Between fragility and resilience
Ambivalent images of nature in popular documentaries with David Attenborough
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4189090 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Evi Zemanek (0000-0002-8707-3880, University of Freiburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 139-160 |
| Publication date | 2022-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Anthropocene Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2053-0196 • E-ISSN: 2053-020X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/20530196221093477 |
| OpenAlex | W4280500384 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 36 |
Nature documentaries often present contradictory images of, on the one hand, a fragile nature that is threatened or already destroyed by humans and, on the other hand, a resilient nature that indifferently survives the human species. Similar ambivalences characterize the public discourse on "nature" in the Anthropocene. From the perspective of cultural and media studies, this essay attempts to disentangle the incoherencies in popular imaginaries of nature by exploring the challenges of narrating and picturing the two opposite qualities of vulnerability and resilience. Tracing the conceptual evolution of documentaries presented by David Attenborough between 1979 and 2020 and their gradual increase in environmentalist rhetoric, I show how different visual motifs undergo a recoding (resilient/fragile) and relate it to paradigm shifts in ecology, earth system science, and environmental protection principles. With an interest in the historical development of multimedia discourses on resilience and vulnerability, I focus on the relationship between visual and verbal representation as well as on the interplay of semantic and aesthetic aspects, while reflecting on whether the observed ambivalences are intentional and how they might influence the perception of the documentaries. This essay is a contribution to Transmedia Ecocriticism and thus situates itself in the Environmental Humanities
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Anthropocene · Art · Ecocriticism · Environmental ethics · Linguistics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Visual arts · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
Wildlife Films
Apollo's Eye
The diversity–stability debate
Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000
Globes and spheres
Television wildlife programming as a source of popular scientific information
Environmental Conflict and the Media
Nature documentaries and saving nature
BBC Wildlife Documentaries in the Age of Attenborough
Responsible resilience
On Nature Programming, the Anthropocene, and the Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary
Climate visuals
Towards a theory of documentary representation for animals
Reel Nature
Contested Global Visions
Imaging vulnerability
The Anthropocene
Sense of Place and Sense of Planet
The Trouble with Wilderness
Global Nature, Global Brand
The Living Planet
Planetary Boundaries
Resilience
Fractal Eaarth
La Terre vue d'en haut - L'invention de l'environnement global
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |