File this under meta-experiences: I watched the nature documentary event of the year, “March of the Penguins,” for the first time, right here in Antarctica. A group of about 150 Antarcticans filled the galley of McMurdo Station Saturday night for a screening of the DVD, which opened the absurd possibility that penguin researchers in McMurdo Sound who might be in town for their day off could have left their post at a penguin colony to watch a film about a year in the life of a penguin colony.

Adding to the disjunction: the DVD we acquired for the event was clearly a bootleg. To wit, the insert on the case was a crooked color photocopy, there was no labeling on the disk itself, the film had no menu, and the titles were in French, although Morgan Freeman was clearly speaking English. This fact did not seem to impede our enjoyment of the film—aside from a few skips and jitters, which had the sponsors of the evening in the rec department holding their breath, and one brief stretch where the narrative didn’t appear to match the action (I’m almost certain that the script didn’t call for Morgan Freeman talking glibly about chicks cavorting with one another while we see an image of a Giant Petrel eviscerating one of them—then again, it’s a French film, I could be wrong).

I’ve read that people up north are heralding this film as an affirmation of traditional family and community values. The film does shamelessly indulge in anthropomorphism, a supposed cardinal sin of animal research. That’s where you attach human traits and values to other forms, explaining their behavior in terms of our own. I can’t really weigh in on whether the penguin life-cycle will help keep American families together, but I do know that even the most cynical and objective among us got sucked into a film about the drama that unfolds every year just up the coast from us.

Other highlights? During the autumn reunion scene at the breeding grounds, over images of penguins strutting and preening for one another, Morgan Freeman says something like penguins are monogamous, to a point. “They mate for one season, then all bets are off.” Wait a beat. Then someone yells, “Just like McMurdo!”

Isn’t that penguinomorphism or something?