A lot of ignorant people are calling David Attenborough a hoaxer for using footage of zoo-dwelling polar bears in his latest nature programme. I bet these foolish hypocrites have enjoyed countless action movies in which stuntmen pretend to be Bruce Willis or Daniel Craig. What D.A. did was far more justified because: (i) there are no A-list actors in the polar bear community and (ii) all polar bears look the same to humans. Television viewers who want to see close-ups of real wild polar bears should piss off to the North Pole with a pair of binoculars.
I have to be honest and declare a personal interest here. D.A. is a personal friend who has often asked me about gorilla etiquette. He once hired me as a consultant for a film shoot in the Congo.
“Is it OK if I grunt and make eye-contact with the females?” he asked.
“Not advisable with wild females, Davy,” I said. “They might think you were making a pass at them and end up sitting on your face. I suggest you shoot the scene at London Zoo. The female gorillas there are used to men flirting with them and know it’s just pussy-teasing.”
Davy did as I suggested, and the BBC obtained some brilliant footage of him chatting up a female gorilla as she pouted and fluttered her eyelids. One of the most enthralling scenes ever filmed in a natural history show.
Humans often ask me whether I approve of wildlife documentaries. It’s the sort of question that makes me want to lie on my back and scratch my chin with my toes. Like many things in life, they have their pros and cons. A positive feature is that the sex they contain is suitable for family audiences. Because let’s face it, most human parents are far too embarrassed to tell their children how babies are made. It’s much easier to let them watch animals do it and put two-and-two together.
This is why documentary-makers should exercise discretion in the species they select for their hard-core scenes. Definitely not baboons. After watching them mate, boys might think that having sex involves drilling away for 10 seconds like a woodpecker and then running off to boast about it to their buddies. Elephants are not advisable either. The size and shape of a bull elephant’s appendage makes me clench my anus, so heaven knows how innocent girls would react.
So much for the sex, but what about the violence? In my view, it gives modern humans the same kind of kicks that the Roman amphitheatre used to provide. Why are lions the most popular wildlife attraction? Because people want to see them chase down a zebra and bite chunks out of it. As a vegetarian gorilla, I find it pretty sickening, but at least lions don’t combine their violence with sex, like in a Tarentino movie. Can anyone explain why the black crime baron got raped by the white gimp-handler in Pulp Fiction? If that’s entertainment, I’m a duck-billed platypus.
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