I get that they have to dramatize nature to get ratings, but these documentaries project our fucked up societal bias on nature like crazy.
Every single one is like “DANGER, SURVIVAL, DEATH, DANGER, CONSTANT STRUGGLE, PAIN, DOMINATION, VIOLENCE!”
Yes, violence is a part of nature, but it’s just one part. The majority of life spends its time conserving energy, sleeping, eating grass, etc. Even lions only hunt once or twice a week and then sleep the rest of the time.
“IS THIS BABY SEAL GENETICALLY SUPERIOR ENOUGH TO PASS THE TEST OF LIFE?!?! YES, HE BOOTSTAPPED HIMSELF THEREFORE HE HAS PROVEN HE HAS THE RIGHT TO LIVE!”
What a nihilistic, unobjective conclusion to jump to.
“LOOK AT THESE TWO BABY LIONS PRACTICING KILLING AND DOMINATING!”
No, my dude, they’re just playing… you know, forming bonds like all social species do? Entertaining themselves because all animals with a brain get bored? Nope, they must be doing it for BRUTAL VIOLENT DOMINANCE reasons.
Again, I’m not saying nature is all rainbows and unicorn farts, but these documentaries give a false impression of the wild. Where are the documentaries about the cooperation and loving families of elephants? The amazing parenting of crocodiles? The beauty of cooperation that happens between species? Those spiders that form societies? The spiders that are vegetarian?
Ugh, nature is far more beautiful, complicated, and nuanced than Westoids think. But no, we can’t help but project our own unconscious fascist bias onto it.
I know Animal Planet was like this too, but it seems like Netflix has leaned hard into the “Nature but trying to make it into a grimdark drama” angle.
Watch PBS, BBC, etc. docs instead.
Documentaries made by companies for profit started to be fucking awful a couple decades ago. Reality tv, true crime, and other horrible forms of sensationalistic tv deliver the goods for people with no attention span. On top of the overuse of music, CGI, special effects, etc - I bet the average made-for-profit doc has at least 20 (30?) edits etc every minute.
BBC’s nature docs are very good at showing the silly and laid back side of nature, I don’t really watch any others
Is there any where to find round planet xcpt torrents? It’s premise was that both nature and the narrator were drunk and it was the only good docu
Looks like it’s on Dailymotion:
You have built 1% of communism today.
Yeah, that’s just kinda what every American nature show is like. https://youtu.be/T81lPoG0JME
I miss Wild America.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Netflix made a documentary where someone said the Romanovs being killed was one of the biggest tragedies in human history or something along those lines.
Or that one specie of spider that is down for to eat some spidery puss, right? Where’s their documentary?
Lmao
"WHERE IS MY SPIDER SEX MOVIE?!?
"I looked this up and it turns out nobody is even sure why some spiders give oral either. They’re just like “yeah this one type of spider seems to really prefer salivating on the female’s genitals before (and during and after) sex, which is a behavior we see less frequently in only a couple other types of spiders. why do they do it? idk maybe some chemical shit dude you cant exactly ask the spider why he’s going down on the other spider”
How the fuck have I missed this? I literally have books on spider behavior.
Thank you for verifying my unsubstantiated memory! I don’t remember where it came from but it ended with me reading an article about the spider that enjoys the genitive workplace!
Been awhile since I watched one but I remember having exactly the same reaction. I could listen to David Attenborough talk about the wonders of nature for hours without stopping, but then you watch an American version of the same thing and it’s the exact same awful narration style that they use for every single awful reality TV show, it sucks.
And when they get onto a subject that I know a thing or two about I find dozens of errors in the narration, and wonder how many other wrong things I’ve been told so far in this stupid docu series. I’ve fucking read Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation by David Mech, his 2003 omnibus (though I have the 2007 edition) written after a lifetime of studying those animals, so don’t try to tell me about alpha/beta pack shit with a wild population.
Yeah it is pretty jarring, even for documentaries that have good message like Frozen Planet 2, which is to preserve the cryosphere on Earth. It would go something like this
Title: Frozen Planet episode 3, Frozen South
The Southern Ocean is the southernmost ocean, on the edge of Antarctica. However, because of the upwelling of carbon rich nutrient from the deep ocean, it most productive ocean on the planet, able to sustain diverse communities of animals that call the Southern ocean their home
Killer whales hunt and murder humpback whale
Leopard seal hunt and murder penguins
penguins getting smashed into the cliff by strong Southern Ocean waves
In conclusion, we must stop global warming to preserve these animals
Oh good, I thought it was just me.
Yk? I never really thought about it like that. Strange
What are you watching on Netflix? I’ve been watching our planet and felt like it was cohesively going through the lifetime of some of these animals. Way more species than I thought eat only once a year.
