Customer Reviews

Eden at the End of the World

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Penguins received a disproportionate amount of coverage in this work. I really think the work would like to piggyback on the success of "Happy Feet." It covers a region that the main character visited in the animated film. One difference is that this showed a seal that outran a penguin, whereas that movie implied that South American penguins were safe from clumsy seals once they reached the shore. I question whether this work is child-friendly like the movie. Jeremy Irons' narration, which channels Patrick Stewart's voice, and the biological issues raised may not excite young ones.

On the one hand, this work just says, "Here is one animal of the region, then here is another." People who want to ignore the terrible ecological impact that humans are having all over the world could minimize this into just a wild kingdom special. However, the narration spells out how humans are being harmful. It showed an alpaca's relative's carcass stuck on barbed wire. If animals can't travel, they can't chase faraway food. Western sheep tear up grasses that other animals need. Also addressed in "Happy Feet," when human capture so much squid and fish from down there, the animals that used to have those fish all to themselves now starve. There was a tit-for-tat here. The work says beavers from North America are messing up the land. Though the work says nothing on the subject, in Louisiana, the nutria, a South American rodent, is ruining land.

When you see Brazilian citizens burning down the Amazon, you can tell why that region is in trouble. When you hear that China has more than one billion citizens, you can connect the dots and see why pandas face extinction. There are very few humans seen here. For each animal that is presented here as cute, they also show its predator killing it. "Nature is cruel," but I don't know how often documentaries chant that jingo nowadays. For example, they show seals that kill penguins, but they also show seals being killed by killer whales. One day I saw a hawk kill a seagull right in front of my eyes and I was horrified. However, here birds are seen eating other birds that were dying or dead. Though unspoken, perhaps the predator birds are doing the species a favor by removing dead animals that would just spread germs.

I question the term "eden" in the title. Perhaps they are using the word to mean a place without civilization or large numbers of humans. However, the definition that says Eden was the birth place of man wouldn't make sense here. The definition that says Eden would be a perfect, flawless place for man wouldn't work here either. Eden was a place that can be viewed as designed for man and this work suggests this was an Eden without man's meddling. Basically, I guess I would have given it another title.