Week 10

I rarely watch documentaries on evolution, genetic modification but when I do, it always seems to be in a somewhat negative light. Documentaries always have some type of a view they are trying to push to the viewer. Nature documentaries? Look at our beautiful world we should try to preserve it. Political documentaries? This person is either great or bad person and this is all that we have found  out about them which will also show you why they are bad or good. There is usually two types of views on how the documentary is shown, in positive or negative. 

The documentary I watched and discuss here is the first episode of the documentary mini-series "Unnatural selection" by Netflix. 

What I noticed immediately in this documentary mini-series is the music and the way conversations are cut. The music is very anxiety introducing, it's heavy, mechanic, slow, twangy, it reminds me of Portal 2 music mixed with horror. They have made it so that there are moments in which the doctors in shots inject DNA into animals and during that time there it is accompanied with creepy music in the background. 

The first episode starts at night in the middle of nowhere where a guy interested in genetically manipulating dogs to glow in the dark is doing his work at night in a shabby hut. It gives this feeling of illegality or that he is doing something illegal even though he is breeding dogs and is actually taking care of the dogs very well. A lot of the shots from proper labs are also very dim, like a shot during a rainy day and I am pretty sure labs are usually very well lit so it must be editing giving this type of a feeling to the shots.

Surprisingly the interviews seem better than what I usually see. The people working on genetics are allowed to speak of the positive sides too instead of only speaking about the dangers. But there are still parts where the editing cuts their chance to speak for their study. At one point a person asks a scientist if there has ever been a case in which us humans have brought something from somewhere else to another place and it had beneficial effects on that environment. The editing cuts it, lets one part of the scientist's answer in which is "Well there has been a lot of cases where it hasn't been beneficial" and it cuts to another part, why it is so noticeable is that there was a clear question that we didn't get an answer to because of the editing. And before this there was a part of a television talk show where the host made fun of this particular scientist. I did a quick search and for example certain type of mussels are introduced into dirty lakes in order to clean them and that is an example of beneficial introduction of a species to another habitat, but this documentary won't allow these kinds of positive things to be told, why? It could be just that the scientist did not have an answer or that it wasn't relevant or his answer did not go along with the documentary makers opinion that they are trying to push in this show. 

The show does sell itself as a more positive documentary on this subject or more controversial version by starting the show with a quote from Charles Darwin, the father of evolution theory

"If you had an idea that was going to outrage the society would you keep it to yourself?" 

-Charles Darwin

 and it does have many types of people interested in the subject being interviewed. The creator of the technology to change humans, animal breeders, people who try to work with the communities to change their views on the subject and more radicals who hold conferences why we should just do it and push it aggressively. It is not that the documentary doesn't have great points and that it isn't neural in some ways. What I look at is the editing and how it has been edited to give it a very serious and almost negative atmosphere and why it is like it is.

Ideas I came up with on why these type of documentaries are often cut like this:

A) Everyone else is doing it and the makers and company behind it copy the same kind of view from other similar documentaries because they know those have succeeded before so why change what already works and brings in money? 

B) It is the most common/popular view on the subject and the documentaries want to echo it to the viewers. "Yes you are right".

I asked two people I know on this subject, law graduate and Politics master student, G.C.G from Lancaster University and the Molecular Biology Bachelor student from University of Bielefeld who also worked at KWS Saat in their plant genomic research projects.

"Why do you think documentaries almost exclusively show genetic manipulation in a negative light?"

Law Graduate:

Illegality is intertwined with the popular opinion making, as such if something is illegal then it is more likely that thing is presented in a negative light.

Under patent law you are not allowed to patent something that inherently modifies or alters the human body. What do you need in order to make money on a scientific invention? A patent. Because you can not make profit out of genetic manipulation it discourages people from studying it or making any progress with it so it is left as more of an obscure thing. 

Also most of pop culture, like fantasy and sci-fi feeds us this fantasy bias of "something bad will happen from genetic manipulation" even though we do not know if it will. 

Molecular Biology student:

Because general audience does not really know how it works and how it is done and what it affects.

"Genetic mutation in general media is just viewed upon as something "bad". In media you only see mutations from these fallout disaster movies". Companies have a PR problem meaning they have a problem selling their products even with all the benefits you get in food from manipulation. Also people seem to have false ideas on what the manipulation leads to and are extremely negative towards GM food but do not know or care that insulin which helps people's health is made from genetically manipulated bacteria.

(This will not happen)

So basically both of my initial guesses were about right, documentaries often seem to depend on the public opinion because that is what sells the best. This can also apply to other media outlets and how companies harness this for their own use.