Intellectualism is often seen as reserved for the elite, those wealthy enough to afford the top colleges and devote themselves to intellectual pursuits. Yet, Stephen Mack argues in “Are Public Intellectuals a Thing of the Past?” that the public must be included into intellectual dialogue, which dictates the importance of public intellectuals who expand scholarly discussion to the common population to strengthen their competency in supporting a strong democracy. Ultimately, David Attenborough embodies Mack’s image of a public individual, as he used the medium of public broadcast channels to bring intellectual natural history content to a wider public and bring awareness to the public about the need for conservation in the modern climate change debate.
First, this review will focus on a problem invoked by Mack’s work—the misunderstood end of the public intellectual. Mack’s “Are Public Intellectuals a Thing of the Past?” exposes the elitist privilege in traditional perspectives of intellectualism. Elitist intellectualism has long viewed the general public as inferior. Here, Mack explains the perspective that “the infantile common-folk who compromise the ‘mob’ has been the star of the elitist melodrama for centuries; they’re also ‘exhibit A’ in nearly every hand-wringing, antidemocratic treatise in the western tradition” (1). As such, the public is often left out of important conversations and intellectual discourse. They are assumed to be unable to understand or too unconcerned to care about academic or important intellectual matters. This resulted in intellectuals who embraced the public being largely mislabeled by the academic establishment. Mack discusses a common misunderstanding that “what is sometimes identified as anti-intellectualism is in fact intellectual—that is, a well-articulated family of ideas and arguments that privilege the practical, active side of life (e.g., work) over the passive and purely reflective operations of the mind in a vacuum” (1). In this environment, public intellectuals may often be overlooked in terms of their role and importance in participating within intellectual discourse.
Contrary to the elitist misconceptions, Mack puts forward that the public has to play a participatory role within democracy, thus increasing their need to be part of a critical discourse, which he sees as public intellectualism. Public intellectualism works on expanding intellectualism to the common population and tearing it out of its former restrictions. In this sense, public intellectualism is strengthening the competence of the general public and therefore strengthening democracy as a whole. As such, “the best argument for democracy is not that the people are ‘naturally’ equipped for self-government—but that they need to become so, and moreover experience is the only teacher” (Mack 1). The public intellectual plays a key part in this process, as such individuals help inform and guide the public into becoming better participants in democracy without them having to have ties to the elite institutions and resources that mock them. Public intellectuals help all members of our democracy understand that they too must take part in active criticism and discussion—that they too can benefit from the pillars of intellectual practice and thought.
Given this definition, the role truly fits David Attenborough’s participation within British society. Patrick Barkham’s “The Real David Attenborough” highlights the esteemed broadcaster and public intellectual’s long life and career. Attenborough was born in May of 1926 in Middlesex in the UK (Barkham 1). Attenborough had a long history with academia, as his father served as the principal of University College in Leicester. This imparted him even before his own college career with a sense of intellectualism. Also, during Attenborough’s childhood, his love of natural history flourished. As a boy, he was fascinated by fossils, specimens, and other natural material to add to his own amateur collection (Barkham 1). Attenborough had a strong intellectual upbringing and would eventually attend university himself, eventually attending the Clare College at Cambridge. He would also attend the London School of Economics, although left before finishing his degree to return to the BBC. Interestingly, the academic traditions of Attenborough’s family continue today, as his son Robert Attenborough is currently a lecturer for the Australian National University (Barkham 1).
Yet, Attenborough is best known for his long and illustrious career as a British broadcaster famous for his support of public broadcasting. Attenborough first applied to work for the BBC in 1950 and was eventually accepted in 1952 as a producer. In 1965, Attenborough came back to BBC to take control of BBC Two (Barkham 1). Attenborough was able to save BBC Two’s plummeting ratings, taking advantage of the fact that the station was one of the first in the UK to switch to color broadcasting (Barkham 1). He valued diversity in the perspectives and discourse of the content produced by BBC Two. With new technologies and a more diverse approach to creating meaningful content, Attenborough reshaped the way public broadcasting could impact the general population that watched it. Attenborough took emerging television technology to produce historical documentaries in stunning color and quality. His first color content was Civilization from 1969, which stood as a model for historical documentaries for years to come. It was Attenborough’s belief in the importance of public broadcasting that thrust him into the position of public intellectual. Throughout his life and career, Attenborough fought for the BBC and for public broadcasting in general. Barkham admits that Attenborough “championed ‘community programming’” that attempted to create content that sympathized with the people, while keeping them informed on key social and political policy issues as well (1). Attenborough saw TV as the medium to reach the public, informing them of key issues he believed they needed to know about to make decisions about their behavior and political support.
Attenborough often combined his two career fields, producing natural history documentaries and other content for public broadcast channels, effectively opening the general public to very intellectual debates in the more popular form of natural history. He first dabbled in natural history content at the BBC with Animal Patterns that explored animals’ behaviors and camouflage characteristics. In 1954, Attenborough landed another production, Zoo Quest, which ran from 1954 to 1963 (Stewart 1). The original broadcaster of the show needed to leave, thrusting Attenborough in front of the camera for the first time. After denying an invitation to the BBC Natural History Unit in 1957, Attenborough created the Travel and Exploration Unit that produced Zoo Quest and other documentaries focusing on travel and adventure. Even after taking a more senior position at BBC Two, Attenborough would continue to make natural history content. He made sure that within his contract, he was still able to pursue his own content. This resulted in a significant body of work in natural history from the late sixties onwards. In 1979, Attenborough again stepped out from behind the camera to work on a Life on Earth. This was a move where he actually resigned from his esteemed position at BBC to focus specifically on nature filmmaking (Stewart 1).
Attenborough respected the work of the scientists he was using at the heart of his film, which increased the positive relationship between academics in the field and film producers. As such, he was able to gain an inside view of the science as it was happening—both in the lab and in the field. This allowed him unprecedented access to a zoology study on mountain gorillas, exposing an exciting and otherwise hidden side of academic research in natural sciences to the public. For example, The Living Planet in 1984 featured ecological theories and scientific work that brought the public deep into the world of scientists that had been so sheltered from them before. Animal behavior was investigated in 1990’s Trials of Life focused on animal behaviors (Barkham 1). This series did not sugar coat some of the more controversial elements of animal behavior. Its depiction of orcas playing with terrified seals as they hunt them was an honest—yet shocking—element of animal behavior for the public to see. His work continued into the 1990s, producing The Life of Birds in 1998 and The Life of Mammals in 2002 and Life of the Undergrowth in 2005 focused on invertebrates (Barkham 1). The Blue Planet, produced in 2001, highlighted marine life as a focus more specifically. Additionally, Planet Earth in 2006 would introduce high-definition filming to nature documentaries, shaping the future of how documentary series seduced viewership through impressive picture quality and filmmaking (Stewart 1).
More recently, Attenborough has focused on producing content that focuses on the need for conservation as a core underlying message. As a natural historian, Attenborough was also heavily interested in the field of conservation. Attenborough worked with Blue Planet II in 2017 and has even partnered up with Netflix in 2019 for Our Planet. In an article for the Time, Dan Stewart discusses Attenborough’s fight to inform the public against the impact of climate change. Stewart claims that the “blockbuster eight-part documentary series […] aims to not just present the majesty of the world around us but also to raise awareness of what the changing climate is doing to it” (1). The series would put the need for conservationism to a public debate once again, as Attenborough used stunning visuals and key information at the heart of his conservation messages. Attenborough uses heartbreaking scenes from real natural environments to highlight the damage done to ecosystems around the globe. In fact, “in one draw-dropping sequence” shows “thousands of Pacific walruses are forced by vanishing ice sheets to crowd on a rocky strip of land,” where “hundreds leap off a cliff to their doom” (Stewart 1). He has long been known for taking the key elements of suspenseful film making to create an undeniable argument about the need to do something about climate change. As such, Attenborough has worked to increase the public’s knowledge in key areas through television in order to make them more experienced participants in key policy issues—such as climate change. Attenborough himself has been quoted as saying, “people ought to be concerned because they think the natural world is important. If they know nothing about the natural world, they won’t care a toss” (Barkham1). His work with the BBC provided him a platform to expand intellectual discourse on natural history to a wider public, that had often been left out of academic study and debates. His shows in natural history are essentially his body of academic work—using the medium of television rather print. As such, Attenborough has “shaped the views of millions of people about nature” (Stewart 1).
It was this lifelong endeavor that would help him achieve recognition back within the world of academia. He has achieved numerous awards from various academic societies recognizing his contribution to science and public education. Attenborough only had a bachelor’s degree but was eventually awarded several honorary degrees from over thirty universities for his tireless work to support public broadcasting and his contributions bringing academic discourse to a wider public stage. Barkham writes, “in our fractured age, Attenborough is the closest we have to a universally beloved public figure” who is popular among the general population for his lifelong career of bringing interesting and dynamic content to televisions across Britain and the world (1). Attenborough was actually knighted by the Queen in 1985 (Stewart 1). Clearly, his body of work is respected among a wide range of academics and public policy makers, who appreciate his contributions to the ongoing discourse in a way that allows access to the general public as well as the elite.
In many ways, Attenborough embodies this populist image of the modern public intellectual in that he staunchly supported public broadcasting. Rather than creating content purely for-profit or for academia alone, Attenborough used public broadcasting to bring forth impressive new investigations of the natural world to the everyday TV watcher. His body of work expanded intellectualism to the larger public, taking the academic discourse out of elite classrooms and bringing it into living rooms across the UK and the world. Attenborough is ultimately the embodiment of Mack’s modern public intellectual. His continuing contributions to natural history and conservationism demonstrate that public individuals are very much still an influential part of our society.
Works Cited
Barkham, Patrick, “The Real David Attenborough.” The Guardian. 22 Oct 2019. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/22/david-attenborough-climate-change-bbc
Mack, Stephen. “Are Public Intellectuals a Thing of the Past?” The New Democratic Review. 14 Aug 2012. Web. http://www.stephenmack.com/blog/archives/2012/08/are_public_inte.html
Stewart, Dan. “David Attenborough Isn’t Sure We Can Save the Natural World. But at 92, He’s Not Giving Up.” Time Magazine. 18 Mar 2019. Web. https://time.com/5560233/david-attenborough-climate-documentary-netflix/
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