Nature is Magic on the Discovery Channel

At a time when polluting corporations skate by unscathed by regulation and the effects of global warming equals an Oscar win, one might think that documentaries like Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth could be a form of unintentional protest, right? Showing how gorgeous and sublime the world around us that we never see is, increasing the level of repressed guilt in its viewers (which wears off by dinner, but whatever), and helping to cement an environmentally progressive discourse in the American cultural imagination and stuff? Well, if the show wasn’t so completely enamored with its own grandeur, maybe. The series, which takes a BBC approach to science and nature by lovingly filming them and then edting them into high-concept narrative vignettes, debuted last night. Instantly, I was reminded of Winged Migration and That Other One About Penguins, as well as the recent bio-film-about eco-art Rivers and Tides, which lovingly displays Andy Goldsworthy’s scupture au naturel with gorgeously patient cinematography. I still don’t know which part of the film I enjoyed more—his art, which was made from and in nature and which lasted only as long as its environment would let it, or the way in which it was essentially archived with brilliant photography. The style has its progenitor in the (Coppola-produced) Koyaanisqatsi, but the technology for motion pictures has finally managed to develop the ability to fetishize the natural, non-human world the same way it envisions the people who share it (even moreso than PBS' Nova has been doing forever---Planet Earth is like Nova on Creatine, standing in front of the gym mirror, flexing and telling itself how buff it is), and these shows and documentaries are creating a new genre of scientertainment-ence non-fiction-ish. And, to its debit, Planet Earth doesn’t want you to forget how they do it, and how cool they thus are.

Like every cable television documentary, it has wall-to-wall voice over narration, and the woman here takes care to mention often how totally unique and cool and never-before-done the photography we’re seeing is. After about 15 minutes, I started expecting to see product placement, as if the show were just one big ad for Canon HD lenses or hangglider camera attachments, or the executive producer’s wide-eyed imagination. I’ve become increasingly suspicious of documentaries (or other hybrid shows that just call themselves documentaries) that use the camera as a scientific tool, capable of revealing some sort of irrefutable truth unreachable otherwise, and there are certainly reservations I have about the claims toward objectivity lots of documentarians offer. But wow…did you see this show? I know they Disney-fy the holy hell out of these beasts, but come on. On the first episode, they capture on film two wolves chasing a monstrous pack of caribou, attempting to frighten the calves away from their mother. One of the wolves scares off some prey and chases it for what seems like miles. I found myself rooting for that poor baby, valiantly outrunning the wolf forever. But then it turns ugly, the wolf wins, and Discovery fades to black and cuts to commercial as he settles down to dinner. No matter whether it’s an animal, human or what, actually watching a living thing die on network television is a strange and distressing experience, but one I also got a thrill from, and I'm not fully sure why. Tom Gunning, a professor at the University of Chicago, has written a lot on the effects the earliest motion pictures had on many audiences, most of whom were still amazed by the representational abilities of still photography. Far from the mythical naive, horrified spectators, they sat in shock of the potency of the technology they were witnessing, and reveled in its novel ability to render objects and actions so lifelike (and out-of-context). Not that I would infer that Planet Earth et al's technologized naturalist-maximalism inspires anything relating to what audiences around the turn of the century felt about trains leaving the screen and coming into the theatre, but I for one was certainly able to suspend disbelief for a minute last night and stare at pretty pictures. Until that woman started telling me how great they were again, and then I came over here and wrote this.