Nature Red in Tooth and Claw
Jul. 30th, 2013 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightNot really the right icon, but it's the only one of a (potentially) savage predator I have. Aww!
Anyone on my flist watched the Discovery Channel's North America series? I bought the DVD (and it took ages to arrive), lured in by the 'from the makers of Planet Earth' mention in the blurb.
I don't regret it, or anything. The footage is indeed extraordinary - the sequence of a female peregrine attacking some rather bewildered passing pelicans was particularly memorable, plus the baby goat crossing the river, and the horrid demise of the lions' mane jellyfish etc. Okay, so the background music is way over the top, but for the most part when they've set the action to pop songs, they're appropriate ones, and besides the background music still sounds relatively sane compared to the sheer bonkersness of the Doctor Who music.
I am noticing a bi-it of a theme, though. It's all survival this, and apex predators that, and fighty-fight the other. And yes, nature is indeed red in tooth and claw (there are innocuous little birds engaged in a daily life and death struggle right outside our suburban windows, for instance),but somehow, according to this program, it's extra-specially so in North America.
In other words, it's the most macho nature series I've ever watched in my life.
Not much chance of some pretty little bluebirds tweeting happily in the trees in the last two episodes, I fear. Speaking of which, just to give this post something of interest in it, have a picture of a baby robin.
Aww! Unless you're a worm. Or, in fact, any sort of insect. Red in tooth and claw, see?
Anyone on my flist watched the Discovery Channel's North America series? I bought the DVD (and it took ages to arrive), lured in by the 'from the makers of Planet Earth' mention in the blurb.
I don't regret it, or anything. The footage is indeed extraordinary - the sequence of a female peregrine attacking some rather bewildered passing pelicans was particularly memorable, plus the baby goat crossing the river, and the horrid demise of the lions' mane jellyfish etc. Okay, so the background music is way over the top, but for the most part when they've set the action to pop songs, they're appropriate ones, and besides the background music still sounds relatively sane compared to the sheer bonkersness of the Doctor Who music.
I am noticing a bi-it of a theme, though. It's all survival this, and apex predators that, and fighty-fight the other. And yes, nature is indeed red in tooth and claw (there are innocuous little birds engaged in a daily life and death struggle right outside our suburban windows, for instance),but somehow, according to this program, it's extra-specially so in North America.
In other words, it's the most macho nature series I've ever watched in my life.
Not much chance of some pretty little bluebirds tweeting happily in the trees in the last two episodes, I fear. Speaking of which, just to give this post something of interest in it, have a picture of a baby robin.
Aww! Unless you're a worm. Or, in fact, any sort of insect. Red in tooth and claw, see?
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-30 03:24 pm (UTC)Which was probably not an accident on their part. Discovery Channel goes for the male demographic what with its top shows being "Deadliest Catch", "Dirty Jobs", "Man vs. Wild," etc. You can almost see the testosterone level go up by the year.
(Though out of boredom this weekend I watched a couple of episodes of their new "Naked and Afraid" where they drop two stark naked idiots who have never met one another (one male, one female) into some god-forsaken hellhole to watch them
suffer'survive'scripted reality TV. (They mention having done psychological testing, which I hope is true, because they are dropping a couple of naked strangers into the 'wilderness', what could possibly go wrong?) Actually watching what goes wrong is the amusing part.As someone summarized on DailyKos after a few episodes you begin to see a pronounced pattern:
1) Man + Woman are dropped off in hellhole.
2) Man (w/ requisite pot belly) brags about whatever experience he has hunting/military/whatever (and hopes the woman is 'good looking' so that he has something nice to look at. That said, they didn't seem to be selecting participants on having awesome bodies, so he's not stranded with the hoped-for bikini model, just another survivalist-masochist like himself (Though the women seem more naturalist/hippie as compared to the "Uh-uh-uh I am MAN" lab rats). Woman worries to the camera that man doesn't view her as/treat her like an equal.
3) Man complains that woman isn't 'tough' enough for this lunacy and mocks woman's touch-feely/not-macho efforts to gather plants/fire wood/fish/trap lobsters/etc when 'real survivalists' hunt.
4) Macho man promptly injures himself while being macho.
5) Woman nurses macho man, who spends the next 10 days laying in the shelter complaining about having been laid up, the lack of protein, and everything the woman is doing even though she is the only one doing anything. He also complains about the plants the woman offers him to eat and is equally grumpy about her methods of attempting to gather protein (be it traps or fishing), mocking the futility of these efforts from his sickbed.
6) Woman successfully traps lobsters, fishes, traps something to eat. Desperate, protein-deprived man finally allows that she's 'not so bad', is 'tougher than he thought' and that she 'might be up to this challenge' (So says the man who has laid around camp.)
7) Last six days man and woman "work together" (which amounts to doing whatever it was that the woman had said to do all along but which the man had griped about until it's revealed that it works better than his 'macho' plan. )
8) The 'experiment' is over and they 'grade' the performance and announce how much weight they've lost... and the guy has always lost more than she has.
Rinse and repeat for the next episode. (The dailykos person who did the summary was laughing because taken as a whole it's unintentionally feminist).
And, despite the utter ridiculousness of the entire thing, one does begin to have a sneaking suspicion that this scenario may be reflective of the status quo for hunter-gather cultures all along...
no subject
Date: 2013-07-30 08:51 pm (UTC)Really? I hadn't realised that, as I don't have cable. I should have guessed, though. My nephews (18 and 15) are fond of it, and they definitely like their wild animals big, bitey and preferably covered in blood.
As for that program, it sounds utterly ridiculous, and yet again proof that a lot of people just don't hear the 'gatherer' in hunter-gatherer.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-01 11:19 pm (UTC)And, despite the utter ridiculousness of the entire thing, one does begin to have a sneaking suspicion that this scenario may be reflective of the status quo for hunter-gather cultures all along...
That's exactly what I was thinking of as I read this!
Your comment about the weight made me laugh though. I just heard a story yesterday about a man winning a legal case for a mistaken arrest where he was forgotten in a cell for 4 days without water or food. As appalling as the story was what amazed me was that he lost 15 pounds in 4 days. I was thinking "How is that even possible?" I swear if it had been me I might have lost 4.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-02 09:06 am (UTC)