Like the museum and the zoo, the nature film sought to recreate the experience of unspoiled nature while appealing to a popular audience, through a blend of scientific research and commercial promotion, education and entertainment, authenticity and artifice. Travelogue-expedition films, like that of Teddy Roosevelt's African safari, catered to upper- and middle-class patrons who were intrigued by the exotic and captivated by the thrill of big-game hunting and collecting. The proliferation of nature movies and television shows in the 1950s, such as Disney's True-Life Adventures and Marlin Perkins's Wild Kingdom, made nature familiar and accessible to America's baby-boom generation, fostering the environmental activism of the latter part of the twentieth century. Reel Nature reveals the shifting conventions of nature films and their enormous impact on our perceptions of, and politics about, the environment.
Whether crafted to elicit thrills or to educate audiences about the real-life drama of threatened wildlife, nature films then and now reveal much about the yearnings ofAmericans to be both close to nature and yet distinctly apart.
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Like the museum and the zoo, the nature film sought to recreate the experience of unspoiled nature while appealing to a popular audience, through a blend of scientific research and commercial promotion, education and entertainment, authenticity and artifice. Travelogue-expedition films, like that of Teddy Roosevelt's African safari, catered to upper- and middle-class patrons who were intrigued by the exotic and captivated by the thrill of big-game hunting and collecting. The proliferation of nature movies and television shows in the 1950s, such as Disney's True-Life Adventures and Marlin Perkins's Wild Kingdom, made nature familiar and accessible to America's baby-boom generation, fostering the environmental activism of the latter part of the twentieth century. Reel Nature reveals the shifting conventions of nature films and their enormous impact on our perceptions of, and politics about, the environment.
Whether crafted to elicit thrills or to educate audiences about the real-life drama of threatened wildlife, nature films then and now reveal much about the yearnings ofAmericans to be both close to nature and yet distinctly apart.
Imprint | Harvard University Press |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | November 1999 |
Availability | Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available. |
First published | December 1999 |
Authors | Gregg Mitman |
Dimensions | 240 x 162 x 25mm (L x W x T) |
Format | Hardcover |
Pages | 274 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-674-71571-4 |
Barcode | 9780674715714 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-674-71571-3 |