Planet Earth II - The Two Forms Of Spectacle: Is Planet Earth A Documentary?
Thoughts On: Planet Earth II (2016) & Spectacle in Documentaries
A brief look at the 'truth' presented in Planet Earth II.
It is rare that I actively think of and engage documentaries on animals and nature as actual documentaries. Why this is seems to have much to do with their place on TV and their forming a genre themselves. Alas, this has always felt most true, with me, when watching David Attenborough documentaries. The BBC, in partnership with Attenborough, have developed a very distinct style and approach to the nature/animal documentary. The ethos of this mode is narrative-based with inflections of true life (documentation) used primarily to generate drama. We see this best with hunt scenes - many of which are found across Planet Earth II, one example being from the episode that explores deserts and a pride of lions within it.
Fact is used to frame the hunt of this sequence, facts concerning the seasons and biodiversity--but much of the work in this regards falls on the visuals which masterfully capture the unforgiving aridity and vastness of a desert. This framing of a sequence via fact does not necessarily have much to do with an exploration of truth in nature, rather, it provides the on-coming story dramatic weight and stakes. Hunts then begin, and we follow through them somewhat chronologically; with editing that momentarily breaks chronology to foreshadow or explain the goings on - how the pride of lions is cutting off escape routes and leading the giraffe they chase towards the alpha female, upon which the success of the hunt is solely pinned. Herein there is an abstraction from 'the moment'. This abstraction leaves all pre-decided; because of the writing of the V.O, there is no illusion: we know that Attenbourough has seen this footage before and that this part of the documentary has been perfectly structured for maximum dramatic effect and then written about.
What typifies much of Planet Earth II is exactly this search for drama that sacrifices the raw presentation of truth for an entertaining and heightened vision of the world that is so attractive and intriguing because what occurs is 'real'. Alas, there comes a point that is easily identified by anyone who studies documentary and watches them for more than mere consumption's sake, where truth becomes belittled by the obvious framing and heightening of 'real-world drama'. This point, or line, is crossed, in my opinion, when all seems pre-decided or inevitable.
Planet Earth II doesn't see all of its major sequences bogged down by such pre-decision. The most famous sequence of the series is that which maintains 'the moment' (which cannot be pre-decided) best. We have likely all seen this clip before:
In this clip, we see the BBC/Attenbourough mode of documentary exemplified. First we are given the steaks and drama masked in facts: the snakes cannot see too well, so the Iguana must remain still... must keep his nerve. And then comes the hunt, whose drama is framed largely by a lot of editing, but the chronology feels very tight and true, and so this retains 'the moment'.
To praise this clip would be redundant as it has been done so many times over. I can only ask you to think of the impossibility of all within. That said, there is much to criticise here. It is very clear that truth comes after drama, and to many serious documentarists this would likely be blasphemy. In this clip, its all too clear that we do not want to know what the average iguana or snake's actual life is like, much like we rarely want to know what the average human's life is like: we are, more often than not, only ever interested in the extreme and heightened, and such explains the vast majority of all film and television. The presentation of the heightened and extreme can be truthful, but the major element of spectacle within this is not necessarily conducive of truth. This raises a very interesting conundrum that lies at the heart of Planet Earth II. Is what we are being presented truly the planet earth, or is it merely Planet Earth?
Embedded deep into cinema is a dichotomy of spectacle. The moving image, one may say, wants to be seen. It is an encapsulation of humanity coming to control nature, taking the abstract concept of time and vision and, rather literally, bottling it. We have touched on this idea before in our exploration of film history and one of the very first 'filmmakers' Eadweard Muybridge.
Muybridge was one of the very first people to be able to take photographs with glass plates at a rate fast enough to 'capture' movement. He then devised a system to take multiple pictures of single subjects such as this:
One, in the modern day, can easily transform his work into animated gifs such as this:
Even with just these two images, we have the encapsulation of Muybridge's standing as a 'filmmaker', 'scientist' and 'artist' (such entities he seems to have floated somewhere between). With the images of the ostrich we have a form of bottled space and time that exists with a quality of intrinsic attraction: how does an ostrich move? is what makes the study of this imagery fundamentally intriguing, after all, it is an incredibly exotic animal to a Westerner (especially one in the late-1800s), is the largest bird in the world and, frankly, is a rather alien creation. Because it can be seen, we want to see, because it has been abstracted from time, we would want to bear witness--or, at least, this is true to anyone who finds the images even somewhat spectacular or attracting. Herein, we then have one type of spectacle that is based on the inherent magic of cinema. Thus, we shall refer to this as inherent spectacle, and can define it by the subtle miracle that is the invention and being of moving imagery, which signifies humanity's control over nature.
The second kind of spectacle is seemingly a creation of a more base humanity as opposed to a higher consciousness and ingenuity. This 'base humanity' is most obviously linked to, in my estimation, survival. Any organism has two basic functions: consumption and production. These two basic functions split into, approximately, 5 fundamental actions: eating, drinking, sleeping, working, procreating. Mammals consume food and liquid so they may work as to procreate, and they sleep so, when they fail one day, they can try again the next. In all of these actions are three elements: consumption, production, preservation. In Hinduism, notably, these three basic actions are conceptualised as elemental forces of the universe via the trimurti; the trichotomy, or the three forms, of the ultimate God: Shiva (destruction), Brama (creation) and Vishnu (preservation). Spectacle in cinema often deals with an undignified triumrti of the mimetic universe. That is to say that spectacle often manifests in the form of a contrived conception of creation (love, heroism, etc), destruction (combat, deception, etc) and preservation (romance, comedy, etc). Spectacle is most apparent when these elements are used to evoke feeling above meaning. We feel because something in cinema is meaningful in my belief, but, spectacle of a certain basic character is the most direct route towards making an audience feel that, we can argue, by passes meaning--or rather, the meaning-making process--itself. So, though a knight, warrior or king may be a symbol of great meaning in works--even those that heavily utilise spectacle--such as King Arthur, A Knight's Tale and The Lord of the Rings, such figures can become empty, bastardised symbols in a work such as Bay's Transformers: The Last Knight. In Bay's film, the knight - which is often an archetype of destructive good that comes to accesses preservation via romance or heroism - is not built as the archetype it fundamentally is. Rather, meaning, the symbology of the fundamental archetype, is assumed or implied, not built in the narrative. Such defines base spectacle: the appropriation of meaning and the undignified communication of, and with, the cinematic trimurti.
Having said that we can make two brief notes. Firstly, inherent spectacle has a strong relationship with meaning-making as it is a signifier of both the form of a medium and of storytelling itself; thus, it encapsulates the purpose and philosophical ramifications of cinema existing as well as story generally and a specific story. Secondly, inherent spectacle is less spectacular - is more subtly attracting and harder to recognise and feel through - than base spectacle. Such explains my terminology: base spectacle is palpable, is sourced at the foundation of the human spirit, whereas inherent spectacle is sourced from the centre of personal and collective being - wherever that may be.
Let us take a step back. All of which we talked about in regard to base spectacle is in the images of the two women kissing. With these images Muybridge assumes an undignified, contrived and rather meaningless focus on base creation and preservation: on romance and sex. It is this that fuels the attraction, not the fundamental magic of cinema - which also engages destruction, preservation and creation in the world (such is an inevitability), but does so neutrally or, one could say, with dignity. Let us look again at our two examples of Muybridge's work:
Where cinema is born, so is spectacle. Muybridge assumed the nickname, Helios (Greek God of the Sun). This signifies his conscious position as he who controls light, space and time, with his photography. And such defines the images of the ostrich as an embodiment of inherent spectacle. Muybridge was human, however. And, though he claimed he was a scientist, he seems to have sometimes engaged his own intrigue somewhat unscientifically - some (not myself) may go as far as to call him an exploitative pervert. This idea leads one rather easily to see the base spectacle in the second piece.
If we move through all of film history, we see these two forms of spectacle remain constant. They can then very easily be identified in Planet Earth II. Let us then remind ourselves of our example:
The inherent spectacle here is found in the technology and element of chance (which has meaning and philosophical ramifications that I shall leave you to exposit with your own platitudes); not only is this space and time beautifully captured, but the space and time has a rarely unique and heightened character. Base spectacle emerges via the contrived drama, through the score, narrative framing, subtle characterisation and sound design. One may critique his clip via its over-emphasis of the non-diegetic, on that which is not within the world of the piece of film, instead is constructed upon it. Diegesis - the real world - in documentary is as close as one comes to truth on film. Base spectacle then almost inevitably emerges through any extra-diegetic material: a score, sound effects, V.O, a script, etc.
It is having made this brief exploration that we can return conclusively to our initial question of truth and spectacle in documentary. Truth and reality is a form of spectacle in documentary. However, spectacle can be built upon spectacle, truth can be presented with emphasis on contriving or heightening drama, which is where the waters of truth are muddied. It is this that begins to reveal why I, quite possibly you reading, too, do not think of programmes such as Planet Earth II as documentaries. The modal approach to the documentary made in Planet Earth is bounded in too much base spectacle so that, what is supposed to be a documentary, begins to feel heightened beyond reality and much like a narrative film. It is having made this proposition that I'll end with a question to you: Do you feel like Planet Earth II is a true (truthful even) documentary?
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #75
Next post:
Pinch Me - Happy Apathy In The Hyper-Normal
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
A brief look at the 'truth' presented in Planet Earth II.
It is rare that I actively think of and engage documentaries on animals and nature as actual documentaries. Why this is seems to have much to do with their place on TV and their forming a genre themselves. Alas, this has always felt most true, with me, when watching David Attenborough documentaries. The BBC, in partnership with Attenborough, have developed a very distinct style and approach to the nature/animal documentary. The ethos of this mode is narrative-based with inflections of true life (documentation) used primarily to generate drama. We see this best with hunt scenes - many of which are found across Planet Earth II, one example being from the episode that explores deserts and a pride of lions within it.
Fact is used to frame the hunt of this sequence, facts concerning the seasons and biodiversity--but much of the work in this regards falls on the visuals which masterfully capture the unforgiving aridity and vastness of a desert. This framing of a sequence via fact does not necessarily have much to do with an exploration of truth in nature, rather, it provides the on-coming story dramatic weight and stakes. Hunts then begin, and we follow through them somewhat chronologically; with editing that momentarily breaks chronology to foreshadow or explain the goings on - how the pride of lions is cutting off escape routes and leading the giraffe they chase towards the alpha female, upon which the success of the hunt is solely pinned. Herein there is an abstraction from 'the moment'. This abstraction leaves all pre-decided; because of the writing of the V.O, there is no illusion: we know that Attenbourough has seen this footage before and that this part of the documentary has been perfectly structured for maximum dramatic effect and then written about.
What typifies much of Planet Earth II is exactly this search for drama that sacrifices the raw presentation of truth for an entertaining and heightened vision of the world that is so attractive and intriguing because what occurs is 'real'. Alas, there comes a point that is easily identified by anyone who studies documentary and watches them for more than mere consumption's sake, where truth becomes belittled by the obvious framing and heightening of 'real-world drama'. This point, or line, is crossed, in my opinion, when all seems pre-decided or inevitable.
Planet Earth II doesn't see all of its major sequences bogged down by such pre-decision. The most famous sequence of the series is that which maintains 'the moment' (which cannot be pre-decided) best. We have likely all seen this clip before:
In this clip, we see the BBC/Attenbourough mode of documentary exemplified. First we are given the steaks and drama masked in facts: the snakes cannot see too well, so the Iguana must remain still... must keep his nerve. And then comes the hunt, whose drama is framed largely by a lot of editing, but the chronology feels very tight and true, and so this retains 'the moment'.
To praise this clip would be redundant as it has been done so many times over. I can only ask you to think of the impossibility of all within. That said, there is much to criticise here. It is very clear that truth comes after drama, and to many serious documentarists this would likely be blasphemy. In this clip, its all too clear that we do not want to know what the average iguana or snake's actual life is like, much like we rarely want to know what the average human's life is like: we are, more often than not, only ever interested in the extreme and heightened, and such explains the vast majority of all film and television. The presentation of the heightened and extreme can be truthful, but the major element of spectacle within this is not necessarily conducive of truth. This raises a very interesting conundrum that lies at the heart of Planet Earth II. Is what we are being presented truly the planet earth, or is it merely Planet Earth?
Embedded deep into cinema is a dichotomy of spectacle. The moving image, one may say, wants to be seen. It is an encapsulation of humanity coming to control nature, taking the abstract concept of time and vision and, rather literally, bottling it. We have touched on this idea before in our exploration of film history and one of the very first 'filmmakers' Eadweard Muybridge.
Muybridge was one of the very first people to be able to take photographs with glass plates at a rate fast enough to 'capture' movement. He then devised a system to take multiple pictures of single subjects such as this:
One, in the modern day, can easily transform his work into animated gifs such as this:
Even with just these two images, we have the encapsulation of Muybridge's standing as a 'filmmaker', 'scientist' and 'artist' (such entities he seems to have floated somewhere between). With the images of the ostrich we have a form of bottled space and time that exists with a quality of intrinsic attraction: how does an ostrich move? is what makes the study of this imagery fundamentally intriguing, after all, it is an incredibly exotic animal to a Westerner (especially one in the late-1800s), is the largest bird in the world and, frankly, is a rather alien creation. Because it can be seen, we want to see, because it has been abstracted from time, we would want to bear witness--or, at least, this is true to anyone who finds the images even somewhat spectacular or attracting. Herein, we then have one type of spectacle that is based on the inherent magic of cinema. Thus, we shall refer to this as inherent spectacle, and can define it by the subtle miracle that is the invention and being of moving imagery, which signifies humanity's control over nature.
The second kind of spectacle is seemingly a creation of a more base humanity as opposed to a higher consciousness and ingenuity. This 'base humanity' is most obviously linked to, in my estimation, survival. Any organism has two basic functions: consumption and production. These two basic functions split into, approximately, 5 fundamental actions: eating, drinking, sleeping, working, procreating. Mammals consume food and liquid so they may work as to procreate, and they sleep so, when they fail one day, they can try again the next. In all of these actions are three elements: consumption, production, preservation. In Hinduism, notably, these three basic actions are conceptualised as elemental forces of the universe via the trimurti; the trichotomy, or the three forms, of the ultimate God: Shiva (destruction), Brama (creation) and Vishnu (preservation). Spectacle in cinema often deals with an undignified triumrti of the mimetic universe. That is to say that spectacle often manifests in the form of a contrived conception of creation (love, heroism, etc), destruction (combat, deception, etc) and preservation (romance, comedy, etc). Spectacle is most apparent when these elements are used to evoke feeling above meaning. We feel because something in cinema is meaningful in my belief, but, spectacle of a certain basic character is the most direct route towards making an audience feel that, we can argue, by passes meaning--or rather, the meaning-making process--itself. So, though a knight, warrior or king may be a symbol of great meaning in works--even those that heavily utilise spectacle--such as King Arthur, A Knight's Tale and The Lord of the Rings, such figures can become empty, bastardised symbols in a work such as Bay's Transformers: The Last Knight. In Bay's film, the knight - which is often an archetype of destructive good that comes to accesses preservation via romance or heroism - is not built as the archetype it fundamentally is. Rather, meaning, the symbology of the fundamental archetype, is assumed or implied, not built in the narrative. Such defines base spectacle: the appropriation of meaning and the undignified communication of, and with, the cinematic trimurti.
Having said that we can make two brief notes. Firstly, inherent spectacle has a strong relationship with meaning-making as it is a signifier of both the form of a medium and of storytelling itself; thus, it encapsulates the purpose and philosophical ramifications of cinema existing as well as story generally and a specific story. Secondly, inherent spectacle is less spectacular - is more subtly attracting and harder to recognise and feel through - than base spectacle. Such explains my terminology: base spectacle is palpable, is sourced at the foundation of the human spirit, whereas inherent spectacle is sourced from the centre of personal and collective being - wherever that may be.
Let us take a step back. All of which we talked about in regard to base spectacle is in the images of the two women kissing. With these images Muybridge assumes an undignified, contrived and rather meaningless focus on base creation and preservation: on romance and sex. It is this that fuels the attraction, not the fundamental magic of cinema - which also engages destruction, preservation and creation in the world (such is an inevitability), but does so neutrally or, one could say, with dignity. Let us look again at our two examples of Muybridge's work:
Where cinema is born, so is spectacle. Muybridge assumed the nickname, Helios (Greek God of the Sun). This signifies his conscious position as he who controls light, space and time, with his photography. And such defines the images of the ostrich as an embodiment of inherent spectacle. Muybridge was human, however. And, though he claimed he was a scientist, he seems to have sometimes engaged his own intrigue somewhat unscientifically - some (not myself) may go as far as to call him an exploitative pervert. This idea leads one rather easily to see the base spectacle in the second piece.
If we move through all of film history, we see these two forms of spectacle remain constant. They can then very easily be identified in Planet Earth II. Let us then remind ourselves of our example:
The inherent spectacle here is found in the technology and element of chance (which has meaning and philosophical ramifications that I shall leave you to exposit with your own platitudes); not only is this space and time beautifully captured, but the space and time has a rarely unique and heightened character. Base spectacle emerges via the contrived drama, through the score, narrative framing, subtle characterisation and sound design. One may critique his clip via its over-emphasis of the non-diegetic, on that which is not within the world of the piece of film, instead is constructed upon it. Diegesis - the real world - in documentary is as close as one comes to truth on film. Base spectacle then almost inevitably emerges through any extra-diegetic material: a score, sound effects, V.O, a script, etc.
It is having made this brief exploration that we can return conclusively to our initial question of truth and spectacle in documentary. Truth and reality is a form of spectacle in documentary. However, spectacle can be built upon spectacle, truth can be presented with emphasis on contriving or heightening drama, which is where the waters of truth are muddied. It is this that begins to reveal why I, quite possibly you reading, too, do not think of programmes such as Planet Earth II as documentaries. The modal approach to the documentary made in Planet Earth is bounded in too much base spectacle so that, what is supposed to be a documentary, begins to feel heightened beyond reality and much like a narrative film. It is having made this proposition that I'll end with a question to you: Do you feel like Planet Earth II is a true (truthful even) documentary?
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #75
Next post:
Pinch Me - Happy Apathy In The Hyper-Normal
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
