david attenborough ate my baby
Jul. 23rd, 2006 08:09 pmSometimes I hate wildlife shows.
Mum calls us all in to watch David Attenborough's Planet Earth: Fresh Water, or something, and at first it's great, like, gigantic Japanese salamanders looking like two-metre long lead piping with a slit for a mouth at the front; awesome stuff, even if it's jumping all over the place, 30 seconds on the Grand Canyon, oh look Indian otters, yay otters!!!! Canada and salmon and Grizzlies, what a pleasant surprise!
And then suddenly we've got ten minutes of violence pornography, wildebeest crossing the Serengeti and oooo what lies in wait for them in these murky brown waters? Close-ups of crocodiles blinking, long, lingering shots of wildebeest drinking, the foreplay, mounting tension as the crocodile slips underwater, and then hold it, hold it, hold it; bam! sudden chaos and panic as it surges out of the water, foam and froth and the money shot when it clamps on a leg and drags the animal down, the shortest climax in history except they play it over and over, different beasts, different angles, agonisingly slow motion and my god, the soundtrack, a single nauseating violin, like, am I supposed to be sad? Am I supposed to feel turned on, feel the bloodlust, what? Why are you showing me this again and again? I couldn't figure out why I was watching so I fucked off.
I will say though that there was this one stunning shot, motion so slow it was almost a still, a zebra rearing in the midst of a frenzy of wildebeest, one of those perfect frozen tableaux of terror, all twisted flesh and screaming mouths, like the Rape of the Sabines or one of those Ruebens paintings, Massacre of the Innocents or Daughters of Leucippus (minus the breasts, of course). Such a startling echo in my brain.
Mum calls us all in to watch David Attenborough's Planet Earth: Fresh Water, or something, and at first it's great, like, gigantic Japanese salamanders looking like two-metre long lead piping with a slit for a mouth at the front; awesome stuff, even if it's jumping all over the place, 30 seconds on the Grand Canyon, oh look Indian otters, yay otters!!!! Canada and salmon and Grizzlies, what a pleasant surprise!
And then suddenly we've got ten minutes of violence pornography, wildebeest crossing the Serengeti and oooo what lies in wait for them in these murky brown waters? Close-ups of crocodiles blinking, long, lingering shots of wildebeest drinking, the foreplay, mounting tension as the crocodile slips underwater, and then hold it, hold it, hold it; bam! sudden chaos and panic as it surges out of the water, foam and froth and the money shot when it clamps on a leg and drags the animal down, the shortest climax in history except they play it over and over, different beasts, different angles, agonisingly slow motion and my god, the soundtrack, a single nauseating violin, like, am I supposed to be sad? Am I supposed to feel turned on, feel the bloodlust, what? Why are you showing me this again and again? I couldn't figure out why I was watching so I fucked off.
I will say though that there was this one stunning shot, motion so slow it was almost a still, a zebra rearing in the midst of a frenzy of wildebeest, one of those perfect frozen tableaux of terror, all twisted flesh and screaming mouths, like the Rape of the Sabines or one of those Ruebens paintings, Massacre of the Innocents or Daughters of Leucippus (minus the breasts, of course). Such a startling echo in my brain.
