more sexist than the original.  After 3 Shrek movies (yes, three) did Fiona get her own trilogy? No, Puss In Boots got his spin off film. That movie had a fabulous Minority Feisty, Kitty Softpaws. I’m still waiting for her spin off movie. I’m still waiting for the Wonder Woman movie, but what do I get? Batman vs Superman, because after all, we’ve only had 8 Batman movies and 9 Superman ones.

So, please, don’t tell me anymore that movies lack females because the cast of the original story does. And please, don’t tell me movies are sexist because that’s just how it is in nature. Animals don’t talk in nature, nor do planes or cars, and that doesn’t seem to bother anyone much. Hollywood is sexist because it’s run by men along with the rest of the world. Parents need to seriously consider if they want things to stay this way, if they want yet another generation of children to be conditioned to expect and accept a world where females go missing.