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Works Cited

Barnes, Brooks. “Disney Looks to Nature, and Creates a Film Division to Capture It.” The New York Times, 22 Apr. 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/business/media/22disney.html.

Bouse, Derek. Wildlife Films. U of Pennsylvania P, 2011.

Chang, Justin. “Review: Disneynature Doc 'Elephant' is Gorgeous if Much Too Obvious (tusk, Tusk).” Los Angeles Times, 1 Apr. 2020, www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-04-01/elephant-disneynature-review.

Crowther, Bosley. “DISNEY TREATMENT; Walt and His Boys Continue to Play Tricks In Their True-Life Adventure Films.” The New York Times, 22 Nov. 1953, www.nytimes.com/1953/11/22/archives/disney-treatment-walt-and-his-boys-continue-to-play-tricks-in-their.html.

---. “The Screen in Review; ‘Vanishing Prairie,’ by Disney, at Fine Arts (Published 1954).” The New York Times, 17 Aug. 1954, www.nytimes.com/1954/08/17/archives/the-screen-in-review-vanishing-prairie-by-disney-at-fine-arts.html.

“Disneynature Bears: Cast Interview.” YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa5wJ5tqWuI.

“Disneynature.” Disneynature, nature.disney.com/.

Erbland, Kate. “Disneynature is Creating a New Generation of Documentary Fans.” The Dissolve, 20 Apr. 2015, thedissolve.com/features/exposition/996-disneynature-is-creating-a-new-generation-of-docum/.

Jenkins, Mark. “‘Monkey Kingdom’ Is Best When It's All Monkeys All The Time.” NPR, 16 Apr. 2015, www.npr.org/2015/04/16/400085306/monkey-kingdom-is-best-when-its-all-monkeys-all-the-time.

Korkis, Jim. “In Their Own Words: The People Who Worked on the True-Life Adventures.” MousePlanet, 26 Aug. 2020, www.mouseplanet.com/12740/In_Their_Own_Words_The_People_Who_Worked_on_the_TrueLife_Adventures.

Molloy, Claire, et al. “Independent Nature: Wildlife films between Hollywood and Indiewood.” American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood and Beyond, Routledge, 2013, pp. 165-177.

“Seal Island.” Walt Disney Studios True-Life Adventures, www.moviepostershop.com/seal-island-movie-poster-1948.

Tobias, Ronald. “Sex, Love, and Death: Disney’s True-Life Fantasies,” in Learning from

Mickey, Donald and Walt ed. A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2011.

von Mueller, Eddy. “It Is a Small World After All: Earth and the Disneyfication of Planet Earth,”

in Learning from Mickey, Donald and Walt ed. A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2011.

“Walt and the True-Life Adventures.” The Walt Disney Family Museum, 9 Feb. 2012, www.waltdisney.org/blog/walt-and-true-life-adventures.

Walt Disney Studios. “Earth- Official Movie Trailer (watch in HD!).” 31 Mar. 2009, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeacjOkLjZ0.

“Walt Disney's SECRETS OF LIFE Beginning and End of Movie in Widescreen and CinemaScope.” YouTube, 21 Aug. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Z41WMVE_I.

Woodford, Riley. “Lemming Suicide Myth Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior.” Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Sept. 2003, www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56.

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In Chapter 12 of IIB, author Claire Molloy discusses how Disneynature has come out as Indiewood due to the long pause and transition from the traditional Hollywood of True-Life Adventures. Disneynature may be an Independent genre studio subsidiary, but the bottom line is Disney itself. Disney strives for the “halo effect” over every genre, as Robert Iger discussed at the very beginning of Disneynature. As Molloy concludes, Disneynature’s version of independent wildlife films is a version of Indiewood that continues to “reshape itself to fit in the amorphous space between indie and Hollywood” (IIB 175). As it currently stands, the “Disneyfication” of nature films only continues to grow.

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This is the Disneynature logo, which is an iceberg shaped as the Sleeping Beauty castle that can be found at Disneyland in California.

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Images in Disneynature films reinforce family, monogamy, and citizenship, which are all values that the American public holds close to their heart and highly regard, but contrast with the supposed untouched and raw values of nature films themselves (Tobias). However, there is a reason for this. These values are easily recognizable, which speaks to audiences of all ages and, “exposes cinema’s smallest fans to the limits and possibilities of what a documentary film can do, [and] how vital and real it can feel to its viewership” (Erbland). This is an important part of the Disneynature goal mentioned in 2008 by Robert Iger, that Disney plans to create a halo effect on the genre.

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To see directors, producers, cast members, and crew involved talk about the intimacy of filming in nature for the 2014 feature film Bears, watch this roundtable discussion.

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Similar to reviews of True-Life Adventures, recent Disneynature has been criticized for dramatization, humanization, and narrative storylines of their films. A Los Angeles Times review of Elephant (2020) reads, “like most Disneynature films before it, [it] is not exactly shy about projecting recognizable human motivations onto its animal characters and encouraging us to do the same” (Chang). Similarly, an NPR review of Monkey Kingdom (2015) says, “there are times when the story told by narrator Tina Fey probably doesn’t reflect the extraordinary images directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill captured” (Jenkins). While Disneynature captures images of nature and wildlife untouched by human interference, narration and script can twist the lives of animals just as much as Lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide in White Wilderness.

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Since the release of Earth (2007), Disneynature has released The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos (2008), OceanWorld 3D (2009), Oceans (2009), Wings of Life (2011), African Cats (2011), Chimpanzee (2012), Bears (2014), Monkey Kingdom (2015), Growing Up Wild (2016), March of the Penguins 2 (2017), Born in China (2016), Ghost of the Mountains (2017), Dolphin Reef (2018), Penguins (2019), and Elephant (2020). Disneynature typically releases one film each Earth Day, something that is a marketing tactic strategically used as a recognized International Holiday (IIB 173). While the pandemic may have played a role in the lack of Disneynature film being released this year, the studio surely isn’t losing any steam.

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Here is the trailer for the first Disneynature film, Earth. The film can be seen as somewhat of a transition from True-Life Adventures to the Disneynature brand of wildlife films as well as the beginning of the Disneynature era that is still thriving today.

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After the 2005 documentary March of the Penguins from Warner Independent and the 2006 Planet Earth series by BBC and the Discovery Channel, Disney decided to strap on their old and worn boots to get their hands back into the business of wildlife films. In 2008, Disney’s Chief Executive, Robert Iger, said the success of the aforementioned film and series re-sparked Disney’s interest in the genre (Barnes). Iger told the New York Times that, “We were blown away by that TV series and we wished the Disney name was on it,” and hoped that with their own new productions that Disney could provide a halo effect on the nature genre like it has to so many others (Barnes). Clearly, not only is “Disneyfication” real, it is recognized and strived for by the company itself. And in 2007 with the release of the Disneynature brand and the release of the film Earth, Disney began to do just that.

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Critics in the 50s also questioned the films. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote in 1954 in a review of The Vanishing Prairiethat the particular film, along with other True-Life Adventures, “hold up a mirror to nature, but the mirror isn’t always flat and clear. Sometimes it is willfully angled or distorted for the sake of a gag…The Disney boys do not aim to mislead. They simply desire to shape and order nature so that it will captivate and amuse” (Crowther 1954). In a nutshell, Crowther compares Disney’s portrayal of natural life to something similar to what you might see in a fun-house mirror; you see your reflection, but it’s not truly or perfectly reflective. Additionally, he wrote in a 1953 review of The Living Desert that, “it remains to be seen how untruthful the True-Life series will become” (Crowther 1953). Crowther believed that the Disney classic stories of fairytales and happy endings would seep into their ­wildlife films. As evidence from his 1954 review of The Vanishing Prairie, he was right. Despite negative and questioning reviews, Disney’s True-Life Adventuresremained a staple around the country. In a book titled Wildlife Films, author Derek Bouse admits that “for a time Disney’s wildlife films reached and perhaps influenced more viewers globally than any other nature-oriented media” (Bouse). As Bouse said, the reach of the True-Life Adventures is undeniable. And although the series ceased production after 1960, Disney recently decided they were not done with nature films.

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Despite use for educational purposes in schools, the ­True-Life Adventures­ could not escape questions and critique. And, in the case of White Wilderness (1957), there were even falsehoods presented as a natural truth. In 2003, nearly half a century after the film’s release, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game had to publish an official article myth-busting the so-called “Lemming mass-suicide” that White Wilderness portrays. The official report reads, “Lemmings are a kind of short-tailed vole, a mouse-like rodent that favors tundra and open grasslands. Three kinds are found in Alaska, including the collared lemming, the only rodent that turns white in winter.… ‘White Wilderness’ featured a segment on lemmings, detailing their strange compulsion to commit mass suicide. According to a 1983 investigation by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer Brian Vallee, the lemming scenes were faked. The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. The epic ‘lemming migration’ was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles, and a few dozen lemmings running on snow-covered lazy-Susan style turntable” (Woodford). So, it seems that despite Walt Disney’s and James Algar’s claims that the films were accurate and untouched raw footage of nature, they were less than accurate at some parts. For more information on Lemmings and details about the specific incident in White Wilderness, you can find the rest of the article here: https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56

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Here is a clip including the beginning credits and last several minutes of Secrets of Life that displays the film’s switch from widescreen to cinemascope in the last five minutes of the feature.

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While production of the True-Life Adventures ended in 1960 with Jungle Cat, the criticism and acclaim were seemingly never-ending. Out of the thirteen productions, eight won academy awards, and all were shown as educational films in public schools across the United States (“Walt and the True-Life Adventures”). The films were presented as educational and raw footage of the natural world. Walt Disney said on the projects that, “In the beginning, we sought with the True-Life Adventures to create something new in screen entertainment. That they combined education with entertainment was a natural development… It is our hope and our objective, however, eventually to make them [these films] available in the non-theatrical field” (Korkis). Disney valued the educational aspects of his films while recognizing their entertainment value and striving towards something more. Similar to Walt himself, the director of Secrets of Life (1956), James Algar said that the True-Life Adventures are, “reliable records on film of natural science subjects and wildlife which many educational authorities that envisaged and enthusiastically proposed ad valuable visual aids to school instruction by book and lecture” (Korkis). As soon as the films were seen as valuable to the academy, education began to take notice. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and even beyond, students would watch the films in classes, and when VHS became popular the children of those students would soon watch True-Life Adventures in the comfort of their own homes and on the screen in schools as well (von Mueller). Disney’s True-Life Adventures were defining representations of the natural world for many Americans, and, likely, only a few students in the country who attended school in the era would have been able to escape exposure to the films (von Mueller).

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This is the poster for Seal Island, the very first installment of Disney’s True-Life Adventures.

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Disney’s grapple with nature films began in the 1950s with the production of thirteen nature films that are known as the True-Life Adventures. Walt Disney himself began this series himself in 1949 with Seal Island. With interest in the vanishing frontier, Disney hired husband and wife Alfred and Elma Milotte to shoot everything they could in Alaska (“Walt and the True-Life Adventures”). The married couple shot everything from businesses to the Inuit people to wildlife, and Walt zeroed in on the footage they captured of seals (“Walt and the True-Life Adventures”). Seal Island ran for 27 minutes and first premiered at Pasadena Crown Theater in December of 1948 and ended up winning an academy award for Best Documentary (“Walt and the True-Life Adventures”). And so, the True-Life Adventures film series began. For a decade, Disney produced nature films and wildlife documentaries about animals and elements all around the globe. The thirteen films include Seal Island (1949), (In) Beaver Valley (1950), Nature’s Half Acre (1951), The Olympic Elk (1952), Water Birds (1952), The Living Desert (1953), Bear Country (1953), Prowlers of the Everglades (1953), The Vanishing Prairie (1954), The African Lion (1955), Secrets of Life (1956), White Wilderness (1957), and Jungle Cat (1960).

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For my final blog post of the semester, I will be discussing the “Disneyfication” of nature films and wildlife documentaries. In “It Is a Small World After All: Earth and the Disneyfication of Planet Earth,” Eddy von Mueller defines “Disneyfication” as the overwhelming narrative-driven pattern seen in Disney’s True-Life Adventures, that ostensibly strips away at the ambiance and education of the typical nature film (von Mueller 181). While “Disneyfication” can be applied to any of the multitudes of genres or styles that the conglomeration has seemingly taken over, I am focusing on much of what von Mueller discusses in his essay. The “Disneyfication” of nature films is upon us, and it began earlier than you might have thought. As Walt Disney Studios increases the production of their wildlife and nature documentaries through Disneynature, there will be a “Disneyfication” in which less and less wildlife and nature documentaries are produced and distributed outside of Disney, resulting in the loss of independence of the Independent wildlife film genre and an increase in the Indiewood approach to wildlife filmmaking.

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When Cameron Post is sent to God’s Promise conversion camp when she gets caught with her girlfriend, she is met with emotional abuse, unlikely friendships, and grapples with acceptance of herself and others. In A.O. Scott’s New York Times review (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/movies/the-miseducation-of-cameron-post-review-chloe-grace-moretz.html) of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, the film is characterized as being “more interested in how its characters feel than in what they might symbolize…it’s also about the struggle between earnest young people and the equally earnest, painfully misguided adults who are trying to save their souls.” Through bed checks, karaoke nights, group discussions about sin and salvation, and the occasional field trip, teens at God’s Promise are trapped in more than a prison, the minds of those around them. After a fellow camper ends up in the hospital due to self-harm, Cameron and two friends, Jane and Adam, decide they cannot stay at God’s Promise any longer. The film closes on them walking through the forest away from camp and hitchhiking an escape.