Attenborough's Passion Projects

  



    Today I am going to review a series from another documentarian that has changed my life and the world: Sir David Attenborough. We're going to look at a few of his lesser know documentaries that have been repackaged for rebroadcasting. The series was put together by using archival footage from earlier series and reworked for a new generation. (and to honor Sir David's 90th Birthday in 2016) It worked exceedingly well, in my opinion. It's a four part series, at about an hour/hour-ten mins per episode, and it touches on some of the more intimate interests of Sir David  himself. 

Episode 1: A Blank on the Map

  Sir David travels to Papua New Guinea in search of the Biami tribe, which at that point, (1971) were uncontacted. He hires some ten and hundred men to be porters, guides and most importantly: cultural liaisons. They trek through uncharted territory for days, up and down mountains, across rivers (the porters make a suspension bridge with creeping plants in such a way that a modern engineer would blush) eventually getting in so deep that they must have supplies air-dropped in. After several weeks they make contact through their cultural liaisons (whom were appointed then and there, giving them uniforms, weapons and a quick rundown of what NOT to do were they to contact them) that were scouting ahead. After gifting several members of the tribe with a pound of salt, they disappear into the forest again. Early the next morning, a larger group from the tribe comes with gifts to trade, and this is where Sir David finally makes contact himself. In khaki gear like the colonial brits of the late 19th and early 20th century, he gains their trust and goes about learning of them through his Pidgin interpreters. He admires their adornments, asks them of their culture, and does it in a way that doesn't make you feel bad about it. That's where Sir David shines. He's able to make friends within an uncontacted tribe and he's just there solely for curiosity's sake. He stresses that he's keeping the actual whereabouts safe because the area has, up till then, been untouched by modern hands. He knows that if the location of these unspoiled lands were to be made public, they would be destroyed virtually overnight in the quest for lumber and minerals; he knew the dangers of that back in 1971.

 That's a smart man, right there. 

Episode 2: The Lost Gods of Rapa Nui* (Easter Island)

   Sir David goes on a quest to discover the origins of a mysterious wooden statue in his possession that is rumored to be an original Rapa Nui religious icon. He learns of their culture, does a deep dive into their known history; from pre-western contact all the way through current day. He then sets off on a quest following all loose threads starting at Rapa Nui, then onto London and eventually into Russia of all places. He compares his idols to known collections from early traders, has a sample taken from his icon to be analyzed, which shows that it was made from a hardwood that was endemic to Rapa Nui and nowhere else, but, that does not sate Sir David's curiosity. He wants to see if there's a record of it being traded, as many similar icons that are in possession of private museums have been meticulously recorded, drawn and cataloged; in other words: they have a very clear provenance. Sir David is dying for his to be confirmed as the real deal, so in a last ditch effort, he contacts the leading collectors of Rapa Nui art and Icons and finally gets what he's been searching for. Sure he goes for the glory here, but you also get an intimate view of what these idols and icons meant to the Rapa Nui peoples and how they were used. Again, here you get a glimpse of "Colonial Brit Attenborough;" a man obsessed with adventure, giving the proper revenanace to a historic icon... and apparently winning bets.*

 *That's the only reason I could imagine him going the lengths he did to get this thing confirmed on TV


Episode 3:  Lost Worlds and Vanished Lives

  In this episode we learn of Sir David's obsession with fossils. He waxes poetic about his youth and how he used to go to old quarries and split rocks all day, looking for a glimpse into a world long gone.

"There's a certain "magic" that comes with splitting a rock and letting sun in on something that's been buried for 300 million years, and knowing that you are the first human ever to lays eyes on it."

Yeah, Davey boy, I hear 'ya loud and clear.

  He visits many of the places that he haunted in his youth which gave him a fond fascination with life on this planet. He openly admits that it was his love of fossils that lead to him creating nature documentaries near single handedly while collecting specimens for Queen and Country. Sir David also visits the Burgess Shale, a deposit high in the mountains of the Canadian Rockies, which somehow managed to preserve the bodies of soft creatures. A landslide, perhaps? The bodies were then preserved perfectly while the mud "quickly" turned to stone. This particular deposit revolutionized Taxonomy, Geology, Paleontology and Biology all in one fell swoop. We knew NOTHING of the creatures preserved here before its discovery. A bit here, a sliver there; all teasing Paleontologists for decades and now they've got the full animal all in one crack of a rock, in situ, as they died. He shows how one can go about finding them themselves and you see him in a quarry at one point, where he's all but on autopilot looking for rocks, forgetting he was there to make a show. He was in his element, without question. The magic is strong in this episode as you see Sir David revert to a child with a sense of wonder that's proved to be absolutely insatiable for the last 6+ decades; then he asks you to share in it with him. 

Episode 4: Darwin's Tree of Life.

  In this episode we see Sir David doing a deep dive into his personal hero's life. He goes through old diaries and writings of Darwin's, pointing out key events that lead him to publish "On the Origin of Species." He looks at museum collections, all collected by the man himself, and is in awe of how the power of one man's ideas revolutionized the Natural Sciences.* Again, in this episode you see Sir David revert to that childlike wonder that got him going in the first place. There's a lot more to this episode than that, but if I give away all the key points, (the cries of the naysayers and those who claimed to come to that conclusion first) then there's not much sense in watching it, because Davey boy can present it a hell of a lot better than I.


*There's a question; if Darwin didn't publish, would we have come to that conclusion anyway? "It's steam engine time when it's steam engine time," and there's good reason to believe that, yes we would have. Wallace urged Darwin to publish first, and he did, meaning it was a race to publish and Darwin won it.* And that's just what we know of in THAT particular instance.

*Good thing, that. 

Darwin: that's a smart man right there.

I give this one a 5/5 

Why? Because you see a side of Sir David that's not normally on camera. 

/rant:

* I want to make this abundantly clear: I will use the native names for places and only present the "Westernized Names" ONCE. I loathe that there's people that have lived in these areas for centuries who still do things the old way and who have a deep reverence for their surroundings but are strong-armed into usong a cutesy Anglicized name. I'll make a quick check guide, but within each review I'll use the western name once, along with the CORRECT name, and then it's up to you to follow along. "Easter Island" was the name given to it by a Dutch trader who "discovered" it on April 5th, 1722, killed some natives, and then left five days later in a hissy fit because they didn't have cool enough shit to trade; he shouldn't get a prize for that.
(talk about participation trophies)

Also: YOU CAN'T DISCOVER SOMETHING IF PEOPLE ARE ALREADY THERE!!

/end rant