Planet propaganda

If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love this latest masterpiece of the genre: Our Planet. The Netflix nature series exploits the prestige, popularity and swansinging poignancy of Sir David Attenborough to promote an environmental message so relentlessly dishonest and alarmist it might have been scripted by the WWF.

‘Walruses committing suicide because of global warming.’ That was the nonsense from episode two repeated uncritically by all the newspapers, none of which seems to have been much interested in questioning the veracity of the claim. You’ll never guess what it was that really drove those walruses over the edge of the cliff… Ironically, the likely culprits were polar bears — that supposedly threatened species whose population has grown exponentially in the past 50 years to the point where they are now beginning to become something of a pest.

But obviously you were never going to hear any of that from TV’s favourite whispery-voiced gorilla-hugging Malthusian. Why let the facts get in the way of his narrative, which is that in the past 50 years the human species has catastrophically altered the balance of nature (hitherto ‘stable’, apparently) which has been plunged into chaos by man-made climate change?

I shan’t detail all the arrantly false claims, which I’m sure you’ll find patiently rebutted on the internet soon enough. Instead, I want to focus on the shamelessly manipulative nature of the production, which in future years I’m sure will be offered in MI6 seminars on how to brainwash millions without their having a clue they are being brainwashed.

Music, as Riefenstahl knew, is key. The score of Our Planet hammers home the message with all the subtlety of an amplified kettle drum: exaggeratedly comical, wacky circus music for when the manakin birds are performing their funny carousel dance routines; thrilling, stirring adventure music for when the wolves chase the caribou or the hunting dogs go after the wildebeest; achingly sad violin music for when the fledgling flamingo staggers to a slow, agonised death as its little legs are shackled with encrusted salt.