FILM AND THE AMERICAN MORAL VISION OF NATURE – Theodore Roosevelt to Walt Disney by Ronald B. Tobias. Michigan State U. Press, East Lansing, MI, msupress.msu.edu. 2011. 250+xix pages. $39.95 hardcover ISBN 978-1-61186-001-6 illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
As Tobias shows, Theodore Roosevelt’s outsize personality and exploits shaped not only American foreign policy, but also shaped Americans’ relationship to and perspective on nature. Tobias is a professor of science and natural history filmmaking at Montana State U. whose films have appeared on PBS, the Discovery Channel, the Travel Channel. and elsewhere.
In the macroscopic, simplistic view, TR reflected the ingrained, characteristic national belief of the US heroically forging its way in the world, overcoming any challenges, and seeking out new ventures by which to test its mettle and prowess and thus beneficially remold the world in its image. Tobias however brings out the underside of this image, both its undesirable and frequently harmful effects and also the blind spots in it as a concept embodied in the national image. The lasting impact of Roosevelt’s attitude toward nature and related exploits especially of hunting in the West and in Africa are the foundation of the book with the author following strands of these as presumptions about nature, racism, Africa as the Dark Continent, American virtue, and practically divine destiny.
Even TR’s enthusiasm for national parks evidences the presumption that nature can be circumscribed and thus defined according to national policy. And in pursuing such policy so the public can have an appreciation of nature, this objectifies nature and gives it a status as entertainment more than environment. Such popular policy is markedly different, for example, from Native American attunement to nature.
Walt Disney’s usually fanciful and benign (e. g., singing, dancing animals) picture of nature is seen more as a facet of Roosevelt’s attitude and treatment of nature than a change of it. “Disney’s portrayal of nature reflects an intoxicating mix of spiritual idealism, self-loathing, and a longing for innocence, outlooks he shared with Americans as a result of a common ideological heritage…[for example] disney recast [animals] in patently human domestic terms so average Americans could identify with how animals fought for their share of the American Dream.”
The book is timely and engaging because its illumination of the ambivalent American attitude toward nature which is ultimately distancing and imperialistic is done in terms of media and imagery making it a work on popular culture. Tobias offers stimulating insights and different evaluations of familiar features of popular culture such as Roosevelt’s tracking down thieves who stole his canoe, his hunting elephants in Africa, and Disney’s animated films. One such entertaining thread is precursors of the movie King Kong shown to be an outstanding example of the ambivalent regard of nature with alternating sentimentality toward King Kong and the climactic killing of him atop the Empire State Building, one of modern culture’s crowning achievements, by a symbol of modern culture’s technology, airplanes with mounted machine guns. For the reader. entertainment and enlightenment are seamlessly wedded.