Review: The Vanishing Prairie (DMC #18)
Welcome back! We hope you’re all safe and well, and enjoying virtual viewing parties with your friends. This week’s movie was The Vanishing Prairie, the eighteenth movie in the Disnerd Movie Challenge. If you need a recap, read the synopsis below, otherwise skip to our review!
Synopsis
The second film in the True Life Adventure series moves eastward, away from the harsh desert to the open fields of the prairie located in Central America. It is along these plains where the famous Oregon Trail resides, and the narrator introduces us to some of the notable landmarks. Native Americans roamed the plains, as did wild animals unlike those of the desert. We learn of some of the now extinct species, and are given a peek into the lives of still living, but slowly vanishing, ones. Various birds perform their mating rituals: whooping cranes perform a dance and grouse puff out their chests, making a unique sound to attract a partner. A buffalo gives birth to a new calf, who soon learns to walk on its own and find its mother to get milk.
A mother mountain lion hunts for food, and teaches her kittens the ways of their world. Small animals such as prairie dogs form complex and comfortable underground homes to protect themselves from weather and predators such as black-footed ferrets, coyotes, and badgers. The plains aren’t immune to natural disasters; a thunderous rainstorm creates a wildfire, and a subsequent flood all but destroys many of these homes. Still, nature will both harm and protect its wildlife, and so these animals have endured. The film ends on a hopeful note, that mankind will do its part to help sustain this land.
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: If this is anything like The Living Desert, I’m guessing it will be mildly entertaining while also being informative and educational.
Kevin: I’m going with the same prediction. At the outset, I will say it beats The Living Desert by its preview image alone; those owls look so much more interesting than a couple of insects.
Thoughts After Watching
Kevin: Just a quick note here — twice now these True Life Adventure movies open up with an animated paint brush setting the scene. I never get tired of this meta technique.
The Oregon Trail!
Megan: As we started watching, the narrator began mentioning several prairie landmarks. Kevin and I were trying to figure out how we knew these, until it hit us—The Oregon Trail! Who else remembers playing the old school MS DOS Oregon Trail game? (The original PC game…not the app or the card games, although I do enjoy playing the card games now and then.) All the major landmarks mentioned are the landmarks you encounter while playing The Oregon Trail: Courthouse Rock, Independence Rock, Devil’s Gate… No one died of dysentery in this documentary, but it was nice to see that we did in fact know some of these landmarks prior to watching the documentary. See, video games can be educational.
Courthouse Rock
Kevin: Wow, I remember playing that MS DOS game so often when I was a kid. Anyone else remember navigating the Columbia River at the end? Fun memories. But yes, it was interesting to see how many of those landmarks were referred to here. I also liked that they showed some of the ruts the wagon trains left. When I was little (I think the summer between 3rd and 4th grades) my family took a road trip vacation across various states. One of them was Wyoming, and although my memory of this isn’t clear, I recall that we stopped at an Oregon Trail historical site and a guide showed us some of the ruts. It was fascinating even for a kid.
And they’re being racist again…
Megan: Not so great news: this film, too, uses racist terms to reference the Native Americans. It’s just a few brief moments in the narration, but they use “red man” and refer to them as doing things in a “primitive way.” They also make a claim that they fashioned their dances after the mating dances of the grouse (a type of bird common on the prairie). I’m not quite sure if that is a true fact, or if that is an assumption the creators made. While that information could very well be true, I’m not going to take that information at face value given the racist viewpoint presented.
Grouse are hella weird…
Megan: Speaking of grouse, these birds are hella weird. Kevin and I both live in California now, though I’ve spent time living in New York and New Jersey and he’s spent time living in Nevada. Neither of us has ever seen a grouse before, and we were both fascinated and a little weirded out at how the grouse inflates a pouch beneath its beak/in its chest to make its mating call. I think the filmmakers must have had a similar reaction because there is quite a lot of footage devoted to these birds and other creatures that have strange pouches to help them create unique sounds.
Kevin: I mean, when you realize it’s a mating call and they’re puffing out their chest, it’s very easy to see a similarity between these and someone flashing. It’s one way to get someone’s attention, but it definitely doesn’t always work in the human world.
The prairie has interesting wildlife.
Kevin: There are so many intriguing things the animals do in this documentary, that I will just highlight some of my favorite moments:
Bighorn sheep climbing near-vertical walls like it’s no big deal (thinking of Anna’s “please tell me I’m almost there?!”).
Mother mountain lion teaching her kittens how to hunt. The babies were adorable! Though I’m glad the mountain lion didn’t get that deer later (more below).
The baby prairie dogs helped a baby cottontail wash its face!!!
Speaking of prairie dog, how cool was it when that one prairie dog faced down a coyote? Also, the narrator pronounces coyote as “kai-oat.” That was honestly the first time I’d ever heard it pronounced that way. It’s always interesting to hear different dialects!
Okay, this one wasn’t actually a favorite, but the mother buffalo giving birth was still kind of fascinating, as was the explanation afterward of how the newborn calf eventually learns to walk and find its mother for milk. We did laugh at the couple times when the baby went for the wrong mother!
Don’t eat Bambi!
Megan: Probably the most terrifying scene in this entire documentary is when we’re anxiously watching as a mountain lion closes in on a fawn curled up in a thicket of bushes. The whole time I was tensing up, hoping and praying that Disney was not so cruel as to show us a mountain lion killing a baby deer. When the mountain lion finally moved on, never seeing the fawn, I was so relieved! I did not know that a baby deer does not have a scent, nor that it instinctively knows to remain absolutely still like that. How terrifying to be a fawn! But also, pretty cool that nature has created such adaptations to protect them.
Kevin: It really is amazing what millions of years of evolution has led to when it comes to how animals (humans included) adapt to life. Several times in both this documentary and the last, the narrator has said something about how nature knows neither good nor evil, it just simply is, and all species have developed the instincts needed to survive, whether it’s predator or prey.
Was this filmed with conservation in mind?
Megan: There were several points in the narration throughout this film that I noticed the narrator highlight the “vanishing” nature of different plants or animals on the prairie. The narrator never outright says anything about protecting nature, exactly, nor does he mention that the interference of humans might possibly be to blame. However, I found it to be a subtle message that unless things change, many of the creatures seen in this film might not exist in the future. I tried to do a bit more research on the reception of this film, to see if there was any sort of cultural shift toward conservation and protecting endangered species at the time, but I didn’t immediately find any conversations of that nature related to this film. Perhaps the message was too subtle at the time?
Verdict
Megan: These animals were definitely cuter than the desert animals, but while I learned a few new things, this still isn’t entertaining enough to warrant a second viewing. Similar to my thoughts on The Living Desert, this could be a good candidate for teaching students about the prairie, but the racist narration is problematic to bring into a classroom without giving proper context (personally I’d find a way to skip those parts or find another film). This also doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, for the same reasons The Living Desert failed.
Kevin: This documentary isn’t as funny as The Living Desert, but the animals are overall more fun to look at (sorry, fans of spiders and beetles and snakes, etc. I’m just more of a mammal type). That said, points are docked because of the previously mentioned racism. The thing about so many documentaries is, well, they of course become dated. There’s still educational value, but it’s curious to wonder how useful these films are these days when so much of our understanding of the world has changed.
Megan: 3
Kevin: 3
Final Score: 3
What did you think of this nature documentary? Did you learn anything new about these animals? Tell us in the comments!