Earth Porn...

People are raving about the show Planet Earth on Discovery. It's one of these stunningly vivid nature documentaries that took five years to film. I checked it out. Beautiful, yep. I'm just not sure what planet they used, because it sure as hell ain't ours. Every single hi-def shot is a richly composed tilt or pan that artfully captures some dramatic "natural" incident in slow motion and crisp eye-popping colors. The vistas and the animals are only seen in their most extreme and dramatic moments. (How many weeks do you have to follow a skink around a rock pile with a thousand pounds of film equipment before it does a back flip?) The show is one snippet of "oooh ahhh" incredible stitched to another, a relentless curation of an imaginary world. I'm not sure what the producer's intention is, but I would imagine it has something to do with preserving this glimmering gem we (don't) inhabit. Think of it, you have millions of people living in crowded ugly cities, packed into their sardine tins, and plugged into this televised Earth pornography which seems to promise that all of this exalted and neverending natural stuff is truly out there, somewhere. Lucky us! (Also, very interesting to note the differences between the Discovery and BBC versions of Planet Earth. Not the same planet at all!).

The Cinematic Imagination is something we all have. It is a new part of our consciousness that has come to fore as a result of all the sophisticated media machines we have invented (and reprogrammed ourselves with) in the last hundred-and-seventy-odd years. It wants to be fed fantastical curations and recreations of objective reality. It craves story and character and plot and denouement. But like all nutritional systems, we must watch what we eat. We may crave ice cream, but what are the effects? We may crave images of synchronized whale dances behind a curtain of gossamer bubble nets, or exotic flowers exploding into bloom in stop-motion induced seconds, set to swirling strings and an eager choir, but what are the effects? Is it now the earth's job to perform for our cameras?