For Purpose or Power

This past Thursday, better known as Earth Day, my roommate and I went to see Oceans, the new nature documentary from DisneyNature. Last Earth Day the released, the documentary Earth, which depicts various wild habitats and animals across the globe. The film is themed around anthropogenic environmental change and uses the polar bear, the humpback whale, and the African elephant to illustrate the threats to Earth’s wildlife. Both movies in my opinion were lovely – especially since I’ve lately been completely obsessed with nature documentaries.

I first heard about Oceans, interesting enough, through previews featured before the film Earth. What is so strange is that besides that preview that I saw over a year ago, I have heard nothing about Oceans, while I remember there being a significant amount of promotion for the film Earth. For a film that is supposed to send this extremely positive message about making life decisions to reduce individual carbon footprints, Disney took little steps in making the public aware – or at least to my knowledge. In addition to this, the previews before Oceans, featured a documentary called African Cats, the third film produced by DisneyNature, which like the previous films will be released on Earth Day.

As soon as I saw the film, while of course I was tremendously excited, I had a strange feeling that Disney is once again trying to use its power to manipulate. The environment is an incredibly popular topic. For example the Discovery Channel just released an 11-part series called Life, which explored different habitats and animals. But the Discovery Channel has always been doing something along those lines. Only within recent years, the years that people have had concern for the environment, has Disney decided to make movies focusing on the daily threat to these beautiful creatures. What is one supposed to think? I’ll leave that one up to you..

You can watch the teaser trailer for African Cats by clicking here