Introduction

How have wildlife documentaries from Southern Africa influenced viewers directly or indirectly? Have they influenced other cultural products or led to financial, political, social or legislative changes? In a conversation with Kobie Kruger, Jamie Uys’s son-in-law, he asked whether any of Attenborough’s serious documentaries had the effect on public views of conservation and hunting that Disney’s Bambi, for example, had. Perhaps Uys’s own light-hearted but sympathetic portrayals of wild animals did more to change attitudes than many earnest documentaries – but what evidence is there, or could there be?

Without more detailed audience figures and a different kind of research project, most of what follows in this chapter is speculative and impressionistic but may at least open up future research possibilities. The first section examines what influence these documentaries had on other cultural products, particularly films; the second section what influence these films have had on attitudes towards animals and conservation; the third section looks at the financial and political effects of these films; the fourth at their impact on social relationships and particularly on gender relationships.

The Cultural Influence

At various points in the study, parallels with other films or genre emerged: for example in the similarity between the Hugheses’ shocking revelation of spider predation and Alien. In one case, however, it seems that these documentaries had some effect on the most influential film about African animals in the last 30 years: Disney’s original animated Lion King (1994). Though sources such as Wikipedia give a long history of planning and trips to Kenya tohelp the animators, Dereck Joubert suggests that their films were highly influential: