The Anthropocene Reviewed(29)

You can’t see the future coming—not the terrors, for sure, but you also can’t see the wonders that are coming, the moments of light-soaked joy that await each of us. These days, I often feel like I’m Jerzy Dudek walking out for the second half down 3–0, feeling as hopeless as I do helpless. But of all the unimportant things, football is the most important, because seeing Jerzy Dudek sprint away from that final penalty save to be mobbed by his teammates reminds me that someday—and maybe someday soon—I will also be embraced by people I love. It is May of 2020, fifteen years since Dudek’s spaghetti legs, and this will end, and the light-soaked days are coming.

I give Jerzy Dudek’s performance on May 25, 2005 five stars.





PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR



UNLESS YOU’VE LIVED an exceptionally fortunate life, you’ve probably known someone who enjoys having provocative opinions. I am referring to the people who will say things to you like, “You know, Ringo was the best Beatle.”

You’ll take a long breath. Maybe you’re out to lunch with this person, because lunch is a time-limited experience, and you can only bear this person’s presence in minute quantities. So you’ll take a bite of your food. And then you’ll sigh again before saying, “Why was Ringo the best Beatle?”*

Well, the Provocative Opinion Person is very glad you asked. “Ringo was the best Beatle because . . .” And then you stop listening, which is the only way to get through lunch. When the person has finished you say, “Okay, but Ringo also wrote ‘Octopus’s Garden,’” and then the Provocative Opinion Person will regale you with a fourteen-minute lecture that begins, “Well, actually, ‘Octopus’s Garden’ is a work of considerable genius because . . .”

Most of us are not Provocative Opinion People, thank God. But I think everyone secretly harbors at least one provocative opinion, and this is mine: The opening sequence of the 2014 film Penguins of Madagascar is one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history.



* * *





Penguins of Madagascar is an animated kids’ movie about the Anthropocene: A villainous octopus named Dave has invented a special ray that makes cute animals ugly, so that humans will stop privileging the protection of adorable animals (like penguins) over less adorable ones (like Dave).

The movie begins as a faux nature documentary. “Antarctica, an inhospitable wasteland,” the famous documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog intones with his trademark gravitas. But even here, he tells us, “We find life. And not just any life. PENGUINS. Joyous, frolicking, waddling, cute, and cuddly life.”

A long line of penguins marches mindlessly behind an unseen leader. As Herzog calls penguins “silly little snow clowns,” we follow the line back to the three young penguins at the center of the movie, one of whom announces, “Does anyone even know where we’re marching to?”

“Who cares?” an adult penguin responds.

“I question nothing,” another adds.

Soon thereafter, the three young penguins are bowled over by an egg rolling downhill. They decide to follow the egg, which tumbles off the edge of a glacier to a shipwrecked boat below. These three little penguins now stand on the edge of a cliff, looking down at an egg about to be devoured by a leopard seal. The penguins must decide: Risk it all to save this egg, or watch as it gets eaten?

At this point, the camera zooms out, and we see the documentary crew following the penguins. “Tiny and helpless,” Herzog says, “the babies are frozen with fear. They know if they fall from this cliff, they will surely die.” And then there is a moment’s pause before Herzog says, “Günter, give them a shove.”

The sound guy uses a boom mic to whack the penguins from behind, forcing them into the great unknown. It’s a children’s movie, so of course the penguins survive and go on to great adventures. But every time I watch Penguins of Madagascar, I think of how almost all of us are invisible to penguins almost all of the time, and yet we are nonetheless their biggest threat—and also their best hope. In that respect, we are a kind of god—and not a particularly benevolent one.



* * *





I also find myself thinking about the lemming, a six-inch-long rodent with pert eyes and a brown-black coat of fur. There are many species of lemmings, and they can be found throughout the colder parts of North America and Eurasia. Most like to be near water, and can swim a fair distance.

Lemmings tend to have an especially extreme population cycle: Every three or four years, their populations explode due to favorable breeding conditions. In the seventeenth century, some naturalists hypothesized that the lemmings must spontaneously generate and then fall from the sky in their millions like raindrops. That belief fell away over time, but another did not. We have long believed that, driven by instinct and/or a willingness to mindlessly follow other lemmings, the creatures self-correct for population growth via mass suicide.

This myth has proven astonishingly durable, even though biologists have known for a very long time that lemmings do no such thing. In fact, lemmings spread out when populations become too large, seeking new and safe spaces. Sometimes, they come to a river or a lake and attempt to cross it. Sometimes, they drown. Sometimes, they die of other causes. In all these respects, they are not too different from other rodents.