Anemia

It wouldn’t be hard to write an essay-length review of Kung Fu Panda and all of the issues it brings up: the film is a hard one to appraise on a moral and spiritual level, so in some ways I’mthankful that its relative lack of humour and its absence of a fully developed storyline mean that my overall opinion of ‘limited recommendation’ is made a lot easier for me to make.

First of all Kung FuPanda’s good points: there was a good theme of diversity and anti-discrimination running through the film. For me the way the different animals came together and worked as a team was a good littleallegory on inclusiveness despite their various appearances and abilities. It was also nice to see Po, who being a panda was naturally a bit shall we say ‘chubby’, achieving his dreams in spite of hisweight issues. In addition to this, Po and the rest of the team’s reverence for the older and wiser Oogway was also admirable. Oogway was also insistent that "there are no accidents" in life, which isimplicit awareness of a guiding hand covering all aspects our lives. The animation throughout was impressive, though at times the movement of some of the characters was a little too life like (they hadclearly been modelled on humans) and thus a little freaky. Also the animation being to a high standard is only a good thing if the overall message is positive, if not, the neutral or even negativemessages are simply being communicated in a more appealing way.

My first spiritual concern: Kung Fu Panda throws up several spiritual issues, the biggest of which, and the over-riding message of themovie, is that you can succeed at anything if you just believe in yourself. This implicitly places the role of faith and religion in life into the superfluous, or placebo, categories. However theachievement of any true yearnings of the soul only ever come about through grace – grace which must be recognised and sought from God as a gift; not something that is manufactured by ourselves in our...