The Work of Environmentalism in an Age of Televisual Adventures

Abstract

This article argues that the otherwise exemplary claims of contemporary environmental activism and activists who champion habitat protection, animal rights, and biological diversity are often uncannily complicit with long-standing and problematic tropes of adventure, danger, man-over-nature, and even the spectacular figures of fictional and real adventurers of another era. Employing this perspective enables us to make critical sense of the televisual world and ecopolitical implications of the media personality, Steve Irwin, better known to his global viewing audiences as the ‘Crocodile Hunter’. In these ‘documentary adventures’, Irwin captures dangerous reptiles and explains their behavior with the often-stated goal of generating support for his conservation efforts. A critique of Irwin’s visualization of environmentalism-as-adventure entails examining the comparisons often made between Tarzan and Irwin, exploring the place of the Crocodile Hunter in the history of documentary film’s depictions of nature and its problems, and considering the consumerist philosophies that underlie mediatized representations of danger, adventure, and environmental activism. The article closely reads one particular film in which Irwin engages in a deliberate and specific kind of ecopolitics, a dramatic wildlife rescue in war-torn East Timor, and demonstrates how the apolitical and ahistorical spectacle of Irwin’s engagement with crocodiles out competes messages about the difficulties of practicing conservation in the real world.