Ocean is a film which has brought in a huge audience, and provided them with imagery and stories that could motivate them to crucial, planet-saving action. It just isn’t especially concerned with explaining what kind of action that should be. But perhaps that’s not David Attenborough’s problem?
As I have said before, when I was small, I used to spend hours of the day entranced by nature documentaries. David Attenborough was an ever-present on the small cathode-ray television in the living room. He has remained so ever since, though the screens now are mercifully larger and clearer. In recent years, that has even included a couple of outings on the biggest screen of all – the latest of which, Ocean with David Attenborough, is in cinemas now.
I don’t approach his films with quite the same misty-eyed reverence as I did in my childhood. I’ve long learned that just because your old heroes are good at one thing, does not mean they can’t disgrace themselves in others. He certainly did that in 2013, when he commented that there were “too many people and too little land” in Africa (the original quote now lurks behind a Telegraph paywall) – and that sending flour bags to Ethiopia was “barmy”, while appearing to suggest famine was just nature resetting its balance. But what he has said and done since are still extremely important.
No other living broadcaster or environmentalist can engage with a general audience like this – and get them to engage with topics like climate change in a way that makes them want to act. At the same time, he provides a very public example of how even the most revered and respected of people can be utterly wrong about something, and still form new opinions. It is never too late to change – and with the world on fire, we must make the most of David Attenborough while we can.
A Life on Our Planet
Not everyone agrees with that, of course, as exemplified by the reception to David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Released into cinemas for a limited theatrical run in the autumn of 2020, before it appeared on Netflix, the film used the famous broadcaster’s life – then spanning 94 years – as its narrative thread, and constructed an evocative case for rewilding the planet.
The emotional clout tied to Attenborough as an environmental figurehead cannot be overstated: his voice has been piped into households for generations, accompanying the majority of the most stunning images the BBC’s Natural History department has procured. So, when he says that reducing meat consumption, and allowing the land to be reclaimed by nature, are essential for the health of the planet, and the survival of humanity as we know it, that should be understood as an open goal.
After the release of A Life on Our Planet, scientists and activists who would normally meet intense resistance to such suggestions – even from friends and family – suddenly had a window of opportunity to make their case, with the goodwill afforded to Attenborough – the institution and the man – backing them up. In 2020, that was easier said than done, of course. Socially distanced cinemas meant leafletting after, approaching strangers to try and explain what they could actually do – beyond small-change individual action – was largely off the table.
Online, however, a different set of issues emerged. In recent decades, with the democratic and social power accessible to ordinary people dwindling, media discourse alone has often been treated as a replacement. Often, it will cite systemic issues at play as a reason why something – even with its heart in the right place – is not worth anybody’s time. Look back at my own writings from the last six years of Indy Film Library, and you will probably find an example or two of this.
These cases seem to be driven by two things: a desire to mask one’s powerlessness (preventing someone else from engaging with a particular film or book standing in for preventing another egregious abuse of power by corporations or governments); and/or a more cynical hope of bringing clicks to a website, by venturing a controversial opinion.
A Life on Our Planet was the target of a number of hit-pieces to that end. Most explicitly, Watching “A Life on Our Planet,” or How I Ruined David Attenborough for Myself saw Jerrine Tan perform an intense trashing of the film, which inferred it was both dripping with colonialism and ecofascist conclusions. There are a number of excellent interventions in the article – in particular, explaining how the famous gardens of Singapore (used as an example of a future where humans and wildlife live harmoniously) were constructed with materials pillaged from crumbling ecosystems, including Borneo’s rainforest. But more of the article is dedicated to reading links to Malthusian ‘overpopulation’ theory, and a prevalent anti-Asia racism – neither of which are links Attenborough or the film’s production team actually make in the film. It may have been that Tan was looking to reference Attenborough’s 2013 comments, though they are never mentioned in the article.
At the same time, nowhere in the long-read is space found to address what Tan supposedly thought of Attenborough before. If this film apparently ruined his earlier work, it is important to know where to spot that departure when watching it for ourselves. As far as I could see, A Life on Our Planet was very much in line with Attenborough’s previous output – in that he is a filmmaker first, and an activist second, one coming from a position of long-term privilege that means the what’s to be done segment usually is far too invested in the status quo. Tan’s extensive knowledge of political theory, and readiness to wield it so extensively here, suggests she would have had issues with that output, so to suggest this particular film ruined anything could come across as disingenuous. The rest of the article might follow, coming across as making an example of popular culture to feel capable of still exerting power in a world of creeping authoritarianism, or simply for personal clout.
Writing like this can be fun, it can use critical and analytical muscles that our day-jobs have forced us to neglect, and it can sometimes introduce audiences to further reading, in a way that the original artefact being discussed would not. But there is also a danger that it ends up squandering precious energy among a wider audience that could be better mobilised in other ways.
In particular, when it comes to environmentalism, it can reinforce a dangerous cultural and political vacuum. We dismiss imperfect attempts to inspire public action – finding them to be secretly racist by quoting obscure academics out of context – and do not engage further with them, or find ways to mobilise their audience from a leftist perspective. But while they are unhelpfully vague politically, Attenborough’s films are extremely effective at communicating basic, urgent messages to build upon, touching a mass audience in the process. Not only is it an unavoidable fact that few activists can currently provide such a draw – making spurning that audience act of wilful self-harm – but if academics and campaigners turn their back on films like this for their shortcomings, the energy does not dissipate – and instead is ceded to actual ecofascists, who will happily make the most of the opportunity.
Ocean: With David Attenborough
Ocean: With David Attenborough is the natural historian’s latest foray into theatres – and at 99 years old, it is not likely there will be many more. In some ways, it does a better job than its predecessor of explicitly addressing the uneven way climate change is endangering humanity, and how Western capitalism is the driving force behind that.
The film bothers to talk to people from fishing communities and conservation projects around the world – while routinely making it plain that while the seas are over-fished to the point of collapse, that is not to say that it is the fault of the Global South. In Liberia, people from a coastal community explain how they have survived by fishing for generations – but as a trawler scrapes its way across the distant blue horizon, they note that their nets no longer yield a healthy catch. The process of industrial fishing – shredding miles of sea-bed in the hunt for sometimes just one kind of particularly profitable fish – is utterly destroying the local community’s ability to live, for the benefit of wealthier nations. This relentless extraction of resources from those with least to those with most is what Attenborough describes as “modern colonialism”. It’s a tiny moment, but possibly the most radical Attenborough has dared to sound in his films, and something that should probably make it clear he’s changed his position from 2013 – and he’s certainly not interested in establishing an ethnocentric ecofascist dictatorship to negate climate change.
At the same time, though, the film does still indulge in some of the shortcomings that were present in A Life on Our Planet. Hope is a good thing when it comes to mobilising people – but there can be too much of a good thing, and Attenborough’s narration makes it sound just a little too easy to save the world by rewilding the oceans.
By protecting just, a third of the world’s oceans as ‘no fishing’ zones, coral reefs and kelp forests could recover in a way that the abundance of life would spill into unprotected zones, where fishing communities could harvest them. At the same time, enough sea-grass could be allowed to grow, it could be a powerful ally in preventing climate change, as it absorbs CO2 30 times faster than a rainforest on land. But while the world’s international community could conceivably sign up to that bare minimum this year (the film’s release comes a month before that conference), we have seen from the Paris Agreement what such commitment is really worth (even from the countries which have remained part of it consistently). Less than the paper it is written on.
The fact is, to protect a third of the oceans effectively, we will still need to upend the global supply chain, and a number of lucrative industries – not least, commercial fishing – in ways which corporate interests and their pet politicians will rally against. And the film’s biggest issue, to that end, is that it is not concerned with life beyond institutions. When referencing the great whaling ban that saved so many ocean giants from extinction, it only gives a cursory nod to the “public pressure” that eventually motivated governments to act. At the same time, there is no hint at how one of the world’s largest and most successful no-fishing zones in Hawaii was created. Whatever the cultural heritage that might have played into it, how did people there get the project over the line when it inevitably faced pushback from businesses or local legislators? And how are they planning to defend it against the onslaught it probably also faces from the national government now?
These are important questions – but one which I am not surprised a 95-minute film helmed by a near-centenarian did not consider. Over Attenborough’s life, he has lived through a number of supposedly watershed moments, in which institutions were heralded as finally paving the way for a rational and humane world. As those organisations have matured, he has also been inducted into the British establishment. While that by no means insulated him from the failures of institutions like the UN to deliver on their promises, or the way larger nations have under cut them, it has left him disconnected from ways of moving on from that. So, the answer to systemic and institutional failures remains ‘let’s just hope that the failing institutions finally do something about this irrational system.’
But perhaps that’s not David Attenborough’s problem. Perhaps it’s not even the problem of the wider crew at Silverback Productions. Perhaps, rather than labelling Ocean as racist for failing to touch on Frantz Fanon, this is where left-wing activists should be stepping in – to harness the hopes and fears of audiences captivated by the film, and to ensure that their energy is not wasted, or ceded to ecofascists waiting in the wings. Perhaps any green party worth its salt in countries where Ocean is in cinemas should be looking to engage with its viewers. Perhaps that goes for any progressive project harping on about the need to learn ‘storytelling’ in the wake of electoral shortcomings – the story is already here; you just need to help people find a way to use it.