The Planet Earth Illusion
How planet earth acts as truth, when it is really a fantasy.
Good television, good entertainment, is all about storytelling, surprise, relatability and accessibility. It’s about character arcs that are dynamic but also easily understood, beautiful visuals and a sense of adventure. Good television compels you to share the experience. Weather that’s physically watching with someone else or just pestering them at lunch about, “the show you have to watch”. Good television should keep our interest and attention away from the fifty million other shows Netflix is releasing this month.
Good television is a category that, for most, is filled with critically acclaimed acting, zestful writing, and superior world building. This is why high budget fantasy shows dominate the “good television” segment. They construct a world that we can immerse ourselves in for an hour at a time while simultaneously allowing us to escape our present moment. World class cinematography sensationalizes even the smallest interaction, holding us onto the edge of our seat. The score swells when the tension is at its climax, insurring we are immersed in the fantasy world that this show is selling us.
A few weeks ago I started one of these, “good television” shows. It was recommended by a friend who gushed about it’s “insane visuals and creative storytelling”. Just to be clear, describing a television show by saying it has “insane visuals and creative storytelling” is a blanket statement filled with empty words and promises but nonetheless I decided to invest an hour into the first episode.
Eighteen minutes in, the first episode visits one of the Galapagos Islands, where our protagonist’s are entering the world. Newly hatched, they crawl out of the sand in the island’s interior, and must make the dangerous trek to the coasts, where they can feed. One does so, and in its wake, a snake follows. Then two. Three. Soon, dozens of Galapagos racer snakes pour out of the black rocks at the hatchlings, slithering across the sand and into your nightmares.
Every shot and musical cue heightens the tension. The racers wait in gangs, heads raised like a mythological Hydra. They come at our protagonist from all directions. One youngster emerges to see another being constricted mere feet away. It tiptoes past. It freezes to avoid being detected. It makes a break for it — and is caught by a racer lying in ambush. All seems lost, but somehow, it manages to slip through the ensnaring coils. Predatory jaws snap at its legs and tail, and every strike is a narrow miss. It is free, and millions of viewers finally exhale.
The “good television” show I started was Planet Earth II. The BBC’s latest landmark wildlife series — the highly anticipated sequel to its equally groundbreaking predecessor, Planet Earth. When that series was first broadcast in 2006, it was the most expensive nature documentary ever produced. and it fits the description perfectly; big budget, beautiful, dynamic characters and creative writing but most importantly it’s a fantasy.
What is Planet Earth?
And why does it look so gosh darn good.
When the BBC launched its Natural History Unit in 1957 to produce radio and TV programs about wildlife, its wind-up film cameras could only run for 20 seconds at a time. There was no way to schedule multi-destination airplane trips, and once a crew arrived at their remote location, they couldn’t communicate with Bristol for weeks or review their footage.
Now, as the BBC releases its latest blue-chip series, Planet Earth II, cameras are smaller than ever, they can shoot at higher frame rates in lower light, and data storage is essentially unlimited. But each time a technological development threatens to make their jobs easier, the Natural History Unit becomes more ambitious.
It’s not enough to show a barn owl hunting a harvest mouse — now they want it from the mouse’s point of view. It’s not enough to get footage of snow leopards, one of the hardest animals on the planet to track down — now they want to spy on them from a foot’s distance with motion-detecting cameras.
The result is that Planet Earth II is the most cinematic wildlife film yet. We saw a big hint of this when they hired the man who composed the music for The Lion King. If you found yourself shivering during the Planet Earth II trailer, Hans Zimmer is the reason.
But it permeates the entire series. “To make it feel truly cinematic, I think you have to tell the stories from a dramatic perspective, and that means putting yourselves in the eyes, in the mind, in the world of the animals, and seeing what’s at stake for them,” said Mike Gunton, the executive producer of Planet Earth II.
The producers have become sticklers for capturing specific behaviors, and in Planet Earth II, they showcase the drama of those behaviors. Each scene sets up the characters to perform something — something brave, something brutal, something bizarre. They’ve made room for our emotions; that’s what cinematic storytelling means.
Construction of Nature
The Sublime Animal.
Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and other authors of the Romantic era saw a special emotion in our recognition of nature’s terrifying side, the paradoxical pull of the imagery of pain and danger they called the sublime.
The sublime animal is an animal that doesn’t exist in reality. It is an animal that is constructed by photography in such a way that it becomes sublime. It becomes more than the living animal it portrays, it becomes an icon in our mind — a symbol of something else.
An example- a time for a quick comparison between two photos.
Here is a photo of a Lion. In our culture, Lions represent strength, power and toughness. Lions are predators and the “kings of the jungle”. This photo is doing a very good job of conveying these cultural representations.
Now here is a photo of a Lion, just like the first picture, however there are some key differences. The traditional cultural themes are not present. This photo doesn’t convey strength, power or toughness. Both of these photos are “real” in the sense that they both were taken with a camera and both captured a real lion. However if we were to imagine a lion, we would imagine the first photo. This isn’t because you are biased to sleeping lions, it is a result of us creating expectations for how lions act.
Creating sublime animals has no immediate negative impact, however photography changes our expectations of how animals act.
The sublime animal behaves more in our mind than they do in nature. We hyper-focus on animal behavior that is not displayed often but rather the unique, exciting moments. The issue of the sublime animal is what gives Planet Earth’s its draw and richness. To make it feel truly cinematic, the stories are told from a dramatic perspective, and that means putting yourselves in the eyes, in the mind, in the world of the animals, and seeing what’s at stake for them.
In the opening episode of Planet Earth, a pygmy three-toed sloth paddles in search of a partner. Two titanic male Komodo dragons slam into each other. Two Buller’s albatross, having reunited after six months apart, engage in a tender greeting ritual. And it’s all visually spectacular. The greens are that much greener, the blues are that much bluer.
There are more sunsets than a Michael Bay movie, and more lens flares than a J. J. Abrams one. And yet. Every scene isn't depicting animals in nature but rather the sublime creation of the Planet Earth Producers.
How we experience animals.
Rat, Pigeon, Zoo
Rat Pigeon Zoo
This is a quick clip from a comedy special by Andrew Schultz. Using his comedic timing, pure disregard for decency and being incredibly vulgar, Schultz describes the first time he went to a National Park. The comedic premise for the joke is Schultz’s inexperience with nature and how when faced with animals outside of his comfort zone it makes him feel uncomfortable.
Despite being offensive, I think this clip illustrates a key factor about how we interact with animals on a daily basis- especially if you live in a city. When confronted with the possibility of seeing a Grizzly Bear, Schultz is scared and confused. He explains his frightened state by describing his relationship with animals as a long time New Yorker is the most poetic way possible.
Rat, Pigeon, Zoo
While this premise is funny and the punchline gets laughs out of the crowd he is illustrating a key part in our conversation about how we interact with nature. For the majority of the time and for the majority of people you are not going to experience an animal in their natural habitat. Most of the time we experience animals and learn about animals without ever seeing them. This allows us to create animals that don’t exist in reality, — sublime animals. To go back to the lion example, we don’t actually learn about lions growing up. We learn about the sublime lion, the lion that roars constantly and tears through everything in its path- the king of the jungle.
Just like Schultz, we struggle to accurately depict nature in our own lives. Our experiences with nature often don’t come face to face but rather through a TV screen.
This is what Planet Earth plays off of.
Planet Earth thrives on our struggles. The producers of Planet Earth know that an accurate depiction of nature isn’t interesting. Since our expectations of animals are so high the producers need to get our attention by meeting them. If you watched an hour of a lion sleeping you would be getting the most accurate depiction of a lion. However some would rather watch paint dry.
Planet, ‘Proximity’ Earth
The closer you are, the worse it is.
Here is a small snippet of the New York Times review of Planet Earth II,
“It would be too knee-jerk to ascribe this change to the death of intellectual TV, where education has been sacrificed at the altar of spectacle. I think it’s more that nature documentaries have been limited by the same technology that makes them so compelling. When you can get beautiful, high-definition, slow-motion, ground-level shots of an animal, it’s not enough to just show it and start talking. You need build-up. You need to swoop in on the island of, follow a tail as it drags across a beach, catch a scaly body in the reflection of a tidal pool, and reveal a powerful clawed foot as it thumps into the sand — and only then can you show the entire Komodo dragon. The storytelling language of wildlife documentaries has become more cinematic, and every vignette becomes longer.”
This review is commenting about the proximity of Planet Earth. How technology has allowed us unrivalled access to images we could never have imagined or seen before. This proximity to the animals gives us, the viewer, a distorted perception of what we are watching. To humans proximity is associated with the truth; we use a magnifying glass to find minute details, we aim to be in the front row at the ballet, closer to someone telling a story. I will concede that the images are amazing. There is something remarkable about being so close to a bird as it flies through a densely packed forest or an otter swimming within reach of an underwater camera, however in this case, the close proximity of the camera doesn’t equate with the truth.
The Planet Earth Fantasy
Why it’s problematic and not a nature documentary.
I don’t hate Planet Earth. To be completely candid, I have watched every season and have been fully entertained. It shows us images that we would never have ever seen before and as a fan of great cinematography it is essentially the best of the best at work. I don’t hate my friends that recommended Planet Earth to me. I don’t look down on them for being entranced by the fictionalized stories or oversaturated rainforests.
I look down at how it’s presented.
Planet Earth is a show that is presented as a factual representation of nature around the world. Since it is a documentary there is an expectation that what you are seeing is the truth, when in reality it is a fantasy. It perpetuates our long tradition of learning about sublime animals rather than real ones. Planet earth isn’t a documentary but a highlight reel of the most exciting animal interactions the producers could find.
I’m not saying that the sloth didn’t swing from tree to tree at sunset in an oversaturated rainforest but that by watching these images we reinforce our missguided expectations for sloths. While we are in awe of the images the sloth is fast asleep.
I want everyone to watch Planet Earth, but to understand that it’s a fantasy not a documentary.
