The Walt Disneyfication of Nature

For a long time, I’ve rather disliked the subtle messages that we communicate to our kids through kid movies. Nature and it’s relationship to humans are shown to be a block party. All the creatures hang out, the rules of ecology are simply non-existant, and nature is portrayed in a surreal way. Over Christmas I watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and it certainly fit this decription.

Now I realize that I’m in grave danger of being labeled a fun-hater (by the only jury that counts no less — my wife). I think these kid movies condition us though (starting when we’re kids but continuing in adulthood for most people) to not see the connection between habitat conservation and conservation of nature. Most people just don’t realize that a front lawn is NOT a prairie with a crew cut. And leaving a few trees in the backyard or city park doesn’t constitute a forest.

While at the movies the other day, I saw a couple of trailers that really seemed to be put forth a more realistic message.

The first movie was Hoot. The premise is that children work to save a population of owls from impending suburbian development. On the one hand, the movie looks a little hokey and there are some birding inaccuracies with their trailer. They show a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) land on a police car at night (the owls are diurnal) and then give the call of a Great Horned Owl. It’s a shame too because Burrowing Owl’s calls are so much cooler. (They also give a shriek which is particularly neat, but I couldn’t find a vocalization of it on the net.) However, I got particularly excited when the trailer briefly showed the kids looking through the Sibley Guide to Birds (also known as the bible for birders) at the illustrations of Burrowing Owls. While the movie is certain to be ridiculed by those who think conservation gets in the way of progress, it does seem to portray the message that subdivisions aren’t compatible with natural ecosystems. That’s a message most people don’t understand in my estimation.

The second movie was Over the Hedge, and it looked to be good. It’s animated and done by Dreamworks, the same people that did Shrek and Madagascar. (I haven’t seen the latter, so I have no idea what their portrayal of the most spectacular island on earth, one who’s ecology is in tatters, is like. I did hear it was a funny though.) Over the Hedge has good voices too. From the trailer, the movie was a somewhat funny look at how wasteful our society can be, and how a group of animals with nowhere else to turn head for the suburbs to raid the trashcans.

All in all, these back to back trailers advertised movies with a subtle message — we share the earth with all living things — that I think is a positive, if small, step in the right direction.