Wild Things and Artificial Things

I have some misgivings about Project Wild Thing in some (rather effete) respects, but it is powerful, is delivering its message in a novel way, and we need more of its kind.  There has been some complaining from some quarters about the allegedly disrespectful treatment of a frog in the ad for the film, which is shown being licked by a child.  The allegation is that this treatment does not offer an appropriate role model to other children – the adults making the film should offer a more respectful example.

An adult should indeed model respect for nature in the process of introducing children to it.  But respect grows slowly in children.  They are not held back by such cerebral concepts at first – they have an instinctive love, but only stubby fingers to express it.  Respect is a product of practice – holding, feeling, hurting, regretting, learning, hurting again, learning again, working foolishly and working well, and then finally understanding what it was we unconsciously loved in the first place.

Meanwhile, the RSPB offer a little film on their website which describes the making of their current TV advert for their ‘Giving Nature a Home’ campaign – http://www.rspb.org.uk/film/69697956.aspx.  I find this little documentary almost unspeakably depressing.  Yes, I know all the arguments about reach and the power of TV, and the need to have control in the props you use when doing high-quality ad-style filming.  But there is something almost malign about this for me.  The falseness, the crowd of marketeers, the cool metropolitan attitude, the suave corporate assurance of RSPB execs, the (unintended) cynicism towards the public, the notion that ‘the only’ way to reach the masses out there is through television.  Some will, I’m sure, applaud the RSPB for taking a grown up attitude to marketing their message in the same way as the rest of the Powerful do, but I think it stinks of a Faustian bargain.  A talking head in the film says “we want the public to fall in love with hedgehogs, ladybirds and the RSPB”.  Well, forgive me for saying so, but those three things are NOT on a level, and the mistake of the big NGOs is to fall into the smug belief that they are.  I hope people are inspired by the ad – of course I do – but I hope they respond by going out in their garden and connecting with the bugs and birds there – NOT by joining the RSPB.