The Birds and The Bees

It’s beginning to look like a jungle out there.

With the beginning of summer rapidly approaching, a slew of new movies are slated to bring people back to the box offices after a multi-year slump. Production houses are pulling out all the stops to lure people back.

Mission Impossible III managed to yank Tom Cruise away from his soon-to-be-screwed-up child and visibly affected wife to trek across Manhattan in a multi-vehicle publicity stunt. Columbia TriStar (The Da Vinci Code) partnered with Google to create 46 puzzles that fans must solve between now and the movie’s premiere [ed: I think there’s a prize for this contest, but frankly I just like the puzzles – they’re terrific procrastination from work.].

On the other side of the scale, however, are a slew of smaller movies with much smaller budgets, but each has a chance at becoming the next big thing. In the end, which ones thrive and which ones fail comes down to the birds and the bees.

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According to Chinese tradition, last year was the Year of the Rooster; in America, 2005 was the Year of the Penguin. The trend started innocently enough with the unexpected popularity of March of the Penguins, a film about penguins looking for love which quickly went on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary. But since that fame, everyone in Hollywood wanted a piece of the penguin action ("paction"?). Quick on MoP’s heels came a mockumentary entitled Farce of the Penguins. Here’s what you need to know:

1. The tagline is “What Happens In Antarctica... Stays in Antarctica”
2. The film “illuminates penguin survival and mating rituals, as well as one bird's search for love while on a 70-mile trek with his hedonistic buddies.”
3. It was written and directed by Bob Saget. Because when I think hedonistic animals, oh yeah, I think Bob Saget.

Even the big studios got in the game, such as Warner Brothers with their children’s CGI movie, Happy Feet, about a penguin's search for a love (is this all penguins do?!). You might have heard it referred to by its original title, “Dr. Strangeman (or) How Robin Williams Stopped Doing Live Action and Learned to Love Hyperactive Voice-Overs Exclusively”. For more information, please see Aladdin, FernGully: The Last Rain Forest, Aladdin on Ice, Aladdin’s Math Quest (I can’t make this up), Artificial Intelligence: AI, and Robots.

Penguins became such big celebrities that scientists even created a runway for them to walk down!

But then an interesting thing happened to Hollywood’s penguins: Their celebrity dried up. Penguins became extinct.

With penguins out of the picture, Hollywood was in need of a new animal. They tried the exotic with Racing Stripes (zebra). They showed their ambivalence and indecision with The Wild (lion, alligator, panda, giraffe, etc.). In desperation (I assume), they even gave Larry the Cable Guy a movie. Alas, nothing worked.

Yet quite mysteriously, a new animal emerged with increasing popularity: The Bee.

But this isn’t any old bee. This bee is young, it's competitive, and perhaps it smacks of an early-stage antisocial disorder. The bee about which I speak, of course, is the great American spelling bee.

These swarms of bees have taken the country by storm, virtually stinging the masses with bee fever. From television, to theater, to the silver screen, bees are everywhere. ESPN broadcasts the National Spelling Bee each year like a competitive sport (Sidenote: People still ask whether golf is a sport? Seriously?). One of Broadway’s smash successes this past year has been The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. And of course, who can ignore the endless flow of “Bee"-movies: Spellbound, Bee Season, and the latest, Akeelah & The Bee.

As the Bee becomes more in vogue, there’s something oddly paradoxical about its timing in our society. As the last two presidential elections have proven, there is a strengthening anti-intellectual tone within our country. Reading and literacy levels have dwindled in the face of TiVo, instant messaging, and MySpace.

Yet in an age where the only geeks with popularity are the ones who are masters of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, the spelling bee has thrived in this unnatural environment. Much like our diminutive friends in the Antarctic, the bee comes back each season to brave the harshest elements of social stigmas, educational budget deficits, and a limited pool of interested parties. The young and motivated flock in droves, driven by personal visions of glory. Only the strong survive this competitive atmosphere, whether the goal is a penguin mate or a platinum trophy.

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At the end of this month, the E.W. Scripps Company will welcome 275 competitors to this year’s National Spelling Bee – this is the greatest number of spellers in the history of the event. Perhaps this trend, like so many others, will wane when something else grabs our attention. But perhaps there’s something more to the Bee. Does any other competition find children at such a formative period in their intellectual and physical growth as the Spelling Bee? Does any other competition challenge the very capacity of their memory like the Bee? Does any other competition embody such a combination of the artistic and the scientific, mixing linguistic history and cultural origins with the rules and exceptions of spelling as the Bee? And does any other competition screw up home schooled kids more then the Bee?

Perhaps we should take the time to ask “Why now?” What is it about our society allows us to find birds-of-no-flight so intriguing one moment, and spelling competitions the next? Are we more intellectually curious than we give society credit for? Are we just willing to accept entertainment in any form, even when it's wrapped in education? Am I just confusing passing interest with legitimate sustaining fanaticism? In the end, one question lingers as this year’s competition heats up on May 31st:

Are Bees the new Penguins?