Nature porn
Wildlife documentaries? Eco-tourism? Pat Thomas asks: Are we loving nature to death?
A new report puts forward the theory that wildlife film makers are invading the privacy of animals by going to ever greater extremes to film otherwise unseen moments of life in the animal kingdom.
According to Brett Mills, a lecturer in film studies at the University of East Anglia, the growing use of miniature cameras by wildlife photographers and film makers produces an invasive level of surveillance most humans would find objectionable if they were on the other end of the lens: “The key thing in most wildlife documentaries is filming those very private moments of mating or giving birth. Many of these activities, in the human realm, are considered deeply private, but with other species we don’t recognise that”.
He adds that while it might seem strange to claim that animals have a right to privacy, the idea should not be dismissed: “We can never really know if animals are giving consent, but they do often engage in forms of behaviour which suggest they’d rather not encounter humans”.
Debate on animals and privacy is largely philosophical. Allowing for the general validity of Mills’ argument, the very use of the term ‘privacy’, a mainly anthropocentric concern, may be obscuring the point of what is a potentially important discussion about the rest of the animal kingdom.
To require privacy requires a sense of oneself and as well as awareness of being observed by others. Some higher mammals appear to have one or both of these senses, but not all animals do. While they may not explicitly seek privacy, animals are exquisitely aware of their environments and will, when necessary, seek refuge or shelter or take other measures to ensure safety for themselves and their young and their group.
Human sexual behaviour isn’t just for procreation and (usually) has a private element to it. But in the animal world mating rituals can be gloriously public, flashy, competitive, even violent. These open displays of sexuality have some practical purposes. They define territory and hierarchy assuring that the strongest males are given the chance to pass their genetic traits on; it also allows the most prolific breeding females to display their fecundity. All this happens to support the survival of the species; it’s only relatively recently that these activities have come to be regarded as entertainment for humans.
We all have to live on the same earth together and it would seem a given that all animals should have the right to exist in a way and in an environment that is natural to them without being deliberately interfered with, exploited or intruded upon. But most humans have such trouble with this simple notion that we have invented wildlife preserves and parks and zoos to keep the animals, that once had free roam of the wilderness, enclosed in legally defined territory (a few humans are now challenging this with the concept of rewilding, though to some extent both ideas assume the right of humans to dictate terms).
And, of course, we also have wildlife films that safely confine our experience of animals to screens big and small.
Wildlife film makers explain their craft in part by saying that they are providing a public service by helping more of us to know, love and maybe protect the natural world. Newer technologies, they argue, mean that the act of watching animals in their natural or near-natural habitat is less and less invasive. All of this is true – up to a point. And I admit to being one of those who first fell in love with the nature that extended well beyond my back garden through watching wildlife programmes. As a small child in the 60’s I was hooked on the corny wildlife films on The Wonderful World of Disney, the Wild Kingdom and the Undersea Adventures of Jacques Cousteau. Through most of my adult life David Attenborough’s obvious love for his subject has also been inspirational.
But nature films are also a big industry now. There are endless cable channels hungry for content and there is big money to be spent and made. March of the Penguins, for example, grossed £85 million [$130 million] at the global box office and the BBC notes that Planet Earth “has been sold to 95 countries and territories and the DVD was the highest ever TV DVD pre-order on Amazon. It has already generated over £22 million [$34 millon] of gross revenue”.
It is in this comodification of nature, the packaging of it for mass appeal and profit, where the issue of what has been termed ‘wildlife porn’ or ‘nature porn’ starts to make sense.
For some, the juxtaposition of the words ‘nature’ and ‘pornography’ may seem strange. The linking factor is the way pornography objectifies its subject by removing context, whether that context might be character, life story, environment or ecosystem. You know you are watching nature porn when nature becomes a commodity – and this, of course, is how the human body and sexual experience is presented in human pornography – something to be consumed and then discarded as we flick the channel over to X-factor or Lost or the night’s football or a re-run of Friends.
David Attenborough’s Planet Earth was, at the time of its release, considered by some to be a good example of ‘wildlife porn’ – a near constant flow of epic imagery, of vast desert vistas and brooding forests, of skies brim full of migratory flocks birds, of flowing rivers and raging oceans, all filmed and edited to provoke arousal and to incite powerful feelings in the viewer. Beautiful, yes, but also in some ways numbing and ultimately a false reassurance that, when it comes to the natural world, voyeurism is our only role. And of course, it also ignored the many genuine environmental perils going on behind the scenes.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the rise of the nature documentary/series/film doesn’t seem to have inspired many of us to take better care of the world, but it has helped give rise to the idea of eco-tourism. Essentially, you’ve bought the album, now see the live show.
This leads to another issue; namely that we change what we observe. This isn’t just the experience of quantum physics. Any observed ‘object’, if it is alive and aware or can sense that it is being observed, will react to the observation, even if the reactions are unconscious or unintentional.
The intrusion of wildlife photographers and, perhaps worse, eco-tourists into the natural world to watch, to feel a part of nature while still being apart from it, is having a profound effect on wildlife. It doesn’t just put habitats under pressure; it also impacts the reproductive behaviour of the animals within those systems.
Eco-tourism may superficially seem to be an antidote to couch-potato consumption of nature documentaries, but the fact is that at a very basic level, taking busloads of people into the wild crowds the natural environment of the animals and alters their biology and behaviour in significant ways.
In 2004 New Scientist reported on studies showing that polar bears, penguins, dolphins, dingoes, even birds in the rainforest were becoming stressed as a result the invasion from eco-tourism. The physiological effects noted were sometimes subtle: changes to an animal’s heart rate, metabolism, stress hormone levels and social behaviour. But the wider impacts on the animals were worryingly high and included fewer hours of sleep each day, weight loss, lower resistance to disease, lower reproductive rates and premature death.
Two years ago the Wall Street Journal reported that the boom in eco-tourism to the Galápagos Islands was having a devastating effect on wildlife there. Unsustainable development, an influx of workers from the mainland and introduced species were, the article noted, putting endemic biodiversity and habitats at risk.
In the forests of California, scientists have found that hiking, bird watching and other similar ‘low-impact’ non-consumptive activities can interfere with the mating habits of bobcats and coyotes. Where the eco-tourists went, there was a fivefold reduction in numbers of these animals. After banning the tourists, their numbers began to rise again.
We understood how animals respond to crowding even before eco-tourism came into being. Over the years studies have shown that animal populations living in crowded conditions display a number of behaviours that tend to limit the size of the population, including aberrant forms of sexual behaviour, small litter sizes, a higher incidence of spontaneous abortion, ineffectual maternal care and even cannibalism of their young.
In this respect ‘privacy’, or whatever we choose to call it, may be important to the normal physiology of many species, even when particular individuals or groups don’t appear to live, or in the case of zoo animals, may never have lived, in a very ‘private’ environment.
For me the unasked questions are: Why do we watch nature films? What is it about the drama of birth, sex, survival and death of other species that draws us in? What do we – that is we who are not scientists – get out of the experience? Nature has long been our blank canvas and it’s tempting to consider whether our interest in animal lifestyles is really just a projection of our desire to be more free in our own mating choices and habits, to be more in tune with our natural environment, instincts and biology. What a strange world we live in where we can effectively watch a parade of elephants, tigers, chimps and whales humping all day long, but where a man, a human animal, can be prosecuted for indecent exposure (though finally, sensibly acquitted) after a neighbour, out walking with her child, inadvertently spied him making coffee in the nude in the privacy his own home.
As humans we believe that awareness of ourselves is our greatest gift. Maybe it’s time to apply some of this sentience in a less inwardly-focused way. It’s reassuring that so many of us love nature. But as with all forms of consumption we should at least question our ongoing, really voracious, desire for nature porn, and ask where it gets us, what it is displacing, what is lost through it, what might serve us better and what the potential damage is, to us and to the rest of the animal kingdom, if we don’t direct our interest in a more positive, practical way. These questions are more than a philosophical game, they are the obligations of a conscious, enlightened society.
© Pat Thomas 2010. No reproduction without author’s permission.
