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The Bear Documentary Analysis

Decent Essays

In Bears, a Disneynature documentary film, directors Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey filmed the first year of life of two Alaskan brown bear cubs with their Mother, in the coastal mountain regions of Alaska. Through the film’s portrayals of Alaska’s beauty and wildlife, viewers are able to see what Alaska means to them. However, despite these majestic portrayals of Alaska and its wildlife, in the film’s early moments, the narrator states, “the first year of parenting is always the hardest and for bears, it is nearly an impossible task, with almost half of all bear cubs not surviving their first year.” This warning while mentioned only briefly at the beginning of the film and despite the film’s portrayals of Alaska, lies in the first …show more content…

Using the film and their theories, Bears shows the possible outcomes of Climate Change in Alaska and on the bears, and how they affect the other. Michael Carey emphasizes the idea that people once thought of Alaska as an “unchanging, eternal face,” but now consider it the “center of national and international climate change discussion.” Monika P. Calef treated Alaska’s Climate Change and what Bears portrays from a vegetation perspective, claiming that with the decrease of tundra areas due to Climate Change, forested areas were growing due to Alaska’s warmer temperatures, as well as causing other habitats to change and give other resources. Lowell H. Suring with his ideas of human impact related that other environmental factors influenced the “availability of important foods” for bears. Each of these articles relates to how Bears change what Alaska means to us as an unchangeable wilderness to a wilderness that is changing due to Climate Change. In addition, Bears means to us that Climate Change will not only change the life of the Alaskan bears, but it will change the lives of those who are also in our environment and any others in the future that come after

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