If it is whoever attracts admiration almost everywhere in the UK, it’s David Attenborough. The naturalist has impressed our eyes and ears with a remarkable stream of nature documentaries since the 1950s. Even in his later years, Attenborough – now 96 years old – has relentlessly released new documentaries and sequels to his acclaimed shows about life on his planet.
His latest is Frozen Planet II—A sequel in a series that explores the frigid lands of our planet. If that doesn’t excite you, also releasing this year is Attenborough’s flagship documentary series about birdsong and plants, two dinosaur themes and 2018’s sequel. age, a kind of documentary and musical that follows the animals given their names as they struggle to hold power in their respective dynasties. Although he is most closely associated with the BBC, whose Natural History Unit continues to produce the majority of his documentaries, Attenborough programs have also recently been commissioned by Apple TV + and Netflix. If Earth has to offer a planetary spokesperson for the natural world, Attenborough is the most beloved, and for good reason: His deeply gentle reverence for the natural world has inspired wonder for generations. He has done more than anyone to bring distant landscapes into our homes in an unforgettable way, and to remind us that we are destroying these fragile, beautiful ecosystems.
But when I watched the first episode of Frozen Planet II, something – forgive me – makes me a little cold. All the hallmarks of Attenborough-isms are there: ominous sequences as killer whales stalk a seal atop some icebergs. A drone shot of a glacier slamming into the sea beneath the Greenland ice sheet. Pallas’ cat staccato comedy – nature’s softest shuttlecock really – as it swoops in after a rodent. All are beautiful. Attenborough after all. But at the same time, this documentary feels oddly out of place with a burning planet.
In most Attenborough documentaries, nature is unspoiled, beautiful. It is elegiac ropes covered with unbroken ice. It was something that existed outside of human experience – somewhere else hovering so far beyond my life that it might as well have been pulled from the pages of a fantasy novel. Humans are there in the documentary Attenborough but rarely appear on screen. They are a looming destructive presence that exists just outside the natural system, but bears its mark. If one appears in an Attenborough documentary, it is usually the comforting presence of the naturalist himself.
This is one way to look at the natural world, but it’s not the only way. In her book Under the white skyEnvironmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert describes how the chaos that humans inculcate in every ecosystem on the planet. It’s messy, and humans are wreaking havoc everywhere we walk, but Kolbert disproves the myth that nature exists outside of humans and that only by walking can we correct the mistakes we make. we caused. To be sure, Attenborough doesn’t subscribe to this view entirely either. In the 2020 documentary A life on our planet, he points out that reversing climate change will require people to adopt renewable technology, eat less meat, and try other solutions. But he’s also a patron of Population Issues — a charity that advocates for global population reduction in to reduce pressure on the planet. Keeping nature intact means we should have less humans around to enjoy it.
Personally, I am not convinced by this line of thinking, but I do think that the desire for people to move away from nature to focus on nature has two other side effects that we can see in the Attenborough documentaries. One is that the destruction of our natural world is sometimes cast aside. Conservationist Julia Jones made this point regarding Our planet, which she observed for three weeks in 2015. After the documentary was released, she criticized the documentary for its mention of the burning forests of Madagascar but avoided screening. destruction of ecosystems. Jones then praised Attenborough and his teams for portraying human impact in the 2020 documentary. Extinction: The Truth—A film she praised as “surprisingly progressive. “
