Review of Reading 27: Seeing Green: Knowing and Saving the Environment on Film

Summary of the Reading 

(Image borrowed from Nalaka Gunawardene, please click on the here to visit his blog)

This essay was written by Luis A. Vivance, an American Anthropologist who has very high expectations for the “environmental film industry” that currently, are not being met.  Throughout the essay he discussed several films, and how they are not only failing to be doing “good” they claim to be doing, but are actually causing harm.             

      Vivance’s view of the appropriate environmental film would be one that includes indigenous views of the environment, with our typical Western views.  Much like health education, the films should exhibit nonmalficence and beneficence when filming and researching a particular environment.  The films should be free of our American societal norms such as conservative sexual relationships, and an emergence in social orders.  According to Vivance, “a film should be a carefully crafted win-win vision of conservation and sustainable development” (McKinney 113).  It becomes our job to consider what we are watching, and how real the “documentary” actually is.   Does the filming of the documentary harm the natives of that land?  What is the environmental dilemma being portrayed, and who is that dilemma most directly affecting?  Are plants, animals, and entire ecosystems being harmed, and if they aren’t harmed, are we getting an accurate view of that plant/animal/ecosystem’s life?  Are the “remote” places that are being filmed remote because the camera crew did a good job of excluding roads, villages and civilization?  The author of this essay indirectly asked so many questions for the reader to consider, I have only named a few.

          As the essay progressed from film to film, the author acknowledged what each film was doing right and what each was doing wrong.  In the conclusion he stated, “we have more to gain by scrutinizing the vehicles of representation, and not just supporting a film-makers artistic and commercial impulses” (McKinney 113).  Environmental films shouldn’t be earnest political documents.  They need to become more realistic, and less harmful to the environment they are “trying to save”.  

Concepts that Challenged My Thinking

I had never in my life watched a documentary on National Geographic, or Animal Planet and thought that was I was viewing was an “earnest political document”.   After reading this article, I have changed my mind.  I feel like Vivance brought up some very good points.  He is correct; nature shouldn’t be censored, dumbed down, or changed to make it more marketable. 

A remote place that is not actually remote?  I had never considered that before.  If I look at any reality TV show or documentary, what happens is the camera-crew and the film editors do everything they can to make the environment (whether it be a social scene at a club, or a forest in Malaysia) exactly the way they want it.  People who dwell in that environment on a regular basis are never shown, conversations between humans, and interactions between animals are all too often edited out, or changed to be more appealing.  I think each time I watch a documentary from here on out I will question, what is being cut out, edited, or dubbed-over with stock sounds and images?

What can I do to save the environment?   Who is telling me that is what needs to be done?  As this essay presented, popular mass-media messages aren’t necessarily the best way to get information regarding the environment.  They show messages that will appeal to the audience, and will bring in revenue.  I have realized it is my job to do some researching to find out what organizations deserve my attention, which ones are just media scams? What can I do on a daily basis that goes beyond what media tells me to do?

There was a paragraph in the essay that stated “Plotkin urges us to consider the empirical rigor of shamanistic biochemistry (they’re better chemists than us in certain instances), and argues that Western medicine’s materialistic bias and search for magic bullets prevents a holistic understanding of disease etiology and the subtle and comprehensive understanding of nature among indigenous healers” (McKinney 112).   This paragraph blew my mind.  I had never considered the “doctors” around the world, and the fact that they may have a better understanding of the human body than we do; yet they aren’t ever allowed to be portrayed in a documentary about their environment?  The ability of indigenous healers to take from the land and heal their fellow village/tribe members is phenomenal; that could possibly be one of the most important human-environment interactions I have ever heard of.

New Terms

ethnography: a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual cultures.

anthropomorphism: an anthropomorphic conception or representation, as of a deity.

mundanity: the condition or quality of being mundane; mundaneness (Click on link to define mundane)

gemeinschaft: a society or group characterized chiefly by a strong sense of common identity, close personal relationships, and an attachment to traditional and sentimental concerns.

herbarium: a collection of dried plants systematically arranged.

ethnobotany: the systematic study of such lore and customs

ecotourism: tourism to places having unspoiled natural resources, with minimal impact on the environment being a primary concern.

Links For You To Visit

I have included in the Paragraphs above a few links for you to visit.  Here are a some others I found:

1. This is an article about indigenous healing, I found it to be very interesting. Indigenous Healing

2. To learn more about the Penan Indians and the logging situation in the Borneo rain forest visit this link.

3. For more information on any of the films the author presented in the text, visit the Internal Movie Dababase website, and type in the name of the film you would like more information on in the search bar.