From Kearton to Attenborough: Fashioning the Telenaturalist's Identity (original) (raw)

This paper, centred on two British figures of natural history film-making, Cherry Kearton (1871-1940) and David Attenborough (born 1926), examines how the figure of the natural history film-maker was historically constructed as one of expertise, and how such claims to expertise were sustained. A key element was for both character to demonstrate their intimacy with the natural world. The period under consideration spans from 1909, when Kearton started filming wildlife in Africa, to 1957, when Attenborough was offered the position of head of the BBC Natural History Unit, after he had produced three Zoo quest expeditions, thus demonstrating his skills at natural history television-making. In both cases the analysis is based on autobiographical documents and commentaries published in the British daily press. Regarding Attenborough, additional sources are the material found at the BBC written archives centre. The study makes use of the analytical tools and models developed in the constructivist history of science to make sense of the identity fashioning activities of knowledge producers, specially the notions of ‘bricolage’ and of performance. As the paper demonstrates, the public persona fashioned by the two individuals under scrutiny is an instance of two distinct types of expertise combined to form one identity. In order to appear as trustworthy natural history film-makers, Kearton and Attenborough will have to convince their audience of their expertise both as naturalist and as film-maker, hence the term ‘telenaturalist’ suggested to designate the hybrid identity thus fashioned.

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