Making animals public: early wildlife television and the emergence of environmental nationalism on the ABC

Abstract

This paper analyses how animals became devices of the public in the early years of ABC television. It investigates the challenges of how to make animals televisual and reflects on the various forms of public interest and environmental awareness these animals generated. Over this period most animal content on the ABC was imported from the BBC. By examining a 1956 episode of Attenborough’s Zoo Quest, we see how capturing wild animals on film was technically difficult and required a range of devices to contain and display animals for TV. These techniques provoked a form of viewing where the sovereign human gaze prevailed. We then examine an early ABC nature documentary, Dancing Orpheus (1962). It used techniques of visual capture that displayed lyrebirds ‘in the wild’ in what appeared to be a state of natural and spontaneous self-betrayal. However, in the final scenes these birds were problematised as living in a threatened environment and therefore vulnerable. Shifting from objects of natural beauty performing for audiences, these birds demanded public concern. We investigate how ABC animals and their publics were implicated in an environmental nationalism as it emerged over the 1960s and early 1970s.