His
voice has enthralled millions across the world. His now-abandoned Instagram
account was the fastest to be followed by a million people. He is often
considered to have seen the most number of places in the world, starting his
overseas sojourns soon after the Second World War when air travel started to
become popular and seeing them before some of them disappeared from the face of
the earth. The images that he brought alive on screen from the greenest jungles
to the whitest polar regions to the bluest oceans with their giant whales and
multicoloured marine life have made a large section of the TV watching
population more aware of the earth and the various non-human species which
inhabit it. He has been lucky enough to have enjoyed good health and be
involved with a job he likes well into his late 90s. His work ethic is
comparable to his Queen Elizabeth II, born seventeen days before him. The
world, and its various species, has been lucky to have him around.
His legacy may seem to mirror the smoothness of the vivid images which he presented on screen. Yet, there have been those who have had issue with his legacy. By presenting nature as undisturbed, was the urgency of climate change and the endangered nature of the landscapes and life he was presenting toned down? By travelling across the world and presenting uncommon images, was he enticing the rich to follow suit and did he threaten the sustainability of the environments he presented by attracting tourists?
Son of an academic father and a mother who was interested in the arts, David Attenborough was born into a cultured household. By the time, he took up a job at the BBC, his elder brother Richard had already become a fairly well-known actor on both the stage as well as the screen. His early life and his initiation into the appreciation of the natural world have been recounted by him in various media to the point where his regular followers know there is little new to learn in another iteration of it. His discovery of ammonite fossils in commercial mines near his childhood home in Leicester, his father urging him to find out about them from the natural history museum and guiding him to seek knowledge from experts and find out on one’s own instead of being spoon-fed with answers on the tap, his reading of the nineteenth-century explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and his acquired fascination for birds of paradise, studying zoology and geology at Cambridge and later studying social anthropology — these have been well-documented in his various memoirs.
Much of his early work with the BBC does not survive owing to the limitations of technology and the cost of film reel during the 1950s. His career in the nascent medium of the television and with movie cameras placed him at the vanguard of technological advancements in the medium. Till date, pioneering visual reproduction techniques have been often used in natural history movie productions much before they have made their way to fiction movie productions.
When we think of natural history movie productions, we think of the BBC’s natural history unit in Bristol. David Attenborough never worked for that unit. He was born in the greater London area and other than the period when his father was working at Leicester, he has maintained residence in the greater London area. Desmond Hawkins, a young producer in the BBC’s west region, started producing a series of programmes on natural history for the radio. He wanted to move to the television department and suggested starting a natural history unit in Bristol. Attenborough was invited to join the department but declined preferring to stay in London with the family he had just started. Thus began the sequence of long-distance collaboration of the BBC’s natural history unit and which continues to this day with its team of producers and film makers working across the globe but knowing that they will find a haven for their footage at Bristol. Even though the BBC has a licence fee to achieve some kind of balance in financial sheets, the pressures that a public service broadcaster faces has forced many of these filmmakers to find other outlets for their productions. American streaming services such as Netflix and Apple TV+ have taken on some such content to satiate the craving for natural history that exists across the globe but the sustained support and nurturing that the BBC provides is perhaps unique in the history of moving pictures.
Natural history film making and watching may seem repetitive. Yet, with advancements in technology, the art of making and the details which one can watch keep changing all the time. Has the focus of Attenborough’s film making also changed with time? Surely it has. In the 1950s, one saw much more of him on the screen. He was there in the forest, on top of the tree, hidden in the bushes, with animals crawling over him. The 1950s were when the UK was still experiencing a loss of its colonies. But colonial trajectories and colonial projects and mindsets were very much enmeshed in the population of the UK. The journeys that Attenborough made in the 1950s were often to former colonies—to British occupied Guyana rather than French, Spanish, Dutch or Portuguese colonised Guiana, to Papua New Guinea rather than Indonesian Papua. His 1950s Zoo Quest series was, as the title, implied, about animals and zoos. Zoos or animals in captivity were far removed from animals in their natural habitat as portrayed in natural history film making. The Zoo Quest series was about collecting animals. One may even say stealing animals. This brings to attention the idea of using animals as museum collectibles, as an object to be stared at. Since the 1970s when climate change and environmentalism started to become significant issues globally, the idea of the zoo has changed drastically in some places whereas in some settings, it has remained similar to the idea of the menagerie of ancient times. Reading his 2002 Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (available both as a book to be read as well as in audiobook format read by Attenborough) may make the modern reader appalled and cringe at such blatant continuation of the colonial project. However, one must realise that to see is to be aware. When one thinks of scientific experimentation on animals which disappeared from public spectacle after the 1670s and was hidden behind the laboratory door or the rise of industrial meat farming and abattoirs in the nineteenth century which concealed some animals from public view, one realises that it has coincided with the change in human relationship to other species.
David Attenborough’s most important legacy is to make people aware of the natural world. Without awareness of the variety of life on earth, we would have been less compelled to look at the larger picture of the perils of climate change. It is easy to think of one’s immediate surroundings as the be-all and end-all such as when the 45th POTUS scorned at the idea of global warming because of a particularly frosty American east coast winter even though that year was the hottest year on earth recorded till then. To overcome such scepticism, often propounded by political leaders because of a combination of ignorance and vested interests and who have mass followings, the images are necessary to bring greater awareness. Images not only of sooty skies above industrial landscapes but also of the beauty of our planet, of the variegated clownfish, the almost-extinct brightly coloured corals, of the savannas and of the birds of paradise in the rainforests, and the Antarctic sea lions. In order to save the planet, we need to be empathetic to it and its beauty.
Attenborough’s shift to raising environmental awareness, combining academia and accessibility, happened sometime in the late 1990s. Before that, in the 1970s, shortly after completing a postgraduate course in social anthropology, Attenborough also presented programmes about people and cultures, rather than on just animals. His A Blank on the Map (1971) about people in New Guinea was one such programme. A more accessible production of this kind is the 10-minute BBC radio episode titled ‘Adam’s Face’, Life Stories (2009). His first programme to deal exclusively with the human effect on the natural world was State of the Planet in the year 2000. It may be that the programme should have been made twenty years earlier. Late to bring this to the scene he may have been, but he has been at it ever since. Natural history film making is now much more collaborative and is a much larger team effort than it was in the 1960s when it was just Attenborough and a few of his colleagues. Attenborough is often now the writer of his shows and sometimes he contributes with only his comforting voice as the narrator. His on-screen appearance is limited to a sequence or two and is a minuscule portion of the total recording that took place. Yet he is there to bring home the message. The 2020 David Attenborough: A Life on our Planet had him shooting in the abandoned ruins of Chernobyl.
He shot a few programmes in India in 1960. Since then, he has returned to India to shoot various programmes. He has been awarded with honours in India as well. Biju Patnaik, in the half century after independence, had been associated with the annual Kalinga Prize for the Popularisation of Science. After awards to Julian Huxley in 1953 and Konrad Lorenz in 1969, David Attenborough was awarded this UNESCO prize in 1981. More recently, shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic began and most of the world went into lockdown, the Indira Gandhi prize, which was set up shortly after the death of Indira Gandhi, was awarded to Attenborough. The trustees perhaps had the occasion to watch some of his productions in the lockdown. The Year Earth Changed (2021), about the restorative effects of the lockdown, had him just as the narrator. He may have been late in alerting his viewers to the biggest threat to this planet but perhaps his viewers should not be late in acknowledging the joy of awareness that is brought into the lives of millions of TV viewers by David Attenborough.
His legacy may seem to mirror the smoothness of the vivid images which he presented on screen. Yet, there have been those who have had issue with his legacy. By presenting nature as undisturbed, was the urgency of climate change and the endangered nature of the landscapes and life he was presenting toned down? By travelling across the world and presenting uncommon images, was he enticing the rich to follow suit and did he threaten the sustainability of the environments he presented by attracting tourists?
Son of an academic father and a mother who was interested in the arts, David Attenborough was born into a cultured household. By the time, he took up a job at the BBC, his elder brother Richard had already become a fairly well-known actor on both the stage as well as the screen. His early life and his initiation into the appreciation of the natural world have been recounted by him in various media to the point where his regular followers know there is little new to learn in another iteration of it. His discovery of ammonite fossils in commercial mines near his childhood home in Leicester, his father urging him to find out about them from the natural history museum and guiding him to seek knowledge from experts and find out on one’s own instead of being spoon-fed with answers on the tap, his reading of the nineteenth-century explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and his acquired fascination for birds of paradise, studying zoology and geology at Cambridge and later studying social anthropology — these have been well-documented in his various memoirs.
Much of his early work with the BBC does not survive owing to the limitations of technology and the cost of film reel during the 1950s. His career in the nascent medium of the television and with movie cameras placed him at the vanguard of technological advancements in the medium. Till date, pioneering visual reproduction techniques have been often used in natural history movie productions much before they have made their way to fiction movie productions.
When we think of natural history movie productions, we think of the BBC’s natural history unit in Bristol. David Attenborough never worked for that unit. He was born in the greater London area and other than the period when his father was working at Leicester, he has maintained residence in the greater London area. Desmond Hawkins, a young producer in the BBC’s west region, started producing a series of programmes on natural history for the radio. He wanted to move to the television department and suggested starting a natural history unit in Bristol. Attenborough was invited to join the department but declined preferring to stay in London with the family he had just started. Thus began the sequence of long-distance collaboration of the BBC’s natural history unit and which continues to this day with its team of producers and film makers working across the globe but knowing that they will find a haven for their footage at Bristol. Even though the BBC has a licence fee to achieve some kind of balance in financial sheets, the pressures that a public service broadcaster faces has forced many of these filmmakers to find other outlets for their productions. American streaming services such as Netflix and Apple TV+ have taken on some such content to satiate the craving for natural history that exists across the globe but the sustained support and nurturing that the BBC provides is perhaps unique in the history of moving pictures.
Natural history film making and watching may seem repetitive. Yet, with advancements in technology, the art of making and the details which one can watch keep changing all the time. Has the focus of Attenborough’s film making also changed with time? Surely it has. In the 1950s, one saw much more of him on the screen. He was there in the forest, on top of the tree, hidden in the bushes, with animals crawling over him. The 1950s were when the UK was still experiencing a loss of its colonies. But colonial trajectories and colonial projects and mindsets were very much enmeshed in the population of the UK. The journeys that Attenborough made in the 1950s were often to former colonies—to British occupied Guyana rather than French, Spanish, Dutch or Portuguese colonised Guiana, to Papua New Guinea rather than Indonesian Papua. His 1950s Zoo Quest series was, as the title, implied, about animals and zoos. Zoos or animals in captivity were far removed from animals in their natural habitat as portrayed in natural history film making. The Zoo Quest series was about collecting animals. One may even say stealing animals. This brings to attention the idea of using animals as museum collectibles, as an object to be stared at. Since the 1970s when climate change and environmentalism started to become significant issues globally, the idea of the zoo has changed drastically in some places whereas in some settings, it has remained similar to the idea of the menagerie of ancient times. Reading his 2002 Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (available both as a book to be read as well as in audiobook format read by Attenborough) may make the modern reader appalled and cringe at such blatant continuation of the colonial project. However, one must realise that to see is to be aware. When one thinks of scientific experimentation on animals which disappeared from public spectacle after the 1670s and was hidden behind the laboratory door or the rise of industrial meat farming and abattoirs in the nineteenth century which concealed some animals from public view, one realises that it has coincided with the change in human relationship to other species.
David Attenborough’s most important legacy is to make people aware of the natural world. Without awareness of the variety of life on earth, we would have been less compelled to look at the larger picture of the perils of climate change. It is easy to think of one’s immediate surroundings as the be-all and end-all such as when the 45th POTUS scorned at the idea of global warming because of a particularly frosty American east coast winter even though that year was the hottest year on earth recorded till then. To overcome such scepticism, often propounded by political leaders because of a combination of ignorance and vested interests and who have mass followings, the images are necessary to bring greater awareness. Images not only of sooty skies above industrial landscapes but also of the beauty of our planet, of the variegated clownfish, the almost-extinct brightly coloured corals, of the savannas and of the birds of paradise in the rainforests, and the Antarctic sea lions. In order to save the planet, we need to be empathetic to it and its beauty.
Attenborough’s shift to raising environmental awareness, combining academia and accessibility, happened sometime in the late 1990s. Before that, in the 1970s, shortly after completing a postgraduate course in social anthropology, Attenborough also presented programmes about people and cultures, rather than on just animals. His A Blank on the Map (1971) about people in New Guinea was one such programme. A more accessible production of this kind is the 10-minute BBC radio episode titled ‘Adam’s Face’, Life Stories (2009). His first programme to deal exclusively with the human effect on the natural world was State of the Planet in the year 2000. It may be that the programme should have been made twenty years earlier. Late to bring this to the scene he may have been, but he has been at it ever since. Natural history film making is now much more collaborative and is a much larger team effort than it was in the 1960s when it was just Attenborough and a few of his colleagues. Attenborough is often now the writer of his shows and sometimes he contributes with only his comforting voice as the narrator. His on-screen appearance is limited to a sequence or two and is a minuscule portion of the total recording that took place. Yet he is there to bring home the message. The 2020 David Attenborough: A Life on our Planet had him shooting in the abandoned ruins of Chernobyl.
He shot a few programmes in India in 1960. Since then, he has returned to India to shoot various programmes. He has been awarded with honours in India as well. Biju Patnaik, in the half century after independence, had been associated with the annual Kalinga Prize for the Popularisation of Science. After awards to Julian Huxley in 1953 and Konrad Lorenz in 1969, David Attenborough was awarded this UNESCO prize in 1981. More recently, shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic began and most of the world went into lockdown, the Indira Gandhi prize, which was set up shortly after the death of Indira Gandhi, was awarded to Attenborough. The trustees perhaps had the occasion to watch some of his productions in the lockdown. The Year Earth Changed (2021), about the restorative effects of the lockdown, had him just as the narrator. He may have been late in alerting his viewers to the biggest threat to this planet but perhaps his viewers should not be late in acknowledging the joy of awareness that is brought into the lives of millions of TV viewers by David Attenborough.
