Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

lwlies.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 43 posts

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#31

Post by rdtsc »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #3

My personal favourite work of his is "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga". Most of the people are doing immediate purposeful work and are much more present. There is so much resilience (the bear destroyed hut), and there is also tragedy in it as well (the fire). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_People:_A_Year_in_the_Ta...

I like that one as well. I just rewatched it again. One of the trappers in the movie is Mikhail Tarkovsky and I just learned he is actually the nephew nephew Andrei Tarkovsky, the film director.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#32

Post by tialaramex »

barcodehorse wrote: post #16
beeflet wrote: post #8

I would describe it as a faustian penguin, not a nihilist penguin. The other day there was a story here about a coyote that swam to alcatraz ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674433 ). When we look at an animal that does such a thing, we characterize it as a strange and suicidal act of a disturbed creature hurtling it's life force into the abyss. But when man does the same thing, it is a heroic and uniquely hu…

> When we look at an animal that does such a thing, we characterize it as a strange and suicidal act of a disturbed creature hurtling it's life force into the abyss. But when man does the same thing, it is a heroic and uniquely human act of exploration. I'd say that that's mostly because the man in question is rational. They strategize, they collect resources, and they do whatever they can to make sure they can retur…

Human explorers aren't necessarily terribly rational. A bunch of ordinary human pride is involved.

The base on the actual South Pole, far on the interior of the continent, isn't McMurdo where much of that documentary was filmed, it is Amundsen-Scott, and it's named for two teams of explorers who first reached that pole in the same summer, Amundsen (whose team reached it first and returned alive) and Scott (whose team was second and all died)

Scott's plan was crap. To a considerable extent that view is hindsight, but even at the time Scott must have known Amundsen's plan was better. Certainly by the time they reached the Pole and found that they'd been beaten to it, he will have been sure. By that time he was in extreme danger, slowly starving and with a long trek back to any permanent shelter - it would have taken excellent luck (which he didn't get) to make it home alive, and in any case he'd been beaten to the pole.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#33

Post by lux-lux-lux »

ceejayoz wrote: post #18
dyauspitr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting fantasy but these broken penguins are too infrequent to start something new. They usually just wander off to die alone in the cold. New species are usually formed gradually while introducing their mutations to the population until they eventually break off as a group. But more commonly there’s usually a geographic barrier that separates an existing group and they gradually just drift apart from each other…

> They usually just wander off to die alone in the cold. Usually! But not always. Every once in a while, one probably makes it to another colony many miles away, and helps prevent inbreeding as a result. Or runs into a similar weirdo somewhere in between.

Penguins live in large colonies and, as a result, generally do not have issues with inbreeding.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#34

Post by dd8601fn »

beeflet wrote: post #8

I would describe it as a faustian penguin, not a nihilist penguin. The other day there was a story here about a coyote that swam to alcatraz ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674433 ). When we look at an animal that does such a thing, we characterize it as a strange and suicidal act of a disturbed creature hurtling it's life force into the abyss. But when man does the same thing, it is a heroic and uniquely hu…

> When you factor in the probability of survival in the new world, and the requirement of finding a sexed pair on the other side you realize that this takes many living things, integrated over a long period of time.

Seems to me you've described how lone adventuring animals are not the source of dispersion to remote areas.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#35

Post by Towaway69 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #7
observationist wrote: post #2

That's how new species happen. Over time, the penguins who get sufficiently tired of all the other penguins' shit march off to the edge of the map, and when they finally get lucky, enough of the smart, independent minded penguins survive to produce a new generation. The new adventure flock eventually garners enough members to march back to the feeding grounds and seize the territory from the loser normy penguins. Thu…

Interesting fantasy but these broken penguins are too infrequent to start something new. They usually just wander off to die alone in the cold. New species are usually formed gradually while introducing their mutations to the population until they eventually break off as a group. But more commonly there’s usually a geographic barrier that separates an existing group and they gradually just drift apart from each other…

This leaving the group to die can also be observed in other species (cats and dogs do this too).

So this penguin knew its time was up and didn’t want to mess up the colony with its dead body.

We interpret the behaviour through our lenses and experiences.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#36

Post by ceejayoz »

lux-lux-lux wrote: post #33
ceejayoz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They usually just wander off to die alone in the cold. Usually! But not always. Every once in a while, one probably makes it to another colony many miles away, and helps prevent inbreeding as a result. Or runs into a similar weirdo somewhere in between.

Penguins live in large colonies and, as a result, generally do not have issues with inbreeding.

https://www.penguinsinternational.org/turns-out-that-not-all...

> The researchers found that the differences between species could be determined by the habitat where a species was found. For example, Emperor penguins occupy the Antarctic continent, breeding mostly on sea ice. Even though they have colonies clustered by geographic regions, the researchers found that juveniles of Emperor Penguins can travel long distances between colonies facilitating “gene flow.”

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#37

Post by palmotea »

Why nihilism and not just confusion? If you stick me in the Sahara Desert, I might just start marching deeper into it, because I want to get out but have no idea where I am. I think birds have a magnetic sense, maybe this penguin just got that messed up?

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#38

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

palmotea wrote: post #37

Why nihilism and not just confusion? If you stick me in the Sahara Desert, I might just start marching deeper into it, because I want to get out but have no idea where I am. I think birds have a magnetic sense, maybe this penguin just got that messed up?

The researcher in the film says the penguins can "become disoriented" and it's not made clear in the film whether that _always_ results in the penguins venturing off to the centre of the continent or if that's just what happened to the one they got footage of.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#40

Post by nkurz »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #3

My personal favourite work of his is "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga". Most of the people are doing immediate purposeful work and are much more present. There is so much resilience (the bear destroyed hut), and there is also tragedy in it as well (the fire). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_People:_A_Year_in_the_Ta...

I like Herzog's work, but that's a really tricky one. Herzog only became involved after the film was completed, and then edited it down to make more salable. I liked Herzog's version, but I liked the original even more once I found it.

While Herzog certainly made it more popular, he lost a lot of accuracy by forcing it to tell the story he wanted it to tell. It certainly shook my faith in Herzog as a documentarian. He's a good artist, but you shouldn't trust him when it comes to facts.

The full original by Dmitri Vasyukov (Дмитрий Васюков) is available in four parts (one for each season) on Youtube. Here's the first quarter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttItxwzgbUs

Post reply on HN