Headline Nov23,2012/

TELEVISION ON :

''BUT, BUT GOD'S CREATURES?​!''

Having enjoyed success and controversy earlier this century with a series of human autopsies, many channels have gambled that the screen is ripe for bigger game, a game in which the show to work, it needed to see inside some of the real giants.

Thus those dissected for our delectation included a whale, a giraffe, a crocodile and an elephant. All this happened not to too long ago and on a highly regarded channel.


Made in conjunction with the Royal Veterinary College. The subjects were all donated by the zoos around Europe. Except the whale which had washed up on a beach and was thus in no position to complain about the comparative indignity of televised evisceration. In short time, like the animals, the show found itself in pieces. There was this 25 seconds montage of what takes place, and it was astounding.


For a start, the men doing the operations were all in orange jumpsuits, which lend itself the already surreal footage of vast and glistening guts pouring forth from some TV's best-loved subjects with an air tabloid fantasy. As the pathologist pulled back the sheet covering the dead elephant, it was difficult not to be impressed by the scale and nature of what was on display. Whole organs the size of people, great tubes of matter, huge sheets of veined tissues stretched out like laundry and endless, alien-looking items spilling from the side of whale.


This was in its way as instructive and awesome a reminder of the astonishing scope of Nature as footage of those creatures alive; even more so perhaps.
And there in his orange jumpsuit of his very own stood ''evolutionary biologist'' Richard Dawkins. There to remind us no doubt that though spectacular, these things were not, in a strictest sense of the word, miraculous. Majestic animals undoubtedly, but God's creatures??!! Get a grip on yourself, ''ex-monkey''. That giraffe on the table could be you!! Hahaha!


The presence of the Professor raises many many intriguing possibilities? I leave it to you readers to conjure up all the visions! A service like this. available at the push of red button perhaps, could help to keep TV one step ahead of the Internet.
Just after, even at the same time, The Internet beat TV into a natural history corner with the genuinely viral success of the Battle at Kruger clip: a three way dust up between lions, buffalo and crocodiles that hit 43 million YouTube views.


Where then was Professor Dawkins to remind the Online hordes that what they were watching was simply simply Evolution in Action, and not the struggle between ''good'' and ''bad'' animals that it might have appeared to be?
Busy on Television, probably! Hahaha!


Frankly and truthfully, it is partly our inclination to impose a narrative onto nature that fuels our desire to observe it. The fact that this is tricky  when nature is big and dead and being divided up in front of you is partly what Animals: The Inside Story such a good prospect.
And TV narratives can be really inflicting! Hahaha!


Many thanks to !WOW!

Good Night & God bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless