Nature At The Movies
March of the Cuddly-Wuddly Documentaries – washingtonpost.com
Call it the “fuzzumentary,” this new documentary sub-genre in which creatures of the wild — think the birds of “Winged Migration,” or the emperors of “March of the Penguins” — are turned into almost-human characters on the big screen. Wildlife footage is combined with an off-screen narrator to concoct a G-rated story of loyalty, survival, family togetherness and other themes designed to draw human empathy.Forget the fact that some of these critters, particularly the polar bears and walruses in “Arctic Tale,” opening Friday, might rip us apart if given half a chance. C’mon, they’re so adorable! And when will the stuffed toy versions hit the shelves?
Hey, if it takes some anthropomorphizing to get people to try a little harder to save their habitats and maybe quit chasing them down and killing them for the hell of it, I’m completely in favor of it.
Ideally, people would care about wild animals without them having to be “disneyfied”, but whatever it takes… Of course, that does raise the question: Do films like these actually make people more likely to support habitat protection?
Posted by RebeccaHartong on July 28, 2007 under Uncategorized
I think I’m the only person who thought “March of the Penguins” was barf-tastic. Total anthropmorphizing of these moronic instinct-ruled creatures. The filmakers would show a scene of a penguin realizing it’s egg wasn’t viable and then dub in a loud penguin “sigh” sound. Very manipulative. The penguins are made out to be these noble creatures but it’s not like they were making a moral choice: “Hmmm…I could swim around here in the ocean or trudge over 30 miles of dangerous ice and lose most of my body weight sitting on an egg.” They are programmed to do it.
This type of treatment of animals is second on my most-hated list next to showing “animated” animal mouths speaking words.