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Are wildlife films really “nature documentaries”?

Article  in  Critical Studies in Media Communication · June 1998

DOI: 10.1080/15295039809367038

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Critical Studi,~s in Mass Communication
15 (1998), 11(i-140
Are Wildlife Films Really
"Nature Documentaries"?
Derek Bouse
8:00 pm DSC [Discovery Channel] Wild
Discovery 1:00 "Aliya the Asian El-
ephant." Documentary.
8:00 pm 28 [PBS] Nature (CC)-Docu-
mentary 1:00 Following a family of el-
ephants over a three-year span in Kenya's
Amboseli National Park. Included: the
family's matriarch giving birth, rescuing
her kidnapped daughter.
-listings from TV Guide, February 23 and
December 8, 1996
I T has long been common practice to
refer to wildlife films as "documenta-
ries." In some cases the appellation
may well be appropriate and accurate.
In many others it is not. Few, if any,
wildlife films are included in documen-
tary film festivals or in written histories
of the documentary form, yet inside
the wildlife film industry the term
"documentary" is widely, almost uni-
versally used. In the pages of TV Guide
it is often attached automatically, as in
the examples above, even when a given
film appears to be a biography, or a
constructed narrative replete with stock
dramatic elements from Hollywood ad-
venturefilms-kidnappings, rescues,
chases, escapes, etc. So many of these
films are ,given the documentary label
as to beg: the question-are they really
"documentaries"?, or, at the very least,
what is their relationship to documentary?
Recall, for example, the arrival on tele-
Derek Bousi~ is an associate professor ofcommu-
nication at Montana State University, Billings.
vision ofMTV, and the G.lJoecartoon
series; media critics and scholars were
quick to ask if these could be called TV
"programs" at all, or if they were in-
stead a new kind of advertising. Regard-
less of how it was answered (if it ever
was), the question at least got asked.
Films about wildlife have been around
many decades longer, yet the question
of what they are, let alone of their
relation to documentary form and to
the documentary genre has never really
been raised.
It seems a good time to ask the
question, however, for a number of
reasons. To begin with, the network
television documentary while heir to a
rich and respected tradition, has be-
come increasingly ratings-driven, and
therefore reliant on formulaic, dra-
matic narratives that continue to blur
the lines between fact, reconstruction,
"info-tainment," and fiction (see Curtin,
1993). At the same time, the networks
have begun to reinvest in wildlife films
for broadcast in prime time, after a
decade or so of indifference. NBC has
contracted with National Geographic
Television for broadcast of its wildlife
and natural history "specials." 1 ABC,
in partnership with Dennis Kane, airs
wildlife films on its "ABC World of
Discovery" series. Moreover, since its
acquisition by Disney, ABC also now
has access, or at least a nominal rela-
tionship to, the Disney oeuvre of wild-
life and other animal films, as dem-
Copyright 1998, NCA

CSMC
onstrated in its November, 1996, air-
ing of The Lion King.2 In 1996 CBS
signed an agreement to broadcast wild-
life films from Discovery Productions,
each of which is to be subsequently
shown on Discovery's cable channel to
its already sizable audience. Also in
1996, Discovery launched its sister net-
work on cable, Animal Planet ("All
animals, all the time"), as a showcase
for wildlife films and other animal pro-
granlS. At PBS, after more than a dozen
years on the air, the Nature series has
seen a 30% surge in viewership in the
last two years (McElvogue, 1996;
Green, 1996). This may account in part
for PBS's deal with Devillier-Donegan
Enterprises, a regular producer of wild-
life films, to supply it with another $50
million worth of nonfiction program-
ming.' Given the resurgent profitabil-
ity of wildlife films, it is not surprising
that a New York Times profile of the
1997 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festi-
val focused on the influx of Hollywood
capital, and the entrance of high-pro-
file Hollywood producers into the wild-
life film industry (McElvogue, 1997).
There is one other occurrence that
seems to compel a critical examination
of wildlife films and their relationship
to documentary. In 1996 PBS's other
long-running wildlife series, Wild
America, and its high-profile producer
Marty Stouffer, were taken to task in a
series of articles in the Denver Post and
elsewhere, involving allegations of sys-
tematic falsifications, deceptions, and
unethical filmmaking practices (see
McPhee and Carrier, 1996a, 1996b;
1996c; Carrier, 1996; Husar, 1996;
McPhee, 1996; Obmascik, 1996; Tay-
man, 1996). For many of Wild Ameri-
ca's fans, this called into question the
documentary value of Stouffer's films,
if not of the whole wildlife film genre.
117
BOUSE
A History of Neglect
The emergence of wildlife films as a
force in prime-time television, and the
expansion of the wildlife film industry
worldwide mayor may not, however,
succeed in attracting the attention of
media scholars and film historians. Both
groups seem over the years to have
approached wildlife films along two
paths of neglect. The first, and most
heavily travelled, is the one that steers
clear of them altogether. The result has
been the systematic exclusion-one
might even say the symbolic annihila-
tion-of wildlife films from cinema and
television histories, genre studies, nar-
rative studies, "effects" studies, formal
analyses, and theoretical treatises, in-
cluding high-minded critiques of the
ways in which powerless others who
lack a 'voice' are represented by the
dominant culture's image-makers-an
argument that applies every bit as much
to animals as it does to disenfranchised
human populations.'
While a bit muddier and less clearly
marked, the other path has been taken
by the few who have tried, at least
half-heartedly, to bring wildlife films
under the documentary umbrella-out of
the rain but still not in from the cold.
Lewis Jacob's collection of essays and
reviews, The Documentary Tradition
(1979) includes some tentative ges-
tures. Ernest Schoedsack's film Rnngo
(1931), a story about an orangutan
made after Chang (1927), and which
rehearses some of the themes devel-
oped further in King Kong (1933), re-
ceived passing mention in a 1941 essay
by Richard Griffith (pp. 22-24). He
rightly compares it to the "wild animal
thrillers" of Martin and Osa Johnson,
but offers no further reflection on ei-
ther. s Also in Jacob's volume is a 1948
essay in which Arthur Knight discusses
Swedish filmmaker Arne Sucksdorff,
liS
WILDliFE FlLMS
whose varied output included several
films about wild animals, as well as
more traditional documentaries and
features (pp. 233-35).
Eric Barnouw, in what is often con-
sidered the standard text on documen-
tary histcry (1974; revised 1983, 1993),
covers much of the same terrain. Bar-
nouw does take the Johnsons to task
for the condescending, ethnocentric at-
titude in their films about Africa, which
often express a barely concealed con-
tempt for tribal peoples, and which
even make light of animals' suffering
(pp. 50-51). Barnouw is full of praise
for Sucksdorff, whom he classifies
among th.e makers of "poetic documen-
tary" (pp. 186-90). Also mentioned is
Walt Disney, whom Barnouw catego-
rizes as a documentary "Chronicler,"
and whose work he compares to ethno-
graphic film (no doubt to the chagrin
of anthropologists). Although Disney's
series of "True Life Adventures" virtu-
ally codified wildlife film as a genre in
America during the 50s, Barnouw nev-
ertheless sees them as a "parallel activ-
ity" to John Marshall's The Hunters
(1958) and Robert Gardner's Dead Birds
(1963).6 Adding to the muddle is the
fact that three feature-length True Lifes,
The Living Desert (1953), The Vanishing
Prairie (l.954), and White Wilderness
(1958) won Academy Awards in the
"Best Documentary Feature" category.7
Basil Wright, in his critical overview
of film history, The Long View (1974),
also offers praise for Sucksdorff, whom
he describes as a documentarist and
"maker of nature films" (p. 349). He
also offers a more thoughtful assess-
ment of Disney's True Life Adven-
tures, having reviewed The Living De-
sert at the time of its release in Sight and
Sound (Wright, 1954). In the interven-
ing twenty years, however, Wright ap-
parently turned a blind eye to his own
JUNE 1998
country's thriving wildlife and natural
history film industry. He fails even tc
mention it as a possible context in
which Disney's wildlife films might be
understood. 8 Instead, they are shoe-
horned intc a chapter entitled "Neo-
Realism, Witch Hunts, and Wide
Screens," and thus consigned to the
fifties as period curiosities.
An interesting exception is Paul
Rotha's Documentary Film (1952). Rotha
unhesitatingly excludes wildlife films
from the ranks of documentary, but
perhaps for some of the wrong reasons.
His distinction between documentary
and "plain descriptive pictures of every-
day life (travel pictures, nature films,
educationals, and newsreels) ... " (p.
105) is based on his assumption that
"nature films" are a sort of pure repro-
duction of reality involving no creative
intervention. Today, however, wildlife
films exhibit, if anything, an overabun-
dance of the very thing Rotha felt was
missing from them, which he described
as the "creative dramatisation of actual-
ity" (p. 105). His attempt to distinguish
documentary from "story film" that
lacks "social analysis" comes closer to
the mark. At the very time he was
writing this (the early '50s) wildlife film
was emerging as a predominantly nar-
rative form-that is, a variety of "story
film" relying on narrative codes and
other storytelling conventions associ-
ated with Hollywood-style fictions of-
fering little or no social analysisY It is
worth noting, however, that of the non-
documentary categories Rotha lists-
travel pictures, educationals, news-
reels-"nature fihns" is the only one
defined explicitly by content.
Kevin Brownlow's The War, the West,
and the Wilderness (1979) provides many
needed correctives to the neglects in-
herent in other documentary histories.
While it deals with both factual and
 119

CSMC BOUSE

fictional films from the silent era, its lionized him. to This survey suggests
detailed scholarship offers valuable that failing to acknowledge wildlife
glimpses at the early years of the evolu- films as a separate genre has allowed
tion of the documentary form, and of conceptual and taxonomic chaos to
wildlife films. Brownlow sees early ef- reign. The few who have attempted to
forts to mm wildlife as outgrowths of include them in the documentary genre
silent-era trends in travel and explora- have groped for connections, come up
tion films, which typically chronicled with anomalous combinations, and
white explorations of Mrica, Asia, the raised unanswered questions-espe-
poles, and. elsewhere. While Brownlow cially with regard to the place of wild-
offers little analysis of the form or con- life films in film history and media
tent of these proto- and early wildlife studies today.
films, he dloes at least consider the men
and women who made them worthy of Documentary Models:
serious historical reflection. Martin and A Poor Fit
Osa Johnson are thus acknowledged
Clearly, wildlife films can no longer
not just for the sensationalism and ma-
be considered mere ofshoots of travel
nipulations which seem to have pre-
or adventure films. Yet if they are docu-
vented other historians from dealing
mentaries, do they fit one of the recog-
with their work, but also for the techni- nized, reigning models or sub-catego-
cal quality of their films, the labor and ries of documentary? One problem is
dedication that went into making them, that most of these-for example, direct
and the acclaim with which they were cinema, ethnographic film, cinema verite,
greeted by audiences-none of which and observational cinema-are defined by
can be discounted. technique and approach, rather than
Most significant is Brownlow's chap- by content. So too are most of the less
ter on Cherry Kearton, a true pioneer celebrated models, like historical or
in both still and motion-picture photog- archival documentary. Might wildlife
raphy of wild animals, and still a cel- films, then, be likened to the growing
ebrated £lgure in Britain. Although number of less easily categorizable
Brownlow wrongly portrays him as an films now expanding the boundaries of
explorer-a.dventurer whose interest in documentary, like those by Michael
filmmaking was almost incidental, he Moore, Errol Morris, Ross McElwee,
takes time to describe some of Kear- and others? If not, are wildlife films
ton's specially developed techniques of their own sub-category-"nature docu-
concealed filming, and allows Kear- mentary"?, and if so, is this a valid
ton's self-characterization as a "natural- sub-category, being defined, unlike any
ist-photographer" (p. 437) sincerely of the others, solely by content?
concerned. about the "wicked and wan- Conversely, if wildlife films are to be
ton destruction" of wildlife (p. 441). categorically excluded from the docu-
Brownlow acknowledges that "the in- mentary ranks, does this determina-
fluence of Kearton's films was far- tion also rest on content alone-that is,
reaching" (p. 441), but offers no elabo- simply on the fact that their subjects
ration, and fails to make any explicit are not human? I propose that the
connection between Kearton and the answer to this question is no, but with
contemporary natural history and wild- qualifications. The depiction of wild
life film industry in Britain, which has animals, even the careful study of them,
J2(1
WILDL1FE FILMS
does not disqualify a film or program
as a documentary. Many wildlife and
natural history films can legitimately
be called documentaries. Yet at one
level, animal subjects may be the diffir-
enee that makes a diffirence. That is, when
the subject of a film is a living, feeling
being but has no way of comprehend-
ing the implications of being filmed, or
the power of the filming process, or of
visual images and representation in
general; when it never will understand
these things in the future, (unlike hu-
mans who are filmed as infants); when
it has no one to take responsibility and
see that the process does not become
abusive (as in cases involving coma-
tose or severely retarded human sub·
jects), the filmmaker enters into a rela-
tionship with that subject which is
different from others. The filmmaking
process thus involves a different kind
of interaction between filmmaker and
subject, a different set of responsibili-
ties on the part of the filmmaker to the
subject, and, ultimately, very different
results. I I Conceivably, a whole new set
of theoretical problems might also be
involved, particularly in the area of
ethics-that is, the responsibilities of
the filmmakers toward their subjects,
as well as toward their audiences. I'
Consider these points:
• since it is unlikely that animals can
suffer embarrassment from public
display of their likeness, disclosure
of their "secrets," or violation of their
"privacy," it is generally held that
they have no secrets and no privacy;
• therefore, they do not enjoy rights of
privacy-or, indeed, many rights at
all that might protect them from in-
vasive filming practices (though as
Margaret Mead once said, "The
more powerless the subject is, per se,
the more the question of ethics-and
power-is raised" -quoted bv Pry
luck, 1988, p. 262);
• therefore, informed consent, in addi·
tion to being difficult to obtain, is
considered inapplicable and irrel-
evant-though there remains no pre
cise means for determining the de-
gree to which wild animals willingly
consent to participating with film·
makers, or merely tolerate them be
cause they have no choice;
• therefore, invasive filming tech·
niques allowing filmmakers to probe,
to prod, and to reveal are not dis-
couraged, providing for entirely dif
ferent kinds of behaviors to be shown
(Urination, defecation, tlatulence, re-
gurgitation, copulation, birth, and,
of course, death-including cannibal-
ism, infanticide, fratricide, etc.) usu-
ally without objection trom either
the subjects or the audience; U
• therefore, there often seems a greater
need for voice-over narration to in-
terpret behaviors that might seem
foreign to the cultural sensibilities of
many humans-especially in light of
the fact that the subjects themselves
have no way of explaining or pul·
ting their behaviors in context, Of
telling their own 'stories' -though the
matter of whether or not animals
have "stories' remains problematic;
• therefore, the rules for presenting
strictly factual evidence, or for con-
structing narratives and telling fabri-
cated stories, are far more vague in
wildlife films, and far less inhibiting
than in 1110re traditional documen
tary filmmaking;
• therefore, the rules governing the
lise of creative editing, or construc-
tion of composite actions Ii-om dis·
connected events, or even compos·
ite characters Ii'om many look-alike
individuals (since it is hard for audi-
ences to distinguish individual ani·

CSMC
mals), are also far more permissive
and ill-defined.
At the most fundamental level, wildlife
films reflect these differences in the
unusual (from a documentary stand-
point) approaches they take to such
practical matters as:
• camera placement-many wildlife shots
are routinely obtained through con-
cealment that might otherwise be
seen as unethical;
• camera-to-subject dIStance-wild ani-
mals are often unapproachable, even
at considerable distances;
• choice oflense.f-wildlife filmmakers use
long tellephoto lenses regularly, of-
ten resulting in close-ups that give
viewers an illusion of close proxim-
ity to the subject;
• arti.ficiallighting-thought by many to
provoke unnatural behavior in night
shootin.g;
• the utility of sync-sound-most wildlife
footage is shot silent with either wild
sound or foley effects added later;
• the selection of which actions to show
and which to exclude.
Given these fundamental differences
from most documentaries, and given
also the place wildlife films now oc-
cupy in the prime-time ratings compe-
tition on nightly television, it seems
reasonable to consider that they may
actually be more closely related to
popular entertainment than to tradi-
tional documentary. Conceptually,
technically, procedurally, and formally,
if not also thematically, it seems that
some of tlle leading models of docu-
mentary fillmmaking simply may not
apply to films with wild animals as
subjects.
For example, David MacDougall's
definition of ethnographic film as "a film
which seeks to reveal one culture to
another" (1985, p. 278) allows for a
121
BOUSE
broad interpretation that could be
stretched to include some wildlife films.
Some animals do, after all, live in orga-
nized societies with complex social in-
teractions and strict rules of behavior.
Hugo Van Lawick's filmic portrait of
chimpanzee society, People of the Forest
(1991), has the feel of an ethnographic
film. Although like most such films it is
made by a professional filmmaker
rather than by a scientist, it is neverthe-
less solidly based on intensive research
byJane Goodall (to whom Van Lawick
was married for many years), and so
does convey the feeling of observing
from an insider's perspective. Yet its
dramatic story construction, along with
voice-over narration that borders on
the omniscient (spoken by Donald
Sutherland), and heavy use of "classi-
cal" continuity editing in service of
scene construction and narrative have
little place in ethnographic film, but
are all staples of wildlife filmmaking.
Likewise, it seems that observational
cinema, in which the audience learns
from observing events rather than be-
ing told what their significance is (see
MacDougall, 1985), is not an accurate
model for wildlife films, where informa-
tive voice-over narration remains a con-
stant, if not a necessity. In addition,
most wildlife films are based on a treat-
ment, if not on a script (often as a
requirement for obtaining financial
backing), so that wildlife filmmakers
often go into the field with a "wish list"
or "shopping list" of preselected ac-
tions and behaviors they hope to cap-
ture on film, and wait to shoot, some-
times for weeks, until the desired
actions occur (see Langley, 1985;
Stouffer, 1988). In such cases, they are
essentially seeking footage to illustrate
preconceived ideas rather than to re-
veal something new. The long hours of
waiting for desired behaviors to occur
WILDLIFE FILMS
are a constant theme in their written
accounts, and have even led some im-
patient filmmakers to resort to provoca-
tion and staging in order to obtain
them.
Direct cinema also refers to attempts
at a revelatory rather than illustrative
style of documentary filmmaking. Typi-
cally, it involves filming subjects essen-
tially just going about their business,
and therefore relies heavily on some
degree of habituation to the presence
of the camera team. The films of Fre-
derick Wiseman, D. A. Pennebaker,
and the Maysles brothers are perhaps
the best known examples. Some wild-
life films, such as David and Carol
Hughes's Lions of the African Night
(1987), or Dereck and BeverlyJoubert's
Lions and Hyenas: Eternal Enemies (1991)
do seem to follow the direct cinenla
model in the way they are shot, as well
as in the way they are edited down
from many hours of shooting until a
kind of loose narrative structure
emerges. It should be remembered that
even the most direct of direct cinema
films do involve careful selection of
images by the filmmakers. Yet because
most animals' lives are spent doing
relatively little that is visually arresting
(lions, for example, typically rest for 20
hours a day or more), the process of
deciding when and what to film, and
what to include in the final cut is there-
fore even more selective in this type of
wildlife film.
Moreover, direct cinema also relies
heavily on sync-sound and diegetic
speech in place of voice-over narra-
tion. This can, of course, directly affect
editing style; as Barnouw points out,
editing silent-film (which would in-
clude wildlife footage) typically results
in the creation of artificial "film time,"
whereas editing for speech tends to
allow "real time" to reassert itself, mak-
ing it more difficult for filmmakers io
cut at will, and also for audiences to
accept SOine manipulations of event!:-;
(Barnouw, 1993: 2.11). Sync-sound is,
after all, among the factors most respon
sible for direct cinema's directness, as
opposed to having events fragmented
and behaviors interpreted in scripted
voice-over narration. For practical rea-
sons (not the least of which is a reliance
on telephoto lenses), wildlife films
rarely make use of sync-sound; even
those that come closest visually (0 the
form of direct cinema still rely on voice-
over narration and sound effects, and
thus retain added layers of authorial
mediation which direct cinema em-
phatically rejects.
Lastly, it seems that the willing par-
ticipation of subjects in the filmmaking
process that originally defined cinema
verite (at least if one accepts Rouch and
Morin's Chronique d'un ete as the stan-
dardl, would automatically disqualify
this as an acceptable category for wild-
life film. Wild animals' responses even
to the presence of humans is quite the
opposite of knowing participation in a
film. One could argue that Rouch's
notion that camera consciousness is
the royal road to self-revelation I j might
be loosely applied insofar as animals'
fight-or-flight reaction to the presence
of filmmakers is an example of authen~
tic "wild" behavior-provocation not-
withstanding. But many wild animals
are largely crealures of habit, and i1
remains a fact that the presence of
humans can disrupt those habits, caus-
ing behaviors that become increas-
ingly difficult to classify as "authentic"
or "natural." This is also true uf habitu-
ated animals, who have become accus-
tomed to the close presence of filmmak-
ers. Moreover, because animals do not
comprehend that their physical actions
acquire meaning from the act of being

CSMC
filmed, mEmy of their on-camera behav-
iors therefore lack the self-conscious-
ness that gives human acts communica-
tive signi£icance of the sort sought by
Rouch and Morin (see Worth, 1981:
134-37).
It is, of course, a moot point. It seems
unlikely that anyone would argue that
wildlife films on the whole can be satis-
factorily classified as cinema verite. In-
deed, it seems upon consideration that
none of Ibese classifications, as ex-
amples of the reigning models of docu-
mentary filmmaking, is a very good fit
with wildljfe films. There may be, then,
conceptual space for a type of film that
not only exploits some of the differ-
ences discussed above, but that has
developed over time into something
with its ovm identity, and which audi-
ences appreciate by virtue of its own
codes and conventions, distinct from
those traditionally associated with
documentlfY film.
Still, this is not to suggest that there
cannot be documentaries about nature
and wildlife, but rather that distinc-
tions should be carefully drawn if our
definitions and categories are to have
any meaning, and if the ethical respon-
sibilities of filmmakers are going to
continue to undergo refinement. In fact,
there have for decades been films about
wildlife that can rightly be classified as
documentaries. Many of these might
well fit into the emerging sub-category
of "television science documentary"
(Silverstone, 1984). Others are clearly
Grjersonian in their orientation toward
social amelioration; indeed, many, if
not most, of the films and videos pro-
duced by environmental advocacy
organizations such as the Cousteau
Society, the Audubon Society, the Wil-
derness Society, the National Wildlife
Federation, and others clearly fit the
Griersonian model. For although these
123
BOUSE
are filled with images of nature and
wildlife, what most of them are really
about is the relationship human beings
have to the natural world, or their im-
pact upon it, and thus about issues of
political, economic, and social change,
specifically environmental policy re-
form, natural resource conservation,
and building sustainable societies in
closer harmony with nature. In their
use of film, video, and television as a
"pulpit" and as "propaganda," and in
their frequent calls for citizen action,
these films epitomize many of Grier-
son's ideals about documentary (Grier-
son, 1979: 11).15
What is it, then, that separates wild-
life film from documentary? To begin
with, the two have separate histories,
which have interested occasionally and
yet still developed along separate lines.
Before addressing wildlife films' distinc-
tive features, then, the place to start in
understanding them is at the begin-
ning-and even before.
Prehistory: 19th and Early
20th Century Developments
If the origins of motion pictures lie
in Eadward Muybridge's 1878 photo-
graphs of Leland Stanford's racehorse
"Occident,"16 the origins of wildlife
films may lie in the photos he made the
following year when he returned to
Stanford's Palo Alto farm. There, in
addition to photos of domestic ani-
mals, Muybridge made sequenced im-
ages of pigeons and deer which, though
semi-domesticated, were the first wild
species to be captured in any kind of
motion picture process, primitive as it
was. In 1884 Muybridge went to the
Philadelphia Zoological Garden, where
he applied his motion-picture process
to a number of wild though captive
animals, including a lion, a jaguar, a
kangaroo, a zebra, deer, llama, sloth,
124

WIU1UFE FILM:;

eagle, elk, stork, vulture, elephant, although by 1883 photographic investi-

cockatoo, and others. In 1885 he reo gation of "animal locomotion" had be-
turned to the zoo and captured in mo· come a respectable enough pursuit to
tion lions, buffaloes, baboons, a pine land Muybridge a research position al
snake, a rhinoceros, and various birds the University of Pennsylvania, It was
in flight, including a red·tailed hawk, a perhaps prophetic that he soon turned
crow, and a falcon. his attention exclusively in the direr-
During the 1884 zoo series an event tion of human subjects, and to the filmic
occurred of particular relevance to con· documentation of human behaviors.
temporary wildlife film. Muybridge With the Lumieres just a few years
made a series of sequenced shots of a over the horizon, so too, for the most
tiger as it attached a tethered buffalo part, did the rest of the world soon cast
"sacrificed at that moment to the cause its eye in the direction of human sub-
of the investigation" (Mozley, in Muy· jects appearing in actuali(es. In the end.
bridge, 1979: xxix)Y Here was indeed however, Muybridge and Marey did
a momentous event: wjldlife imaging give us some significant firsts in the
had made its first use of three devices history of wildlife filming. Muybridge's
that would become firmly rooted con· contributions involved carefully con-
ventions in later years: a fenced enclo· trolled, set·up conditions (wher~ even
sure, a dramatic confrontation staged wild species exhibit only mmimal
for the camera, and an unwitting par~ amounts of what could be called "au-
ticipant who becomes a disposable sub· thentic wild behavior" (see Hediger.
ject. It would be sixty years before the 1955: 36-43, and Ardrey, 196 l: 36-
genre was codified, and a decade be· 43), while Marey, with' his "photo
fore even the film medium itself was graphic gun" designed for the study of
perfected, but in some very important wild birds in flight, helped bridge the
ways an important pattern had been gap between early motion picture tech·
established. nology and wildlife filming under natu-
Etienne:Jules Marey learned ofMuy· ral conditions.
bridge's work in 1878, when an ac· In 1895, a year after Marcy reo
count of it appeared in the French counted his experiences in his book La
journal La Nature. Though he would Mouvement (1894), Richard and Cherry
soon be one of the first to shoot rapidly Kearton went into the English country·
sequenced photographs from a single side to photograph wild animals and
camera, Marey was not interested in pioneered many of the field techniques
developing motion picture technology still in use for capturing natural behav·
for its own sake. IX As a professor of ior under natural conditions, especially
natural history at the College de France, the systematic use of "hides" or blinds.
Marey instead looked forward to a time The Keartons' patient and detailed pho·
when people could see and study on tographic studies of natural behavior
film "the true movements of all imagin· and habitats from these early years are
able animals." This dream, which chronicled in their book With Nature
clearly foretold of wildlife films as we and a Camera (1897). After taking up
know them, he called "animated zool· the motion picture camera himself.
ogy" (quoted in Haas, 1976: 114).1" Cherry Kearton became one of first
It was an idea whose time would not cinematographers to film wild animals
come, however, for many years, for in Africa when he went on safari in

CSMC
Kenya in 1909, where he filmed hip-
pos, lions, and a leopard. 2o He re-
tumed in 1911 to shoot more footage
of wildlife, followed by a similar film
safari in Canada the same year.
By this time, public exhibitions of
films about wild animals were becom-
ing common. The first public screen-
ing of a motion picture devoted solely
to the depiction of wildlife in its natural
habitat that may have been that of the
early Edison film The Sea Lions' Home
(1897), a 25-foot film depicting sea li-
ons entering and leaving the water. By
the end of the first decade of the 20th
century, wildlife was appearing regu-
larly on the big screen in the United
States and' Britain, but it seemed most
popular in the United States when it
appeared in hunting and safari films
such as Colonel Selig's Hunting Big
Game in Africa (1909). Although filmed
in Chicago, Selig's depiction of a live
lion moving about freely (before being
shot to death for the cameras-another
disposable subject) caused Moving Pic-
ture World to write, "we hope that it
will be an encouragement to Mr. Selig
and his merry men to cultivate the
production of moving pictures of ani-
mal life, which are always attractive to
audiences" (quoted in Brownlow, 1979:
405). By 1912, such films were so popu-
lar with audiences that Paul Rainey's
African Hunt ran for an impressive fif-
teen monlhs in New York. In 1913,
Cherry Kearton's Mrican films, made
in 1909 and 1911, were also given a
New York screening, at which they
were enthusiastically introduced by
Theodore Roosevelt, whom Kearton
had met and filmed during his first trip
lo Africa. Unlike the films by Selig and
Rainey about white hunters stalking
and killing wild animals, Kearton's
films were squarely in the Kearton
Brothers' tradition of extremely pa-
125
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tient and non-lethal photographic study
of wild animals exhibiting natural be-
havior in their natural environment.
Adolph Zukor contracted to give Kear-
ton's (Ums nationwide public exhibi-
tion, and although these unsensational
nature studies failed to become popu-
lar successes in America, they an-
nounced the arrival of wildlife film as a
viable cinematic form, even if not yet
fully articulated as a conventionalized
genre. 21
Although the term "wildlife film"
would not actually come into use until
later, "natural history film," the term
still preferred in Britain today, was al-
ready commonly in use by 1913 in
both the United States and the United
Kingdom (see, for example, Jackson,
1913). It is worth nothing, then, that
many of the rudiments of wildlife film
were in place either at roughly the
same time or before the Lumieres, and
that mature productions were exhib-
ited before Curtis, and well before Fla-
herty and Grierson-in a word, before
documentary. Yet my concem here is
neither with nitpicking firstism nor with
fixing some absolute point in time at
which documentary and wildlife film
emerged as fully realized forms. The
point here is that wildlife film did not
spring from documentary, and is per-
haps better understood as emerging
alongside it, with a parallel but still
separate tradition and history deserv-
ing of separate recognition.
This is not to say that the tradition
was clearly discemible at the tum-of-
the-century, or even by 1913; it wasn't.
Still, in retrospect, two somewhat dis-
tinct "tendencies" were emerging.
These might be called, for purposes of
schematic simplicity, the American and
British models-though they are by no
means geographically bound, and ele-
lLtl
WILDLIFE FI LMS
ments of each can be found in wildlife
films from around the world.
The British tradition of natural his-
tory film has come closer to fulfilling
Marey's dream of "animated zoology"
and has generally remained closer to
the idea of "nature documentary" than
to 'wildlife film' per se. There has
tended, for example, to be more em-
phasis on research and scientific in-
quiry ilia Kearton than on entertaining
narrative; more attention to the reveal-
ing close-up than to the action-packed
long-shot-although, again, these are
anything but absolute rules. David At-
tenborough has suggested it should be
no surprise that a natural history film
industry of this sort should have taken
root in Britain, given the British pas-
sion for observing details of the natural
world, which
leads the richest and the poorest, the hum-
blest and the noblest, to stand for hours up
to their waists in chilling salt marshes watch-
ing waterfowl, [orJ to tramp for miles across
bleak moorlands just to glimpse a rare
flower in bloom (quoted in Parsons,
1982, p. 7)"
The American tradition comes closer
to the definition of 'wildlife film' I am
working toward here, which might be
called "classic" wildlife film, and there-
fore farther away from documentary.
It has tended to place more emphasis
on dramatic action, on storytelling, and
in later decades on the creation of ani-
mal characters. In the quest for dra-
matic action, the American tradition
has also tended in the direction of film-
ing in controlled conditions (pens and
other enclosures, including zoos), and
the depiction of dramatic events often
constructed in the editing, or even
through a bit of provocation or staging.
The set-up killing of the tethered buf-
falo in the zoo for Muybridge's cam-
eras was the precursor to similar staged
scenes, such as the 1903 electrocution
of "Topsy," a rogue circus elephant.
filmed by Edison's camera, and the
shooting of the lion for Selig's film in
1909. Martin and Osa./ohnson's prac-
tice of goading African animals into
charging the camera for dramatic ef
feet, and then often shooting them in
"self-defense"-also on camera-··as in
Simba (1928), and the now legendary
scene of lemmings supposedly hurling
themselves over a cliff in an act of mass
suicide in Disney's classic White Wilder-
ness (1959),2:1 not to mention many
mOre such instances in American tele-
vision series like Wild Kingdom in the
60s and 70S. 24 As recently as 1996, the
allegations made in connection to
Marty Stouffer's Wild America series
recalled many of these old bugaboos,
including filming in zoos and other
private enclosures, setting up deadly
confrontations between predators and
prey, including one involving the kill-
ing of a tethered rabbit, unable to lIee.""
Even when it seemed that the Ameri-
can tradition might also follow in the
direction of dose-up scientific inquiry,
it veered almost inevitably toward
drama and manipulation, perhaps be-
cause it was filmmakers, not scientists,
who generally made the films (al-
though this was also true in Britain,
where the results were different). An
interesting example is proVided by
American cinematographer Stacy
Woodard, who published in Scientific
American in the early '30s an account of
his having filmed the behavior of in-
sects doing "battle for the mov;es"
(Woodard, 19:04)."" His candid ac-
count details what are, however, scien-
tifically and morally questionable ma-
nipulations, like pitting insects of
different species against one another
on tiny enclosed sets, and then filming
their fights to the death. Because of the

CSMC
controlled conditions, he regarded his
film stage as a "laboratory," and the
results, therefore, as scientific findings.
Although placing a cricket and a wasp
together in a cage was not, as Woodard
maintained, merely a way of assisting
them in '''carrying out nature's brutal
process,"27 it was a significant, if unher-
alded, expression of the nascent Ameri-
can tradition, although it might well
have been loudly protested had he used
mammals instead of insects. Scientific
pretensions notwithstanding, however,
the point of Woodard's exercises was
not to uncover scientific data, but rather
to film staged "dramatic" confronta-
tions. This impatience with real scien-
tific observation, along with his overre-
liance on theatrical metaphors ("We
had actors on our stage, insects living
the intense drama of nature" [Wood-
ward, 1934, p. 178]) suggest motiva-
tions consistent with those of the
J ohnsons, and anticipate the drive to-
ward dranlatic narrative that would be-
come predominant in American wild-
life films, and later in others from
around the world.
There were exceptions, of course. In
1935, T. D. A. Cockerell of the Univer-
sity of Colorado, published an article
in the journal Science entitled (with ech-
oes of Marey) "Zoology and the Mov-
ing Pictures." Cockerell was not a film-
maker bUll had obtained a number of
short 16mm films from Canada about
beavers, which he described as "pre-
senting a wonderful picture of beaver
life." With regard to the way in which
these films should be used, Cockerell
seemed for a time to be heading in the
direction of Griersonian documentary,
arguing that the beaver films had been
"a major !factor in determining Cana-
dian policy with reference to the bea-
ver," because the visual images had
"reached the people, and aroused their
127
BOUSE
lively interest and sympathy" (Cocker-
ell, 1935, p. 369). Cockerell then of-
fered the quintessentially Griersonian
meditation that the motion picture, as
a form, "must be no longer merely for
amusement; it must be designed to
stimulate thought and, through thought,
action" (p. 370). It may be no coinci-
dence that 1935 was also the year that
Grierson's GPO Film Unit produced
such films as Housing Problems, Coal
Face, and Song of Ceylon.
However, Cockerell's real focus re-
mained on what was then a more tradi-
tional use for film of wildlife: observing
animal movements by exploiting the
film medium's ability to reveal what
the unaided eye misses. "With the aid
of the moving picture," he wrote,
these phenomena can be recorded, and
the film so far improves on actual observa-
tion, in that it can be repeated at will, and
when it is desirable, the motion can be
slowed down so that every movement is
easily studied (Cockerell, 1935, p. 369).
More than fifty years later, and more
than a hundred years after Muybridge's
locomotion studies at Palo Alto, wild-
life filmmaker Marty Stouffer would
reaffirm the importance of animal loco-
motion to those who make wildlife
images:
a good deal of what might be called my
"style" results from this use of slow mo-
tion, which allows people to see the action
and the beauty of movements that would
be nothing but a blur if viewed at nonnal
speed (Stouffer, 1988, p. 124).28
Although Cockerell's interest was
much more scientific, already by his
day the American public had long since
graduated from films that merely
depicted the movements of animals,
however graceful. The dramatic ad-
venture, or "wild animal thriller" ap-
proach taken by the Johnsons had al-
J2H
WILDLIFE FILM,
ready pulled viewers' attention in the
direction of action and dramatic narra'
tive. After a lull during the war years,
another figure came along who took
American wildlife film once and for all
out of the hands of science and docu-
mentary, and who contributed more to
its development as a genre than per-
haps any individual before or since:
Disney.
Documentary, Education,
or Entertainment?
In some ways, the series of True Life
Adventures produced by Walt Disney
between 1948 and 1960 represented
the full realization of the American
tradition. Their use of enclosures, set-up
conflicts, and disposable subjects also
represented, however, the darker side
of the Muybridge legacy. Roy Disney
Jr. has described the use of these de-
vices in the film Perri (1956):
You create a set . .. you just sort of fence-
off a part of the forest and you put some
squirrels in there, and whatever other ani-
mals they are to interact with ... We had
about twenty taroe squirrels, and then we
had a lot of wild ones which were consid-
ered, and were, expendable (from the film
Cruel Camera, 19841.
Disney's venture into live-action film-
making began shortly after World War
II, at a time when newsreels like the
March of Time and documentaries like
Wyler's Memphis Belle (1945) had shown
that audiences could find nonfiction
films as visually and emotionally com-
pelling as mainstream Hollywood cin-
ema, with as much action and drama,
exciting narratives, and engaging char-
acters. Moreover, they could do al-
most as well at the box office. They had
achieved a new respectability; in a
word, they had become commercially
viable.
In 1947 Disney approached AI and
Elma Milotte, a husband-and-wife team
of outdoor cinematographers, aboul
making some sort of non-Hollvwood
films about Alaska. But here Lhe'confu
siou begins. At one point Disney is
quoted recalling his original motiva
lions as having been educational.""
... we thought we might stay in the Hi·
millimeter field after the war and do short
educational films for school groups, for
churches, for clubs ... we looked around
for a photographer, heard about AI Milotte
up in Seattle, and sent him north [to Alaska)
to look around and see what he could get
(Jamison, 19!i4, p. 16).'"
Elsewhere he is quoted as having told his
associates from the outset that the films'
true purpose was ·'to entertain," and that
they "must not teach:' (Lee, 1970, p. 193).
He is also quoted, however, as haVing only
given up his educational aims out of frustra
tion well into the projecI:
We were busy with technicians and educa-
tors ... Before too long I realized that we
weren't going to be able to work with
them. "You can't do this," one said, or
"you mustn't do that," from another-until
I decided that we'd have to do the films our
way or not at all (Jamison, 1954, p. 16).
This may explain why Lhere was
never a technical or scientific advisor
listed in the credits of the True Life
Adventures, and why many facts about
wild animals seem simply to have been
ignored in making the films. Richard
Schickel has maintained that "Disney
had two criteria he always insisted
upon. He wanted facts and mOre facts
in the narration" (Schickel, 1968,
p. 244). Yet as even a causal viewing of
these films now reveals, any faith in
this assurance of factuality is probably
misplaced (the bogus lemming "sui·
cide" sequence in White Wilderness is
perhaps the most notorious illustra-
tion). That Disney ultimately found it

CSMC
impossible to work with educators and
scientists may very likely have been
because of their concern with holding
him to the facts. Among his solutions
to the problem was to call his cinema-
tographers "naturalists" who were "fa-
miliar by study, experience, and close
observation with living nature." The
term "naturalist" has long signified
strictly amateur standing as opposed to
trained scientists steeped in the schol-
arly literature. Disney nevertheless
claimed Ihe highest respect for his
teams as both "scientists and as crafts-
men" (Disney, 1954, p. 23). With such
highly credentialed people operating
the cameras, there was no need for
scientific advisers, which freed the True
Life Adventures to assume the form
that would come to define the term
"wildlife film."
In a contrasting account of the origi-
nal idea for the True Life series, A1
Milotte recalled the instructions Dis-
ney gave him at the beginning, in which
science education was not the found-
ing purpose of the series; rather, it was
documentary filmmaking:
I said, "What kind of pictures?" He [Dis-
ney] said vaguely, "I don't know-just pic-
tures. Movies. You know-mining, fishing,
building roads, the development of Alaska.
I guess it will be a documentary or some-
thing-you know" (quoted in Schickel,
1968, p. 241, Emphasis added).
Perhaps not surprisingly, Disney is
also quoted elsewhere expressing virtu-
ally the opposite sentiments, suggest-
ing that his intentions actually bore
little connection to documentary:
Anything carrying the Disney name was
going to mean entertainment-this I in-
sisted upon. We'd have authenticity, of
course, but we'd also have drama and
laughs and music (Jamison, 1954, p. 16).
Neil Sinyard has attempted to re-
129
BOUSE
solve the confusion in Disney's favor,
while emphatically maintaining the
True Ufe Adventures' tenuous connec-
tion to documentary:
The documentary was there of course for
information and wonder, but what was
wrong in bringing to it a bit of entertain-
ment and emotion? His approach to the
documentary was not that of a natural
scientist or objective observer and analyst,
but that of an entertainer (Sinyard, 1988:
133).
The often invisible lines in film be-
tween documentary, entertainment,
education, and even art, have contin-
ued to be a source of vexation for
critics and scholars over the years, as
well as for the people who make films-
perhaps especially wildlife and natural
history films. Marty Stouffer remarked
that in the film Bighorn! (1974) he
wanted "to entertain people as well as
educate them," although in making a
later film he claims to have felt "an
urgency about educating them, and
entertainment had to take second
place" (Stouffer, 1988, p. 86). The late
Marlin Perkins of the long-running se-
ries Wild Kingdom, noted that "the phi-
losophy behind this is educational, pri-
marily," but then added that "if you
don't entertain a bit ... perhaps with a
bit of action of the animals doing some-
thing special ... then we wouldn't have
the opportunity to tell the story" (from
the film Cruel Camera). Marshall flaum,
a producer for Cousteau's Undersea
World series of films during the 60s and
70s, which actually were documenta-
ries, expressed more ambivalence than
either Stouffer or Perkins:
In many respects the Cousteau films are art
films ... they represent film-making in
every sense of the word. They are not
documentary reports. They are not informa-
tional films abont ecology or educational
films about animals. They deal with eco-
J:lO
WILDLIFE FILMS
lOgical subjects, and they do provide infor-
mation that may not be found elsewhere
... Hopefully, they are entertaining as well
as informative (quoted by Shaheen, 1974,
p. 121.1)
Longtime BBe producer Jeffery
Boswall may have expressed it best,
noting that even when the selection of
an animal to film is carefully made on
the basis of a particular "biological
principle" it illustrates, "the animal
must do a sufficient variety of interest-
ing, filmable things," because, he adds,
Hlet's face it, some animals are rather
boring" (Boswall, 1973, p. 592).
What Boswall implicitly acknowl-
edges, however, is that after years of
exposure, audiences have developed
certain expectations about films depict-
ing the behavior of animals, as well as
about the very behavior of the animals
themselves, and that wildlife filmmak-
ers are therefore obliged, at least to
some degree, to fulfill those expecta-
tions. If this is true, that is, if audiences
have come to expect the presence of
certain conventions governing the mix
of entertainment and information in
such films, conventions with which they
have developed a tacit familiarity and
to which filmmakers feel obliged to
conform, then what we are talking
about is a distinct film genre with its
own recognizable patterns, conven-
tions, and codes. Still, to make this
argument complete, it remains to ex-
p
ore in more detail what was very
likely the primary source of many of
the expectations audiences had come
to have-which brings us back to Dis-
ney.
While there may have been others
who began broadcasting radio and tele-
vision programs about the natural
world before Disney, for example Des-
mond Hawkins and Peter Scott in Brit-
ain (see Parsons, 1982, p. 21-31), or
Marlin Perkins in the United States
(see Perkins, 1982, p. 113),11 it was
Disney who succeeded in I!I,J,H in
launching a series of high-gloss, full
color wildlife motion pictures, and get·
ting them distributed J(lf worldwide
theatrical exhibition. Aided by a name
that already had instant re~ognition
around the world, the Disnev True
Life Adventures were canonized by
the Motion Picture Academy over th~
course of ten years, and institutional··
ized by subsequent distribution for use
in classrooms. It seems reasonable to
conclude that for many years they
reached more viewers globally than
any other nature-oriented media. Still
today, the terms "wildlife film" and
"nature film" remain for lnany viewers
synonymous with "Disney." Although
to describe such a film as "Disney-
esque" nowadays is generally und~r­
stood to mean that its animals are too
cute and anthropomorphic, its plot too
contrived, and its situations too cartoon-
like, these are nevertheless some of
very the qualities that made the True
Life Adventures so popular and com-
mercially successful during the SOs.
Narrativization of the Form,
Codification of the Genre
Ultimately, the master-stroke that
proved to be Disney's most enduring
contribution to wildlife films, and that
effectively codified them as a coherent
genre, was the act of imposing conven-
tionalized narrative frameworks upon
them 32 This included the use of dra-
matic and comic plots often reflecting
familiar mythic patterns deeply m-
grained in Western cultural traditions.
Also important was the addition of
engaging characters, much like those
already familiar to audiences from Dis-
ney's cartoon features-especially Bambi
(1942). Disney himself, however, in-

CSMC
sisted that this was purely nature's do-
ing, for nature always "casts her charac-
ters to type," and among them,
fortunately, happened to be a number
of "natural comedians" (Disney, 1954:
24, 25). Still, the similarities between
the animal characters in the True Lifes
and those in the cartoon features were
often pOinted to by critics and review-
ers.33 This isomorphism was no mere
coincidence; it owed directly to Dis-
ney's having an efficient cartoon-mak-
ing machine already up and running,
creating standardized products with a
consistent and recognizable style. Many
of the familiar elements of this style-
themes, motifs, and narrative devices,
and teclmiques for anthropomorphic
rendering of the lives of animals-were
fairly easily adapted to live-action pro-
duction, and in many cases were even
carried out by the same personnel. 34
Narrativization and/or dramatiza-
tion did not, on their own, set wildlife
films apart from documentaries, which
had actually become "narrativized"
much earlier. Among the most notable
examples are the melodramatic plot-
line in Edward Curtis's In the Land of
the HeadHunters (1914),35 and the com-
pelling survival narrative that shapes
the second half of Flaherty's Nanook of
the North (1922). Brian Winston has
pointed out that whereas Curtis im-
posed a drama upon his subjects, flaher-
ty's advance a few years later was to
construct an artificial story in the edit-
ing from Ihe events filmed (Winston,
1988: 278). In Disney's oeuvre, this chro-
nology of events is exactly reversed.
The dranla or comedy in the True
Lifes of the early 50s was constructed
from the rushes, so that the filmed
events became narrativi;:ed in the fin-
ished film; in the later Disney films,
especially those from the '60s, drama
and comedy were imposed upon the
131
BOUSE
animals during the shooting, so that
they were filmed performing scripted
actions planned in advance (see
Koehler, 1979). Thus, in the early '50s
the prologue that opened each True
Life, while still somewhat disingenu-
ous, could claim with at least a bit
more legitimacy that "nature herself is
the dramatist" (with echoes of Stacy
Woodard). Taking her cue a bit too
readily from this, however, Barbara
Jamison titled her 1954 profile in the
New York Times "Amazing Scripts by
Animals," but that same year Disney
himself described the use of constructed
stories as a calculated practical neces-
sity, writing that "the emphasis is on
dramatic coherence and progression
so that they can be readily understood
by their audiences, for they are made
primarily for mass entertainment' (Dis-
ney, 1954, p. 23-Emphasis added).
Nevertheless, The Vanishing Prairie suc-
ceeded in fooling the members of the
Motion Picture Academy that year,
who voted it "Best Documentary Fea-
ture."
When production of the True Lifes
ended in 1960 withlungle Cat, Disney
abandoned any real pretensions to
documentary in films about animals
and embarked on a series of fictional
narrative adventures with animal pro-
tagonists. These had actually begun in
1956 with Perri, the "biography" of a
squirrel. It was with this film that Dis-
ney began in earnest to impose pre-
conceived, scripted narratives on ani-
mal subjects. Though we are assured in
the prologue that "the plot is nature's
own," Perri was based on a novel by
Felix Salten, author of Bambi. The film
thus took what Disney had already
learned about creating engaging char-
acters one step further by giving them
names, and devoting an entire film to
telling the story of one them. N everthe
WILDLIFE FILMS
less, many of the familiar stylistic de-
vices from the "documentary" True
Lites were present, most noticeably the
voice-over narration read by Winston
Hibler.
The superficial trappings of docu-
mentary endured even as the protago-
nist cycle replaced the True Life Ad-
ventures with fully fictionalized films
like The Legend of Lobo (1962), Yellow-
stone Cubs (1963), Flash, the Teenage Ot-
ter (1964), and others. Whether pro-
duced for theatrical release or for
television, these were pure story films
with human actors, scripted dialogue,
invisible continuity editing, and highly
contrived dramatic events and comic
situations. Still, having retained such
conventions as strong location photog-
raphy, and the ever-present, fully om-
niscient voice-over narration (now read
by Rex Allen Jr.), they looked and
sounded much more like documenta-
ries than like any of Disney's other
narrative films from the same period-
e.g. Pollyanna (1960), The AbsentMinded
Professor (1961), Son of Flubber (1963),
and MaryPoppins(1964). Indeed, it may
have been this that helped perpetuate
the notion that wildlife films are docu-
mentaries.
The cycle of animal protagonist films
accompanied by warm, genial narra-
tion concluded at Disney with Charlie
the Lonesome Cougar (1968), but had
caught on worldwide-even among Brit-
ish natural history films. Completed
just two years later, Survival Anglia's
The World of the Beaver (1970), with its
dramatic narrative, its named charac-
ters, "Castor" and '''Amik,'' and its ge-
nial narration by Henry Fonda, now
appears very much in the Disney tradi-
tion 36 So do many more of Survival
Anglia's films from the World of Sur-
vival series (introduced and narrated
for U.S. audiences by John Forsythe).
This model can also clearlv be seen In
theJapanese film The Glaci~r Fox \.197H;
narrated by Arthur Hill), and Marty
Stouffer's The Man Who Loved Bears
(1977; narrated by Will Geer), to name
a few. According to Stouffer, this is the
model, the standard for wildlife film:
I think I will always be more inclined to
film programs devoted to the life story of
one particular animal. This is lhe classic
format for wildlife films, and though I've
never been reluctant to break the lules, it
really is the most satisfying approach for a
cinematographer (1988, p. 2191.
This "classic format" for wildlife
films, with its "rules" and narrative
conventions, has also been flexible and
adaptable enough over the years to
accommodate stories about domesti-
cated animals, from Disney's The Incred-
ible journey (1963), to its recent Japa-
nese rip-off The Adventures of Milo and
Otis (1989; genially narrated by Dud-
ley Moore). It has also survived intact
without voice-over narration in films
like Jeanjacques Annaud's Th.e Bear
(1989), 37 and Disney's Homeward Bound
(199:1; also a reworking of The Incredible
journey). The story typically opens in
spring, and centers on a protagonist
(sometime more than one) who is ei-
ther orphaned, abandoned, or sepa-
rated from family or community_It
then faces a perilous journey or struggle
to survive so that the lost primal unity
of family and/or community can be
regained. Present in this "family ro-
mance" are such mythic narrative ele-
ments as departure, separation, quest,
initiation, and triumphant return or re-
union 38 Though the perilous journey
motif has given way in recent years to
the perilous ordeal, such as weathering
the dry season, or surviving attacks by
predators (or humans), the relation of
these events to the theme of youthful
initiation remains central.

CSMC
Clearly, this is the narrative frame-
work of a number of Disney's ani-
mated films, from Dumbo (1940) and
Bamhitothe The Lion King (1994). More
important, however, is that it has also
been the foundation of countless films
from around the world that look like,
and are widely mistaken for documen-
taries. Examples include Survival An-
glia's The World of the Beaver, the Japa-
nese production Mozu the Snow Monkey
(1987), Nippon TV's A Panda's Story
(1984), the BBC's Rush, the Fallow Dear
(1990), K.2li the Lion (1991), and Aliya
the Asian Elephant (1992), as well as
numerous works by Hugo Van Lawick
(for Partridge films), including The Year
of the Jackal (1990), The Wild Dogs of
Africa (1990), and Born to Run (1994).
More recently, Van Lawick applied
the classic model to the story of a
young leopard for the Discovery Pro-
ductions theatrical release The Leopard
Son (1996).39
The legacy of the True Life Adven-
tures is reflected today in audiences'
expectations of wildlife films, and in
the institutional practices of television
networks aimed at attracting those au-
diences. Perhaps nowhere more than
in the United States has the tyranny-of-
formula resulted from commercial pres-
sures to produce wildlife entertain-
ments cut from the tried-and-true
Disneyesque mold. Some wildlife film-
makers seem to have accepted these
conditions as normal and "natural;"
others have complained of being forced
to accept them in order to obtain finan-
cial backiing and television airtime,
while still others have made a show of
rejecting them. An example of the lat-
ter is found in Making Wildlift Movies, a
"how-to" book by BBC veteran pro-
ducer Christopher Parsons. While em-
phatically differentiating his model
from what he describes as "the so-
133
BOUSE
called 'true life' cinema films ... in-
tended to provide pure entertainment"
(Parsons, 1971, p. 16), his instructions
for seamless continuity editing, build-
ing-up of dramatic sequences, avoid-
ance of jump cuts, etc., nevertheless
bear the earmarks of classical narrative
cinema more than of documentary. St-
ouffer too has tried to distance himself
from Disney, writing that although he
had been greatly influenced by The
Vanishing Prairie, he committed himself
to making "a more realistic portrayal
of wildlife in America," although this
was "a difficult decision to make" (1988,
pp.6, 164). Critics, however, have con-
tinued to see Disneyesque motifs in his
films.4o Significantly, Stouffer himself,
arguably one of the highest-profile wild-
life filmmakers in the world, sees his
career as having been devoted neither
to science nor to documentary, but to
"a single purpose ... which can best be
wrapped up in a single word: storytell-
ing" (1988, p. 368).
Wildlife Television in the '90s
Today, the huge American TV audi-
ence, with tastes and expectations
shaped by decades of tradition center-
ing on dramatic narrative, engaging
characters, and family dynamics may
have emerged as the most powerful
influence upon both the form and con-
tent of contemporary wildlife films, re-
gardless of their national origins. For
many film projects to be approved,
even at the BBC, some consideration
must be made of their likelihood of
getting U.S. cable or broadcast distribu-
tion, which means on the Discovery
Channel, on PBS's Nature, or on one of
the National Geographic venues on
NBC, PBS, and TBS. Further, Ameri-
can video sales are also emerging as a
major marketing force influencing con-
tent. Time-Life's highly successful
WILDLIFE FILMS
(though deceptively marketed) video
distribution of the BBC series The Tri-
als ofLife, generated over $100 million
in sales. Reader's Digest Video & Tele-
vision, also on the lookout for salable
film projects, advises filmmakers in a
1996 promotional blurb, "We expect
well-plotted, dramatic storylines and
strong character development."
As a result of such market forces,
which in turn reflect patterns of audio
ence consumption in the past, the domi-
nant tendency in wildlife film today is
in the direction of what are often called
"Blue Chip" films. These can be under-
stood by considering their leading fea-
tures: 1) the depiction of megajauna-
lions, leopards, tigers, bears, sharks,
and other large predators-although el-
ephants, whales and few other non-
predators are also included; 2) visual
splendor-magnificent scenery, beauti-
ful sunsets, and stunning panoramas as
a background to the animals, all of
which suggest a still-unspoiled, prime-
val wilderness; 3) dramatic narrativ~
this can entail the classic, animal pro-
tagonist-centered narrative, or some
version of the "family romance," or
even a narrative centering on the film-
maker's encounter with the animals,
but in any case usually includes some
dramatic chases and escapes; 4) the
absence of history and politics-no overt
Griersonian-style propaganda on be-
half of conservation issues and their
causes; 5) the absence ofpeopl~although
the filmmaker can occasionally appear
as a character to provide the point-of-
view, more than one or two people can
spell the introduction of scientific and
technical conservation efforts that spoil
the "natural" picture; 6) the absence of
scienc~while perhaps the weakest and
most often broken of these "rules," the
discourse of science can entail its own
narrative of research (see Silverstone,
19H4), with all its attendant technical
jargon and seemingly arcane method-
ologies, which, like history and poli-
tics, spoil the picture of nature in all its
"natural" splendor.
If the rise of the Blue Chip film
cannot be traced directly to American
origins, it can be attributed to Ameri-
can-style capitalism, and to a television
marketplace increasingly dependent on
ratings. Even the BBC, founded as
"public service" broadcasting, and
which for years enjoyed a monopoly
on British television, must now pro-
duce ratings numbers. This simple fact
places unavoidable pressures on even
the most scientifically astute of natural
history filmmakers to embrace conven-
tions associated with ratings-driven en-
tertainments, rather than with docu
mentary. To the extent this is true, we
may in some ways still be closer to
Disney than many would like to think.
Still, today we find more profes-
sional dedication on the part of film-
makers, more sensitive and informed
narration, more scientific accuracy, less
anthropomorphism, and a system of
international festivals and symposia,
such as Wildscreen, the Jackson Hole
Wildlife Film Festival, and the Interna·
tional Wildlife Film Festival in Mis-
soula, Montana. These act as a peer-
review process for filmmakers, but also
allow them to meet one another, to
view each other's work, to see what
others are doing, and to get a sense of
the market from broadcasters, buyers,
and distributors. The cross-pollination
at such gatherings may ultimately be
leading to an "international style" in
wildlife filmmaking (see Bouse, 1997).
This, combined with broadcasters' de-
mands for films that will pull in large
audiences, means that Blue Chip power
 135

CSMC BOUSE

may act as a mainstreaming force, a kets, where traditional documentaries

centralizing tendency that makes it
harder for other voices to be heard,
and for conceptual alternatives to
emerge, let alone to succeed.
Moreover, it is essential to note that
the tyranny of formula represented by
the Blue Chip model is clearly a more
powerful force in shaping wildlife films
than are any of the traditional docu-
mentary models. Wildlife filmmakers
competing for distribution and broad-
cast in today's market are far less likely
to be influenced by traditional docu-
mentary models than they are by other
films currently selling in their own field,
or by those that garnered last year's
high TV ratings. This is simply a fact of
life in the broadcasting industry, espe-
cially in competitive prime-time mar-
have never held much sway, and where
television documentaries have tended
increasingly toward ratings-generating
formulas borrowed from entertain-
ment genres (see Curtin, 1993). In the
field of wildlife and natural history tele-
vision, the dynamics of all this are still
unfolding, the issues still being de-
bated. For now, however, it appears
that wildlife films have emerged clearly
as their own entity, separate from the
documentary genre.
So, what are critics and scholars to
do with wildlife films? Let's begin by
recognizing them as a distinct and valid
film and television genre in their own
right. This seems a reasonable starting
point for discussion, and for a more
enlightened appreciation. 0

Notes
[NBC currently airs five of these National Geographic specials per year. Indicative of the ratings
and revenues anticipated from them was the network's arrangements with sponsors such as
Chrysler, Mastercard, and Microsoft, each reportedly paying $50,000 to $150,000 per 30·second
spot, depending on the time and the season (Sink, 1996).
2For a discussion and analysis of the close relationship between the Disney studio's animated
features about animals and its live-action wildlife films, see Bouse, 1995.
:Jlnterestingly, Devillier-Donegan is a subsidiary of ABC, and therefore of Disney.
4The negled among intellectuals of media representations of non-human others tells not just of a
humanist bia~" but of a fundamental commitment to humanism-i.e. an embrace of the doctrine
that humans are the measure of all value. Wildlife films, which often contain no sign of humans or
their achievements, or in which the sympathies often lie with animals whose survival may be
threatened by humans (and human achievements), could be seen by some as anti-humanist--or at
the very least not worth taking seriously. It may also be that at this point in history, wildlife is not
considered all acceptable subject for "respectable" art-just as the working classes were once
considered an unsuitable subject for respectable paintings.
5Jacobs's collection includes one other piece that some might see as addressing wildlife films:
Bosley Crowther's review of Jacques-Yves Cousteau's Tht Silent World (1956). Cousteau's films,
however, have always been true documentaries-chronicles of humans involved in extreme
endeavors (in this case exploring and protecting natural environments). These films have studi-
ously avoided many of the elements typically associated with wildlife film, most noticeably the
fabrication of dramatic narratives with animals as principal protagonists. What's more, Cousteau's
films often call for environmental refonn, and frequently show what is in danger of being lost
unless such refonn is brought about. In this sense, his films deserve their place in documentary
texts, and stand today as latter-day examples of the Griersonian tradition.
ti'fhis is a regrettable lapse on Barnouw's part. Anyone who has seen any of the True Life
Adventures knows that his remarks do an injustice to Marshall and Gardner. But it is nevertheless a
good example of a redoubtable film historian up against the limitations of conventional categoriza-
WILDLIFE FILMS JUNE 1998

tion. It is precisely this sort of taxonomic problem which would likely be eliminated by granting
"officiaJ" genre status to wildlife film. See Bamouw, 1983, p. 210.
'In addition, between the years of 1948 and 1958, four more Disney True lifes won Academy
Awards in the category of Best TwoHReel Short Subject. These were preceded, however, in 1937 by
The Private Lives o/Gannets, a one-reel British film shot by Osmond Borrowdale, narrated byJulian
Huxley, and produced by Alexander Korda.
8Admittedly, most British natural history films were then, as now, made for television, which
may explain Wright's failure to acknowledge them, though it hardly justifies it.
9 A curious example from Rotha's time of the willing avoidance in wildlife films of what he calls
"social analysis" is Disney's The Vanishing Prairie (1954). At no point in the film is there any
mention of why the prairie is "vanishing," or of what social forces might account for it (population
pressures, fanning practices, water management, etc.).
\0 As a tribute to Kearton and his contributions to the British wildlife and natural history film
tradition, the BBC Natural History Unit produced in 1979 a one-hour film profile centering on his
safaris to Ali,ica. Written and hosted byJeffery Boswall, aud entitled "The Wildlife Moving Picture
Show," the program was produced in 1978, and broadcast on BBC2 in January, 1979-hifore
publication of Brownlow's book.
llThis is not to say that all bona-fide documentaries depict subjects who are cognizant of the
filming process or its implications. Consider, for example, the subjects in Wiseman's Titticut Follies
(1967) and Ira Wohl's Best Boy (1979), or any number of films depicting small children. The point
here is that few if any fihnmakers feel the sort of obligations to animal subjects that they
automaticalliy do to human subjects.
12Perhaps the most noted observer and prolific commentor on the subject of ethics in wildlife
filmmaking is Jeffery Boswall (1962, 1968, 1982, 1986, 1989), a veteran of nearly three decades in
the BBC's Natural History Unit.
130f course, the moral judgment implied in such taboo notions as cannibalism, infanticide, and
fratriCide, if not the very concepts themselves, are constructs of our own cultural values, and have
little place in the study of animal behavior other than as descriptive labels. Where incidents of this
sort are observed among animals they are still little understood. The point here, however, is that
they are observed, and are not undertaken by the animals in secrecy. This is a crucial difference in
the role of animals as film subjects.
141n this regard, Rouch once said of a subject, "whatever he tries to be [on camera], he is only
more himself' (quoted by MacDougall, 1985, p. 282).
15An analysis of U.S. Griersonian-style documentary films and videos dealing specifically with
environmental issues can be found in Bouse, 1991.
16Muybridge had earlier photographed Occident in 1872 in an attempt to freeze the horse's
motion on film, and detennine if all four feet left the ground at the same time. This, however, was
by way of a single photograph exposed at high speed. The 1878 photographs are the first in which
Muybridge used his celebrated multi-camera sequential technique. See Muybridge, 1979, and
Haas, 1976.
170ne-hundred twelve years later, there is evidence that tethered animals may still be in use (see
n. 24 and n. 25, below).
lllAlthough his primary concern was studying the movements of animals in motion, rather than
perfecting a cinema prototype, Marey's initial reaction to Muybridge's series photographs was that
they would produce "beautiful zoetropes" (quoted in Haas, 1976, p. 117).
J!lHaas quotes from a letter Marey wrote to the editor of La Nature, Gaston Tissandier, who
printed it in early 1879.
~:oIn 1907 Dr. A. David of Switzerland took a professional cameraman along with him on safari
in East Africa, although the scenes shot all depicted the white hunters killing animals, rather than
animal behlwior. The American Carl Akeley went on safari in Mrica at roughly the same time as
 137

CSMC BOUSE

Kearton, and also took a movie camera. Evidently, however, he found it too cumbersome to be of
use, and no film resulted from this trip (see Brownlow, 1979, p. 406).
21 A decade or so later, Americans Osa and MartinJ ohnson did achieve popular and commercial
success with films of African wild animals both by their fine and daring photography, and by the
addition of dramatic (though still human-centered) narratives.
22The British tradition, however. is thoroughly international in scope, and is thus far less
provincial than Attenborough suggests here.
2:1According to cinematographer Bill Carrik, interviewed in the documentary expose Cruel
Camera, 1984, the lemming sequence in White Wilderness was filmed in Calgary and Kenmore,
Alberta (about 1,100 miles below the Arctic Circle, where the narration fixes it) under conditions
so controlled that the lemmings, which had been brought in by truck, were literally thrown over a
precipice for the camera.
14The long-time host of Wild Kingdom. the late Marlin Perkins, had been, among other things,
director of the St. Louis Zoo, not a biologist or field naturalist. Consequently, after the series ended
production, allegations began to surface about heavy use of captive and tame animals. Most
damaging were those made by series cinematographerJeff Simon in an interview in Cruel Camera.
Later in the same film, Perkins is confronted with the charges and abruptly ends the interview
without responding.
:.!,'iThe allegations against Stouffer are detailed in the Denver Post series by Jim Carrier and Mike
McPhee. It might be worth considering them in the context of Stouffer's other Muybridge-like
tendency: his interest in capturing the details of animal movement on film (using slow-motion).
'}.6Woodardl signed on in 1936 as one of the original cinematographers on Pare Lorentz's film The
River. By this time he reportedly had two Academy Awards for best one-reel picture. He dropped
out of Lorenti!:'s project early, however. See Alexander, 1981, pp. 132-34.
27Woodard's language here, which is more detenninistic than Darwinistic, bears an uncomfort-
able resemblance to a contemporaneous movement in Europe that also claimed to be fulfilling the
dictates of nature, history, and destiny-i.e. by destroying the Jewish 'vermin' plaguing the
continent. That movement was also obsessed with filming much of the process. The image of
Woodard sta.f:p.ng and filming battles on his tiny sets thus gives new meaning to the idea of "Fascist
Aesthetics. "
lHFor a thoughtful reflection on the potential problems of using slow motion, see Boswall, 1986.
l!)There are serious problems in calling Disney's films" educational," although they were widely
circulated in schools to "teach" children about wild animals and other aspects of nature and
science. De Roos notes that Disney's films "are a solid part of the curriculum for thousands of
school children," and adds that this is true "not only in the US, but abroad-including countries
under commlmist control." (De Roos, 1994, p. 50).
3Cjamison places the meeting, and the Milotte's home, in Seattle. Schickel, however, places both
III Alaska (Schickel, 1968, p. 241). Marc Eliot agrees that Disney met with the Milottes while
visiting Alasb with his daughter Sharon (Eliot, 1993, p. 202).
31By his ovm account, Perkins began on television at the remarkably early date of 1945 on
WBKB in Chicago, which was then an "experimental" station with 300 viewers in the Chicago
area (Perkins, 1982, p. 113).
32For a thorough analysis of Disney's contributions to the development of the "classic model" of
wildlife film narrative, and of the role that Disney's animated features played in this, see Bouse,
1995.
3:1By the time of The Living Desert (1953), the first full feature-length True Life, reviewers had
already caught on, and there were immediate comparisons to the studio's animated productions.
Variety described one of the squirrels in the fihn as "exhibiting all of the chann of a Disney cartoon
character" (October 7, 1953, p. 6). lime found its factual content to be "vitiated by cuteness ...
reducing the picture sometimes to the level of recent Donald Duck cartoons" (November 16, 1953,
p. 108). Newsweek also saw in the film a good deal of the cartoon-style "cuteness to be expected
from the DisIlley office" (November 23, 1953, p. 100). In The New York Times Bosley Crowther
WILDUFE FILMS JUNE 1998

remarked that "the Dimey boys are as playful with nature pictures as they are with cartoons,"
adding that it was "all very humorous and beguiling. But it isn't true to life" (November 10, 1953, p.
38). The following year, when The Vanishing Prairie was released, Crowther again noted the
presence of "the daffy Disney style," and labeled the True Life series Disney's "new type of
animated films" (August 17, 1954, p. 17).
3:James Algar, who directed The Living Desert, The Vanishing Prairie, The African Lion (1955), and
Mite Wilderness (1958) began his career in Disney's animation department, where he worked as a
sequence director on Bambi, as well as on Fantasia (1940) and Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). Ben
Sharpsteen, who served as associate producer on The Living Desert and The VanIShing Prairie, and
producer on The African Lion, White Wilderness, and Secrets of Life (1956), worked on dozens of
animated Disney shorts and features during the 1930s and 40s, including Snow White (1937),
Fantasia, Dumbo (1941), and Alice in Woaderland(1951).
:';-'Curtis's film has since- been retitled "In the Land of the War Canoes," and released on
laserdisc.
:J6This film was instrumental in helping Survival break through to American television (see
Willock, 191'8), and is therefore something of a broadcasting landmark.
::l7For an ;malysis of Annaud's appropriation (however unwitting) of Disney-esque narrative
conventions, see Bouse, 1990.
38These elements comprise what Joseph Campbell described as the "standard mythological
adventure" (Campbell, 1968, p. 30).
:m The Leopard Son appeared in 1996 to herald the return of classic wildlife filmmaking to the big
screen, but Discovery Productions chose to distribute the film itself, and to promote it only on its
cable channel. As a result, the film opened with little fanfare on only 125 screens across the United
States, far short of the usual 2,000 to 2,500 screens on which mainstream motion pictures typically
open. The LI~opard Son thus failed to earn back its costs, and was subsequendy scheduled for a May,
1998 transmission on the Discovery cable channel, still to a smaller audience than any of the
National Geographic SpeCials on NBC.
4°In his New York Times review,John Corry singled out a scene from this film in which Stouffer's
small daughter "mischievously unlocks a cage with two baby fishers in the basement of the
Stouffer's home in Colorado. There's a camera around to film the antics ... The filmmaking
impulse here is not so much wildlife documentary as Disney cartoon" (Corry, 1987, p. 18).

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