{"id":6872,"date":"2017-01-10T06:42:12","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T06:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6872"},"modified":"2017-01-10T06:42:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T06:42:47","slug":"escapist-wildlife-fantasy-at-the-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/01\/10\/escapist-wildlife-fantasy-at-the-bbc\/","title":{"rendered":"Is there too much escapist wildlife fantasy at the BBC?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I've long held the view that the BBC's flagship nature documentaries, particularly those coming out of the Natural History unit in Bristol, were uninterested in the relationship between humans and the rest of nature, it's good to see that some parts of the BBC are also now taking that view. \u00a0In a Comment piece<\/a> for the Guardian, Martin Hughes-Games, a\u00a0presenter of the BBC\u2019s Springwatch describes Planet Earth II as \"escapist wildlife fantasy\". \u00a0\u00a0I might well have agreed with that view had I watched it, but I'd given up on the BBC wildlife programmes long before PE\u00a0II. \u00a0I'm not even sure I watched PE I, or Blue Planet, etc.<\/p>\n

Producers claim such series encourage conservation, Hughes-Games writes, but in fact, he says, \"their brilliance and beauty breeds complacency about our destruction of the planet\". \u00a0He goes further, saying:<\/p>\n

\"I fear this series, and others like it, have become a disaster for the world\u2019s wildlife. \u00a0These programmes are pure entertainment, brilliantly executed but ultimately a significant contributor to the planet-wide extinction of wildlife we\u2019re presiding over.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The programmes, Hughes-Games says, ignore\u00a0the\u00a0worldwide mass extinction that are happening, and by fostering that lie they are lulling the huge worldwide audience into a false sense of security. \u00a0I should say, of course, that I am writing all this because the article appealed to my deep-seated prejudices. \u00a0I don't normally read the comments under Guardian articles as they are usually too much for my snowflake-like sensibilities, but I did this time. \u00a0My favourite was:<\/p>\n

\"Surely the essence of a nature show is to present me some nature. \u00a0Not the bit we've destroyed. \u00a0That's for other documentaries.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just so. \u00a0You wouldn't want a whole evening of extinctions. \u00a0These are\u00a0the sorts of\u00a0claims that might well get Hughes-Games cold-shouldered in the tea room, but if you think about the programme in educational terms, and look at what the messages are, you can see he must have\u00a0a point. \u00a0He goes on:<\/p>\n

\"The justification, say the programme makers, is that if people (the audience) become interested in the natural world they will start to care about the natural world, and will be more likely to want to get involved in trying to conserve it. Unfortunately the scientific evidence shows this is nonsense.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Environmental educators might be sitting up here and looking around nervously as, although they cannot be accused of ignoring these problems, the rather flawed argument that\u00a0awareness leads to\u00a0concern which leads to involvement that results in change<\/em>\u00a0is rather beloved of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I've long held the view that the BBC's flagship nature documentaries, particularly those coming out of the Natural History unit in Bristol, were uninterested in the relationship between humans and the rest of nature, it's good to see that...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}