Penguin political correctness goes AWOL

(Picture from Spiegel online)

From the Spiegel weekly news quiz:

Yes Sandy the penguin became smitten with her keeper Peter Vollbracht. But the fickle creature lost interest when Vollbracht was off sick and hunted out another lover. Once Tom, a real penguin, died the slippery little trollop made a beeline again for the keeper.

Slippery little trollop! Some lonely, recently widowed penguin who after a long period of loving monogamy has returned her affections to the man she used to do charity work with is a 'slippery little trollop' for flirting with something she can never mate with? Would Der Spiegel have used such language for a male penguin? I think not. Maybe she should have thrown herself onto her penguin husband's burial pyre or lived as an outcast like Nepali widows?

Most likely this is one of Der Spiegel's very rare, yet quite funny little cultural mistranslations. Still, I'm appalled.

The mosquito must go!

Technically, as a nearly 30 year old I shouldn't have been able to hear the 17.7 Hz noise outside a corner shop in Timperley, but I could. It was like a knife through my brain, I actually felt nauseous and my hearing an head felt odd for at least an hour afterwards. I had heard of the Mosquito device, but had never come across one until yesterday. Designed to continuously emit a noise at a level only the under 25s can hear, it supposedly causes enough discomfort and annoyance that they will go elsewhere. The Mosquito is considered one of the most effective methods of preventing teenagers from gathering in a certain place.

This device is a form of ageist assault. I appreciate the horrors and intimidation of ASBO worthy youth in pack form and the right of ordinary shop owners and citizens to carry on with their normal lives. But this device doesn't segregate according to behaviour it segregates according to age. It says in one loud, painful tone that *everyone* under the age of 25 is a thug. Treat them like that and that is exactly what the vast majority of law abiding decent children will become. The device doesn't even make that much sense as a teenager deterrent - sure, they'll move on... to where? Another place that needs a mosquito and then another, soon teenagers and children won't be able to shamble or skip along a single street without being in discomfort.

The Mosquito and it's use is unregulated. It can be used whenever the owner likes and as it doesn't bother *them* it can be left on permanently. The one in Timperley was on at 10am on a weekday - surely not a prime time for teenage intimidation. The Mosquito can be boosted to levels unacceptable under health and safety laws and most adults are none the wiser. There is NO evidence of the effect of exposure on children's ears, all tests relating to adults only, which seems like an insane omission. However, this oversight is deemed to be acceptable as teenagers can surely walk away from the horrible noise. But small children with their parents can't 'walk away' and young people must still walk on pavements and cycle on roads near Mosquitos on a regular basis. These Mosquitos aren't limited to the privately owned shop forecourt, they can stretch up to 25m into public areas and yet no warning signs are required; so adults can wheel their baby/toddler right beneath it and stand and chat for 30 minutes in complete ignorance of the discomfort of their child. How are young people with learning disabilities supposed to cope with this unexpected onslaught?

The Mosquito device, it's installation and usage should be regulated. If there was a device that caused discomfort to everyone over the age of 50, it would be instantly banned. If someone played music at a deeply disturbing volume outside your local post office, so that anyone passing was caused discomfort, the police would be around. The only reason the mosquito is legal and unregulated is because the majority of its victims can't vote.

If you want to find out if you can hear the device, go here. You need good speakers for it to work properly, although the ringbearer says it might damage them.

Not-so-Fantastic Mr Fox

Fantastic Mr Fox was the first book I read on my own and is very special to me. It was therefore with no small amount of trepidation that I approached Wes Anderson's version of Roald Dahl's classic book. However, I quite like Wes Anderson's movies, their gentle touch, sumptuous visuals and unabashedly slow and odd dialogue. So how bad could it be?

Well, pretty bad. Fantastic Mr Fox looks beautiful. It's just a shame that Anderson has shoved American and British culture together with little thought to his source material- one of the most British stories possible. The bad guys have British accents (awesomely played though) whilst the animals are voiced by Americans and include several animals native to America. The music is nearly all American. Anderson even takes the fantastic distinctive British stylings of Mr Jarvis Cocker and gets him to sing an American country fireside song. The British pub, town and train seemed incongruous on what appeared to be a very American countryside, whilst the dialogue was full of American terms and ideas. Did Mr Anderson think we wouldn't notice? Or was his only thought that the cultures would blend seamlessly as far as less internationally culturally aware US audiences were concerned? Why did he even bother with the small whiffs of Britain?

This is not a children's film. Sure, it lacks violence, swearing and sex , but it's dialogue - laden with adult psychology and Latin jokes is too cumbersome for children. Somehow the tale of an arrogant, cunning fox became another of Anderson's stories about a loving dysfunctional yet indie-cool American family. Not exactly something to keep the kids' attention. In extending the book to film length Anderson has naturally made some embellishments. Plot-wise these are still in keeping with Dahl's premise, but his world-building is somewhat strange. His animals inhabit a human-like world of clothes, professions and chemistry lessons, but yet the rules of this world are never fully explained or adhered to. Most annoying for me was the inclusion of Kylie, an opossum (not native to the UK) who fulfilled the standard Anderson role of platonic, odd pseudo family member. Why did soft spoken Kylie join in the raids and not -as-in-the-book- Mr Badger - an equally well developed character? In short Dahl's story lost out to Anderson's sense of style and snail pace.

Fantastic Mr Fox is a lovely Wes Anderson film about indie-American family values, portrayed in a beautiful environment, rich with style and pathos. A Roald Dahl film for kids it is not.