Feathers McGraw From ‘Wallace And Gromit’ Is An Icon, And I’m Tired Of Pretending He’s Not

Some five minutes into Wallace And Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, a penguin named Feathers McGraw comes to enquire about renting a room.

It’s an astonishingly surreal entrance. Holding a suitcase, his eyes black, Feathers comes plip-plopping through the front door on his flippers, following behind the jabbering figure of Wallace.

The music sours. Gromit, the film’s hero dog, sitting in the corner of the room, stops his knitting. Feathers just stares at him. Then, whatever whim that guides the actions of villainous penguins having been satisfied, Feathers turns, and follows Wallace up the stairs.

All up, the silent exchange lasts just under a minute. But it’s immediately striking; maybe even haunting.

For the rest of the film, Feathers slowly inserts himself into the household like a silent, beady-eyed tumour. If that sounds like an overly portentous description for a bank-robber penguin who disguises himself as a chicken via the use of a rubber glove, then that’s precisely the point: despite the jocularity of the action around him, Feathers McGraw does not mess around.

Michel Haneke, the director of absurdist horror film Funny Games, made that home invasion thriller by telling the actors portraying the victims to treat proceedings like a tragedy, and the murderous killers to play them like a comedy. The Wrong Trousers adopts a similar tact. Wallace and Gromit both act as though they’re in a stop motion children’s film. Feathers acts as though he is a Michael Myers clone, imported from some gory American slasher, here to do whatever it takes to get whatever he wants.

Of course, that means Feathers is first and foremost terrifying. But it’s also key to his status as an all-time icon, and one of the boldest, most thrilling characters ever put to the screen.

Feathers Is The Anti-Gromit…

A lot of the genius of The Wrong Trousers is that the film is a battle of the wills between two characters who never talk. Wallace, the only character in the film who speaks, is utterly oblivious to the actual action going on. He doesn’t realise that he’s being manipulated by Feathers, or that he is hurting Gromit’s feelings, even when Gromit becomes so dejected that he considers running away from home.

Instead, the film’s real plot is a power struggle communicated entirely through silent looks shared between two characters who are inverted versions of each other. Gromit’s largely non-expressive face is cute; the kind of open visage that you can read every spectrum of emotion onto. Feathers’ non-expressive face is the opposite; a closed book, onto which you can read barely anything at all.

Feathers is a force of chaos, a true neutral.

What is Feathers thinking? What does he want? Why does he seek to so thoroughly disgrace Gromit? Why the extremely loud music he listens to in order to get to sleep? Actually, does he even sleep? Who knows. The film never tells us, and the blankness of Feathers’ face makes guessing pointless.

The tension of The Wrong Trousers derives from the fact that we know one of these characters deeply, and the other not at all — that Feathers is a force of chaos, a true neutral, who hurts people for no other reason than they stand in the way of his goals.

…And My Hero

Which is not to say that Feathers McGraw isn’t a lot of fun, and now and then he swaps his blinking horror for excellent comic timing. Towards the film’s midpoint, when Feathers is advancing his Harold Pinter-esque plan to force Gromit out of his own home, the penguin swoops in to steal the newspaper as it comes through the slot before the dog can grab it. The moment is astonishingly funny; Gromit standing there patiently, Feathers flying in on his quick little feet, making a perfect circle before Gromit has even worked out what is going on.

Much of the rest of the humour derives from Feathers’ self-possession. He is, if you will pardon the pun, unflappable.

Even when he is finally foiled, trapped in an empty milk bottle, he seems unshaken by proceedings. Most of us move through life uncertain of our goals, plagued by anxieties. Not Feathers McGraw. Feathers is a boss, with a clear-eyed sense of purpose and iron-clad faith in his own ability.

As a child, I found that extremely thrilling. Feathers was some kind of wish fulfilment — an aspirational figure. Unlike the other characters I watched at the time — the buffoonish Ren and Stimpy, the whiny Little Bear, the slovenly and unproductive Very Hungry Caterpillar — Feathers was guided by principles. Evil principles, sure, but principles none the less.

This motherfucker's been my hero since I was six years old pic.twitter.com/X4DrvC72gB

— Joseph Earp (@JosephoEarp) August 11, 2020

Late in The Wrong Trousers, Gromit threatens to expose Feathers, interrupting his plan to make off with a massive diamond. At such a point in the narrative, most other villains might deliver a long speech, rattling off all the cliches we are used to hearing from cornered baddies. But Feathers doesn’t. Without skipping a beat, the penguin pulls out a comically large gun from a bag, and threatens to shoot the dog dead.

How many of us would benefit from adopting such an attitude in our own lives — being honest about what we want, and how we want to get it, nosy dogs be damned?

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Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp, and would like to make it clear that his love for Feathers does not cancel out his love for Gromit.