Certain people of your acquaintance will tell you they can't watch movies that portray violence. They can't watch gangster movies, war movies, even movies about marriage or family life that involve rape or physical abuse. That sort of thing.
I would never tell you that about what I watch; I'd watch anything portraying those things if its dramatic/artistic/cinematic quality were up to a certain standard (which I won't attempt to define, but which is implicit in my list of rated "
Last 100 Films & TV Programs Watched").
But in watching
the first episode of Frozen Planet off our DVR Monday evening (
To the Ends of the Earth1), I learned (or was reminded) that the type of violence I do have a hard time watching is the violence of Nature's food chain. In that first episode, for example, a surfing penguin struggles valiantly (but unsuccessfully) to escape a hungry sea-lion, and a team of orcas create giant waves to (successfully) wash a seal off an ice floe. The doomed seal does manage to scramble back onto the floe, but it is so exhausted that moments later it can't resist when an orca grabs its tail and pulls it off the floe. The sadness of that seal's slow descent into the water to be made a meal of was almost unbearable to me.
I think that's why I've watched nothing but episodes of
Hack since then, rather than watch the second episode of
Frozen Planet (
Spring2).
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- From the Internet Movie Database:
David Attenborough travels to the end of the earth, taking viewers on an extraordinary journey across the polar regions of our planet, North and South. The Arctic and Antarctic are the greatest and least known wildernesses of all—magical ice worlds inhabited by the most bizarre and hardy creatures on earth. Our journey begins with David at the North Pole, as the sun returns after six months of darkness. We follow a pair of courting polar bears, which reveal a surprisingly tender side. Next stop is the giant Greenland ice cap, where waterfalls plunge into the heart of the ice and a colossal iceberg carves into the sea. Humpback whales join the largest gathering of seabirds on earth to feast in rich Alaskan waters. Further south, the tree line marks the start of the Taiga forest, containing one third of all trees on earth. Here, 25 of the world's largest wolves take on formidable bison prey. At the other end of our planet, the Antarctic begins in the Southern Ocean where surfing penguins struggle to escape a hungry sea-lion and teams of orcas create giant waves to wash seals from ice floes -a filming first. Diving below the ice, we discover prehistoric giants, including terrifying sea spiders and woodlice the size of dinner plates. Above ground, crystal caverns ring the summit of Erebus, the most southerly volcano on earth. From here we retrace the routes of early explorers across the formidable Antarctic ice-cap—the largest expanse of ice on our planet. Finally, we rejoin David at the South Pole, exactly one hundred years after Amundsen then Scott were the first humans to stand there.
- Ibid:
Each spring, massive sweet water thawing rapidly transforms the polar regions and the surrounding seas, where broken-off ice floats to. This is crucial in the life cycle of many species, sometimes extremely elaborate. Many colonies (re)unite to mate, hatch and/or start raising offspring, especially in 'temperate' parts, such as South Georgia island.
