The Bambi Gambit

Saw the preview for the movie THE BATTLE FOR TERRA the other day. I'm skipping this one. For those who haven't seen the preview, the premise of the movie is there's a planet called Terra with these cute peaceful inhabitants which are invaded by aliens wanting to take it as a new place to live. The alien invaders are the human race who have no doubt destroyed Earth with that pesky global warming. I've had about enough of pop culture telling me humanity sucks.

Somewhere it came to be OK and even slightly hip to make fun of the species. The most glaring is of course Disney's BAMBI. Therefore we have the "Bambi Gambit" in which the storyteller takes an animal, gives it a voice and makes it noble, then has something horrible happen to it to demonstrate the eeeeeeevils of humanity.

And it works too. It doesn't matter that hunters are among the top tier of the conservation effort. It does not matter that largely due to hunters the deer population is greater than it was when they were being hunted exclusively by bow and arrow. It does not matter that the hunters controlling the deer population keeps them from eating their entire food supply and then slowly starving to death or running out in front of cars on a much greater basis. What does matter to the slack-jawed, uninformed, PETA supporting, would-be do-gooder once they discover someone is a hunter is "OMG, YOU KILLED BAMBI!" You you idiots, they killed Bambi's mother and I'm sure she was quite tasty.

A much more recent example is Brian K. Vaughn's PRIDE OF BAGHDAD, which is a work centering around the Iraq War. A group of lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo once the invasion began. I remember briefly skimming this in the news reports. Well, Vaughn took that incident and applied the above formula. The lions were given personalities and challenges to overcome once they escaped. At the end they finally got to see the horizon which hadn't seen since since they were so horribly imprisoned in the zoo with it's proper care and regular meals, only to be shot by American soldiers. Those poor lions were just sitting there being noble and watching the sunset when they were killed because we need to know that war is horrible and wrong. This is complete bullshit. Does anyone actually think for one second that those lions, which need I remind anyone are wild animals and can easily kill a person, were just sitting there watching the sunset despite being quite hungry? Hey, it sucks that it happened, but as an anti-war argument it utterly fails at being rational.

I see it also here and there in the Pixar movies as well. FINDING NEMO is all about the bad old humans kidnapping a poor little fish. The sharks dismissively blame Americans with the necessary rolling of their shark eyes. At least RATTATOUI was a bit nicer to humans but still found the time to make fun of American food in favor of the obviously superior French food. The French eat snails and on occasion horses. I'll pass, thanks. Then there's good old WALL-E where us humans had trashed the planet and were living in a space ship. People had become so incredibly lazy they were like giant consuming babies. Fortunately, they had a little robot with moxie to show them the way. Just freakin' spare me.

If I want to know how crappy people can be, I'll watch the news. I'll watch the morons who keep being so obnoxious with their "green" movement it makes me want to little. I'll look around me at the people screwing things up for everyone and I'll try to teach the next generation how to do things right.

So, I won't be watching BATTLE FOR TERRA. I'll probably toss INDEPENDENCE DAY into the DVD player instead. Because humanity is worth fighting for and not against.