Kung Fu Panda Hates People in Need

(This is an edited, touched up version that I did a while back) First, Blog.... Keep in mind, i'm arguing that the writers of the movie are either consciously or subconsciously are including an ideology, or belief system that is reminiscent of a certain, "New Age, Self Help" philosophy that underwrites much of today's secular culture....

  On the surface, it seems like an innocent prototypical children's cartoon where the underdog hero (Po, the fat lazy Panda pictured above) overcomes obstacles and his own limitations to beat stereotypical Strong Bad Guy. However, a closer look reveals the movie to be a war of ideology. That is, East vs. West. More specifically, war of religions: Buddhism (reality is false, just "believe" in yourself and you can overcome the illusion of reality) vs. Judeo-Christianity (Man is Fallen/broken in need of God). In short, the message behind the film is ultimately a pseudo gnostic "New Age" one. One of my man crushes, philosopher Slavoj Zizek summarizes the message of the film as "“There is no special ingredient (to life). It’s only you. To make something special you just have to believe it’s special.” 


 While the lines that lend credence to this are numerous in the film, the basic idea of what I argue can be seen in one example.... In the following scene, which is the climax of the film we will see the tiger, Tai Lung (the enemy) opening up the Magic Scroll. As a preface, the Magic Scroll was believed to contain the secrets of the universe and hidden wisdoms. Earlier, Po, who had inherited the scroll, opened it up to find that there was no words on the words but rather just his own reflection on the shiny scroll itself. Essentially, the "wordless" scroll was saying the secret ingredient to life is within you (As in the secret of reality was already within Po as he saw himself in the scroll). Po, accepts this wisdom and goes on to become the Dragon Warrior....

The scene speaks volumes to me.... And if one considers the Scroll equivalent to the Bible or any sacred text..the Secret Scroll in the scene is essentially declaring that there is no such thing as a sacred text. The only thing that is sacred is the individual themselves....if only they believe in themselves. Or to go one step further, it is saying that the only reason the Bible or other writings are sacred is because they arebelieved to be sacred. We then see the Tiger get upset as the lack of message within the scroll (because he was believing the Word within the scroll would help him). Notice too that when the tiger opens up the scroll and sees his reflection, he says "it's nothing!" Is this not a jab at the Judeo-Christian faith/ideology which says man is nothing without God and he needs the Word to sustain him? Thus when the tiger says "it's nothing," the movie is saying that when an individual relies on something outside himself for belief, his value is nothing. At such a rage in realization, the fight continues right after Po says "there is no secret ingredient." Subjective Speculation: 





At the 4:19 mark in the video do we have an allegorical jab at Christianity wherein Panda's shooting the Tiger up into the heaven's to the point of disappearing in the sky (complete with angelic song to accompany the Tiger's ascension) and the Tiger's fall allude to the "false" resurrection of Christ wherein such an ascension never happened and Jesus was just a man (he comes falling back to earth) The one last piece of note in the scene is when the Tiger calls Po "just a BIG....FAT...PANDA" and Po replies, "I'm not a big, fat, panda. I am the big, fat Panda." The emphasis on Po's line is that he substitutes an "a" with "the" and thus in a way elevates his own being to the point of divinity. Thus, Jesus is not a Messiah, but rather he is the Messiah. Or similarly, if I were to say "I am THE Joel Riley," the allusion would be that I am an egotistical maniac making himself something of myself beyond that of a normal human being. 

I am not suggesting that we can't watch such films, nor do I think the director's were intending an anti-Christian polemic outright, but I argue that there are always underlying ideological assumptions in films...and many times in those which we think are entirely innocent (such as children's film). I also don't think the writers of the film "bad guys" but rather I think that if we pay attention to some subtleties within any film we can see there is much going on below the surface of the film, to the point that the film writers may not even be including these subtleties intentionally as part of some "anti-Christian conspiracy." 

As much as we watch this film thinking it's a traditional underdog hero  vs. bad guy film, there is something distinctively anti-Christian about it that is representative of today's secular culture: The Truth is not "Out there," but rather it's "in you." Thus. in today's culture and in  the film, we ultimately see a protest against the Fall of Man, and rather we get a kind of gnostic secular humanism. 


Next week: Rousing praise for the philosophical geniuses who wrote Halloween (the 1978 version) as ultimately using horror to critique post-modern culture...


Note: Most of the inspiration for this particular analysis goes to Zizek... I just went about finding some specifics of this ideology  at work in the film that he doesn't reference.