Evening Cup Of Tea

Audiences were attracted by The True Life Adventures’ presentation of a sentimental and
sanitised vision of nature, which, although not always harmonious, could be understood and
rationalised in simple terms. They were entertaining and educational, but not too scientific.
Disney instinctively favoured filmmakers with an “experiential” connection to nature, based on
the craft of the woodsman or that of the amateur naturalist and acquired through time spent in
the field, rather than those with a more purely scientific bent (Mitman 1999: 118). Scientists
were engaged in making a number of the films but only a few included scientific advisors in their
credits. The preferred narratives of many of the films, with their motifs of young animals
struggling to survive and of journey’s undertaken in harsh and unforgiving environments, were
more theological than scientific. This is best demonstrated by Nature’s Half-Acre (1951), a two-
reel film ostensibly about the origin of species, which manages to make no mention of evolution.
Instead, as Mitman observes, the “web of life” is explained in theological terms reminiscent of the
nineteenth century Linnaean notion of the balance of nature, in which species vary and keep one
another in check (but never explicitly evolve) under “Nature’s” watchful eye (1999: 128) As such,
they were designed to keep conservationists, scientists and evangelicals onside. And for a time
they succeeded.