When the news came that Steve Irwin, the 44-year-old host of Animal Planet's The Crocodile Hunter, was fatally attacked by a stingray at the Great Barrier Reef, a few of us needed a minute or two to summon the proper respect for the deceased. This had something to do with the freakishly exotic nature of the accident—death by stingray sounds like something contrived by Dr. No—and you must allow for the unavoidable gallows humor attendant to the fact that Irwin was filming a documentary titled The Ocean's Deadliest. But it mostly had to do with the cartoonish shape and shading of his public face.
Hadn't he made a living by laughing hard in the face of danger? How could he be gone when he'd never seemed quite real to begin with? Never mind the fact that he was a self-taught biologist actually raised on a wildlife park and therefore the real deal; he quite often looked like a parody of an intrepid naturalist. You would flip on the Tonight Show to find him subduing strange creatures in an outrageously matter-of-fact manner. You would turn on the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet and see him again in that costume that read like some kind of butch, down-under drag—omnipresent safari shirt, unembarrassed shorts, unwaveringly ugly bowl cut. All muscle; all courage; no worries, mate. His exclamatory catchphrase was "Crikey," for Christ's sake. Here is a man who seemed genuinely confused by the fuss when being criticized for feeding a crocodile with one hand while cradling his baby in the other.
This is all by way of asking Irwin to forgive us that moment of failed mourning. While that son has lost a father and conservationists have lost an ally, the home viewer will be missing a man who brought wildlife TV into the future by turning it into something of an extreme sport. Jacques Cousteau was impossibly enchanting, and Marlin Perkins was as paternal as a wizard, but Steve Irwin was a magical ham.
Requiem for the Crocodile Hunter: The man who took wildlife TV to the extreme.
Troy Pattersonis Slate's television critic.
Photograph of Steve Irwin by Michael Buckner/Getty Images.
COMMENTS
Remarks from the Fray:
In a way, Irwin was to Discovery's Animal Planet network what Emeril Lagasse is to Food Network. Both men made use of their larger-than-life personalities to draw in viewers who normally had little interest in their respective subjects. They became the anchors of their respective networks and their success inspired countless clones. The last point is unfortunate, in my opinion, with Irwin's case.
The traditional nature documentarian spends hundreds or thousands of hours filming wildlife at a distance and eventually emerges with an hour or so of useable, interesting footage. The idea is to allow the animal(s) in question to reveal their own beauty at their own pace.
Irwin loved animals no less but almost certainly lacked the patience to obtain what he needed in the traditional manner. His approach was to go right into the bush – or den or lair – and emerge with the animal for close-up observation.
Likewise the traditional nature documentary is narrated in dry, hushed stentorian tones. It is hard for viewers to avoid feeling they are being lectured to and even sometimes lectured at, when the topic of conservation and vanishing habitat is introduced.
Irwin, of course, was having none of that. He felt the best way for viewers to get excited about animals was to express his own excitement about them unchecked. He was a shameless mugger in front of the camera and yet there never seemed much doubt that his enthusiasm for his subject was genuine.
His style, if not necessarily his motivations, has become the new paradigm for nature hosts. The airways are now full of Irwin wannabes, such as Jeff Corwin, Mark O'Shea, and Austin Stevens. Their shows all center around a host who will "do anything" to get the money shot, with an emphasis on risking life and limb.
That is unfortunate, in my opinion. The appeal of the Irwin experience is obvious. There is a certain subconscious desire, especially for those who love animals, of being able to handle wild animals as though they were household pets or docile farm creatures. Irwin seemed to almost magically tame or at least control the beasts he ran across.
Yet the accidents and attacks that proceed from such close-up handling, which is what gives these shows their adrenaline factors, occur not because many animals are naturally aggressive but because almost all animals become defensive when faced with an aggressor. And Irwin's "in your face" approach to animals was aggressive. He desperately wanted people not to think of wild animals as dangerous creatures who needed to be wiped out to make human beings safe – all the while doing the one thing with them that will cause animals to lash out with hostility against us.
Nature, by and large, does indeed manage to co-exist but often enough less than peaceably and certainly never cuddly or touchy-feely. Irwin understood this basic paradox in his work. It is not so clear that his imitators or network executives do.
Irwin deserves credit for pulling nature programs out of the doldrums of Mutual of Omaha's WildKingdom. Unfortunately, he seems to have chosen MTV's Jackass as the program to fuse it with in order to do so. That is not so much to his credit.
It was tragic for Irwin, even before it proved fatal. Slate's Mr. Patterson captures perfectly how many of his critics tended to regard him – as a kind of dork but whose extreme stunts made it impossible to stop watching. I sometimes think Irwin even regarded himself in this manner. He saw using his expertise at tempting danger as the bread-and-butter that made him so popular.
However, for his true fans, while the physical spectacle may have brought them in, it was his very dorkiness that made them fall in love with Irwin and stay. That is to say his kinetic personality and genuine exuberance over any aspect of nature were his real strong points and not his ability to wrestle crocodiles. He wasn't everyone's cup of tea, it is true, but those who loved him drank him in by the gallon.
For his most devoted admirers, rather than urging him on to ever-greater dangers, I suspect many wished he would – rather like an inverse of Emeril – kick it down a notch or two. "You can't keep tempting fate, mate," they would liked to have told him.
I am not sure Irwin fully understood that. If he did, I am even less sure he could have found it within himself to comply with his true fans' wishes for him. I find that kind of tragic, even for a man who died doing the very thing he did best and which he loved doing.
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Remarks from the Fray:
In a way, Irwin was to Discovery's Animal Planet network what Emeril Lagasse is to Food Network. Both men made use of their larger-than-life personalities to draw in viewers who normally had little interest in their respective subjects. They became the anchors of their respective networks and their success inspired countless clones. The last point is unfortunate, in my opinion, with Irwin's case.
The traditional nature documentarian spends hundreds or thousands of hours filming wildlife at a distance and eventually emerges with an hour or so of useable, interesting footage. The idea is to allow the animal(s) in question to reveal their own beauty at their own pace.
Irwin loved animals no less but almost certainly lacked the patience to obtain what he needed in the traditional manner. His approach was to go right into the bush – or den or lair – and emerge with the animal for close-up observation.
Likewise the traditional nature documentary is narrated in dry, hushed stentorian tones. It is hard for viewers to avoid feeling they are being lectured to and even sometimes lectured at, when the topic of conservation and vanishing habitat is introduced.
Irwin, of course, was having none of that. He felt the best way for viewers to get excited about animals was to express his own excitement about them unchecked. He was a shameless mugger in front of the camera and yet there never seemed much doubt that his enthusiasm for his subject was genuine.
His style, if not necessarily his motivations, has become the new paradigm for nature hosts. The airways are now full of Irwin wannabes, such as Jeff Corwin, Mark O'Shea, and Austin Stevens. Their shows all center around a host who will "do anything" to get the money shot, with an emphasis on risking life and limb.
That is unfortunate, in my opinion. The appeal of the Irwin experience is obvious. There is a certain subconscious desire, especially for those who love animals, of being able to handle wild animals as though they were household pets or docile farm creatures. Irwin seemed to almost magically tame or at least control the beasts he ran across.
Yet the accidents and attacks that proceed from such close-up handling, which is what gives these shows their adrenaline factors, occur not because many animals are naturally aggressive but because almost all animals become defensive when faced with an aggressor. And Irwin's "in your face" approach to animals was aggressive. He desperately wanted people not to think of wild animals as dangerous creatures who needed to be wiped out to make human beings safe – all the while doing the one thing with them that will cause animals to lash out with hostility against us.
Nature, by and large, does indeed manage to co-exist but often enough less than peaceably and certainly never cuddly or touchy-feely. Irwin understood this basic paradox in his work. It is not so clear that his imitators or network executives do.
Irwin deserves credit for pulling nature programs out of the doldrums of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Unfortunately, he seems to have chosen MTV's Jackass as the program to fuse it with in order to do so. That is not so much to his credit.
It was tragic for Irwin, even before it proved fatal. Slate's Mr. Patterson captures perfectly how many of his critics tended to regard him – as a kind of dork but whose extreme stunts made it impossible to stop watching. I sometimes think Irwin even regarded himself in this manner. He saw using his expertise at tempting danger as the bread-and-butter that made him so popular.
However, for his true fans, while the physical spectacle may have brought them in, it was his very dorkiness that made them fall in love with Irwin and stay. That is to say his kinetic personality and genuine exuberance over any aspect of nature were his real strong points and not his ability to wrestle crocodiles. He wasn't everyone's cup of tea, it is true, but those who loved him drank him in by the gallon.
For his most devoted admirers, rather than urging him on to ever-greater dangers, I suspect many wished he would – rather like an inverse of Emeril – kick it down a notch or two. "You can't keep tempting fate, mate," they would liked to have told him.
I am not sure Irwin fully understood that. If he did, I am even less sure he could have found it within himself to comply with his true fans' wishes for him. I find that kind of tragic, even for a man who died doing the very thing he did best and which he loved doing.
--The_Bell
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(9/10)