MovieChat Forums > Human Planet (2011) Discussion > This documentary is dishonest

This documentary is dishonest

posted 13 years ago by kuip3148
7 replies | jump to latest

Apparently the production team set out to 'show the remarkable ways humans have adapted to life in every environment on Earth'. We are treated to a bunch of gorefests involving impoverished people killing every animal under the sun. As much as this is a sad indictment on what qualifies as significant human achievements, why didn't they show the real 'relationship with the natural world' we humans have? Oceans being fished empty, 20% of mammals on the verge of extinction, pollution all over the planet, to name a few. Instead we get to witness the glorification of trivial ways arbitrary people have found to kill a shark. It's neither a celebration of mankind's achievements nor is it a true representation of mankind's relationship with this planet. This documentary does not deserve to be associated with the incredible Planet Earth.

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] cowboy_sandy 13 years ago

Actually, it shows that out of all the creatures nature has evolved on this planet, one has learned how to not exist only in a certain environment, but all it comes across. We even have started to learn how to adapt the environment to us.

Nature made us the Jack of all Trades animal.

[–] bruce-129 12 years ago

I'm interested in seeing it, but your points are probably valid. If it will make you happy I think the world will be learning all the stuff you are mentioning real soon. It is sickening, human being are not the intelligent beings we think we are, we cannot even keep from ruining our environment that we depend for life on. Most of us scurry around doing whatever we can to get one tiny little thing more than our neighbor

[–] limskragma 12 years ago

Why?
The instinct to survive is not foreign to any other living organism on Earth, including humans.

I did find the series to give a fair representation on how the relationship
between humans and environment can bring both harm and equilibrium.
If not anything the series does make a point that if humans are capable of finding ways to adapt under so many different conditions, we can use those abilities even now to find ways to mitigate the detrimental effects we have on our surroundings. After all, it's the humans as species that are gonna disappear if anything happens. The planet has ways to change its face entirely, but still survive.

And true, while the ugly industrial production side of our living is not shown here, those small representations of survival and some little examples shown of communities finding solutions to their sustainable living (like the dessert people who only fish at one time during the dry season to preserve the site from exploitation, so that in the next year they can find food there again)make a point that you can find solutions even without seeking exponential growth all the time (since that one inevitably comes crashing down at some point as it is a cyclical process).

[–] omerzen-428-933859 12 years ago

everyone gotta eat man...including humans.

[–] krakhouse 7 years ago

The OP just wanted a politically correct whine-fest.

The aim of this series is something different. It attempts to show the ability of human beings to adapt to every environment on our planet. This is something that our ancestors needed to do in order to survive and in many episodes the connection with our past human experience is highlighted.

This documentary does not preach about how awful human beings are to our own planet, this is not a piece of socio-political propaganda. Of course people are self interested and destroy the resources that the planet offers but that is a different subject, a different documentary.

[–] mariakelly-04164 7 years ago

I agree with everything you said. I guess that the OP wasn't paying attention to the fact that most of the people in the series don't have a choice when it comes to killing and eating animals.

For instance, the Indonesian island shown in the Oceans episode can't grow almost anything on land, so hunting whales is their only option.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.