Nostalgia Watch: "The First Eden"
Feb. 28th, 2017 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsSometimes the internet is good for hauling up those half-remembered fragments of my youth and putting them on YouTube. Well, DailyMotion in this case:
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man by David Attenborough
Here's Episode 1, and you can follow the links to the others if you're curious. There are 4 hour-long episodes on topics blending nature and history:
1: Natural history and wildlife
2: Ancient civilization and Bulls
3: Medieval times and Horses
4: Modern Times and Ecology (i.e. Humans are Jerks)
TRIGGER WARNING FOR CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. I'm not kidding. There's a bullfight in this and various hunting scenes and general Humans Being Jerks.
This was made by the BBC, but I had fragmentary yet vivid memories of it being aired on PBS when I was a child (late '80s, I probably would have been about nine), and it really felt like an event to me at the time, second only to "Don't Eat the Pictures." That mosaic-effect opening blew my mind, and I still have a reaction to the theme music. I think the second episode made the biggest impression. The statue of Artemis adorned with bull testicles was an image that stuck with me; I comprehended that about as well as you'd expect at nine years old (I thought the goddess was actually being depicted as growing testicles out of her chest), but I'd say it added to the fascination, that this was more mature and advanced content than what I was used to.
Something that didn't stick with me was who David Attenborough was, although his cadence on some of his lines did stick.
I watched a lot of nature documentaries as a child (so I have vivid memories of watching various animals die horribly). This was kind of the touchstone example, though, and even nearly 30 years later, when some of the beats came up, I knew where they were headed. It all looks pretty dated now (right down to the sexist use of "Man" for "Humanity" in the title), but it was worth a re-watch just to take it out of that dreamlike area of memory and see it as a real thing.
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man by David Attenborough
Here's Episode 1, and you can follow the links to the others if you're curious. There are 4 hour-long episodes on topics blending nature and history:
1: Natural history and wildlife
2: Ancient civilization and Bulls
3: Medieval times and Horses
4: Modern Times and Ecology (i.e. Humans are Jerks)
TRIGGER WARNING FOR CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. I'm not kidding. There's a bullfight in this and various hunting scenes and general Humans Being Jerks.
This was made by the BBC, but I had fragmentary yet vivid memories of it being aired on PBS when I was a child (late '80s, I probably would have been about nine), and it really felt like an event to me at the time, second only to "Don't Eat the Pictures." That mosaic-effect opening blew my mind, and I still have a reaction to the theme music. I think the second episode made the biggest impression. The statue of Artemis adorned with bull testicles was an image that stuck with me; I comprehended that about as well as you'd expect at nine years old (I thought the goddess was actually being depicted as growing testicles out of her chest), but I'd say it added to the fascination, that this was more mature and advanced content than what I was used to.
Something that didn't stick with me was who David Attenborough was, although his cadence on some of his lines did stick.
I watched a lot of nature documentaries as a child (so I have vivid memories of watching various animals die horribly). This was kind of the touchstone example, though, and even nearly 30 years later, when some of the beats came up, I knew where they were headed. It all looks pretty dated now (right down to the sexist use of "Man" for "Humanity" in the title), but it was worth a re-watch just to take it out of that dreamlike area of memory and see it as a real thing.
