4 ms·

What if the point of a nature documentary isn't to make you feel good, but to present an accurate depiction of the state of the world?

stakhanov 4y ago
Most nature documentaries don't leave it at that, though. They present facts, but then weave them into a narrative. I don't know why this "weaving a narrative" is something they all do. ...maybe they teach that at film school or something. Science itself has no narratives. And at some point in the 90s, it seems to me that someone decided that the narrative for all nature documentaries was going to be: Man is destroying nature. It's all this same weird psychology, where man loves to set up systems to keep reminding him that he's a sinner. The political right, in the U.S., gets their weekly fix in church. The political left works the message into nature documentaries instead. I wish both sides would stop evangelizing. I really kind of want to just say "No, thank you" in the same way I would say "No, thank you" to a Jehovah's witness knocking at my door.
- nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
  Except that humans are destroying the ecosystem. It is quantitatively what is happening around us. A documentary is intended to document, if you don't like what is beung documented that sounds like a you problem?
  - stakhanov 4y ago
    But the space of facts that are true facts is vast, and there's a selection process, and there is no objectively correct way to make that selection, only subjective choices that some people are making, and they have decided that "humans are destroying the ecosystem" is a fact that I need to be bombarded with. It's also a fact that the universe is vast, violent, and indifferent, with our planet being nothing but an insignificantly tiny spec in the fabric of the galaxy. It's also a fact that our planet has seen many epochs come and gone before the anthropocene, and will produce many more epochs after it, bringing forward new and different kinds of life after humanity is long gone. To make it look like we, humanity, are big and mighty in relation to nature, and nature is fragile and timid and needs the good ones among the humans to protect it from the bad ones among the humans: This is not facts. It's spin. Now don't get me wrong: I think every single one of the sustainable development goals [1], including the environmental ones, is a no brainer, and something I can get behind. But it's also a normal function of the human psyche that one doesn't want to be bombarded with cognitive dissonance-inducing messaging all the time, and I want creators of mass media to respect that. Now, it's difficult to make a newscast reporting on the war in Ukraine without inducing cognitive dissonance. But it would be perfectly possible to make a nature documentary that way, and, somehow, mass media aren't doing it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals

stakhanov 4y ago

Most nature documentaries don't leave it at that, though. They present facts, but then weave them into a narrative. I don't know why this "weaving a narrative" is something they all do. ...maybe they teach that at film school or something. Science itself has no narratives. And at some point in the 90s, it seems to me that someone decided that the narrative for all nature documentaries was going to be: Man is destroying nature. It's all this same weird psychology, where man loves to set up systems to keep reminding him that he's a sinner. The political right, in the U.S., gets their weekly fix in church. The political left works the message into nature documentaries instead. I wish both sides would stop evangelizing. I really kind of want to just say "No, thank you" in the same way I would say "No, thank you" to a Jehovah's witness knocking at my door.

nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
Except that humans are destroying the ecosystem. It is quantitatively what is happening around us. A documentary is intended to document, if you don't like what is beung documented that sounds like a you problem?
- stakhanov 4y ago
  But the space of facts that are true facts is vast, and there's a selection process, and there is no objectively correct way to make that selection, only subjective choices that some people are making, and they have decided that "humans are destroying the ecosystem" is a fact that I need to be bombarded with. It's also a fact that the universe is vast, violent, and indifferent, with our planet being nothing but an insignificantly tiny spec in the fabric of the galaxy. It's also a fact that our planet has seen many epochs come and gone before the anthropocene, and will produce many more epochs after it, bringing forward new and different kinds of life after humanity is long gone. To make it look like we, humanity, are big and mighty in relation to nature, and nature is fragile and timid and needs the good ones among the humans to protect it from the bad ones among the humans: This is not facts. It's spin. Now don't get me wrong: I think every single one of the sustainable development goals [1], including the environmental ones, is a no brainer, and something I can get behind. But it's also a normal function of the human psyche that one doesn't want to be bombarded with cognitive dissonance-inducing messaging all the time, and I want creators of mass media to respect that. Now, it's difficult to make a newscast reporting on the war in Ukraine without inducing cognitive dissonance. But it would be perfectly possible to make a nature documentary that way, and, somehow, mass media aren't doing it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals