At Home on Safari: Colonial Spectacle, Domestic Space and 1950s Television

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which television registered, and broadcast, colonial discourse in the specific context of Kenya and Britain in the 1950s. Focusing on the wildlife programming of the husband and wife team Armand and Michaela Denis as its case study, an examination of programmes such as Filming in Africa (BBC, 1955) and On Safari (BBC, 1957–65) is offered, looking at the ways in which these programmes negotiated the transition between colonial spectacle and a cosy, domestic address for British television. The article will explore what these programmes reveal about Britain's ‘imagined Kenya’ in the final years of colonial rule, and argue that it is possible to trace a colonial lament in this form of popular entertainment on the cusp of the decolonisation of Kenya. These programmes are thus interesting as examples of colonial television, that is, domestic television broadcasting made outside the UK by programme-makers who present themselves as being simultaneously ‘at home’ and ‘abroad’ on the BBC. Importantly, the programmes aimed to bridge a perceived gap between the ‘outside world’ of colonised ‘wild’ space and the ‘inside world’ of television's interior, domestic spaces. A history of the Denises’ programmes is reconstructed by intertwining archival research into scripts, set designs, publicity materials and production notes with analyses of the programmes themselves.

The Changing Nature of Modernization Discourses in Documentary Films

“…At the same time, natural history television was swiftly becoming particularly weighty (Davies 1998; Bousé 2000; Scott 2003; Chris 2006; Gouyon 2011), for it addressed red-hot issues, carrying key identity and social justice components, as the natural sciences became a significant field of socio-political negotiation worldwide (Davies 2000; Brockington 2008; Wheatley 2013). The regime was not an exception in this respect; on the contrary, it actually had a significant bearing in the international arena with the wide-ranging repercussion of the founding of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and its relation to the development of the Doñana Research Station and National Park in southern Spain (Camprubí 2016).…”

Wildlife comics, or the making of young naturalists in late Franco's Spain (1969–1970)

“…Concerning the nuances of the international and colonial discourses featured in these comics, particularly in relation with knowledge management processes, see also:Kusiak [2010],Gissibl, Höhler and Kupper [2012] andWheatley [2013]; and specifically in relation with Franco's regime legitimation goals at home and abroad, see: Medina-Doménech[2009],Tabernero, Jiménez-Lucena and Molero-Mesa [2017] andCamprubí [2020].20 'La noche de los licaones' ('The night of the African wild dogs'), Gran Pulgarcito 74 [1970], pp. 8-15. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.21010205 JCOM 21(01)(2022)A05 11…”

El espectáculo de la conservación. El Parque Nacional de Doñana en <em>El Hombre y la Tierra</em> (1979)

“…Los documentales occidentales de corte antropológico, sobre todo aquellos que tienen lugar en contextos en los que también es fundamental el retrato de la fauna, difícilmente pueden eludir, aunque no sea ese su objetivo explíci-to, la evocación jerárquica, de corte colonial, que inevitablemente conlleva la propia actividad mediática y la accesibilidad que sus características tecnológicas comportan en comparación con la supuestamente poco "avanzada" sociedad que se retrata. Esa apreciación refuerza el énfasis en el rigor científico de los documentales por la dificultad de su realización, tanto técnica como ética (Tabernero, Jiménez Lucena y Molero, 2012;Wheatley, 2013;Tabernero, 2016). En la filmación de los Yanomamos, además, ya no se trataba de utilizar imágenes producidas por otros, como en los programas en los que Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente había ejercido literalmente de profesor desde su despacho (Fin de Semana, Televisión Escolar, Fauna, Aventura y Planeta Azul, entre 1964y 1973, sino que era él mismo con su equipo el que había ido a asegurar el rigor y la equidad de lo expuesto, y que tenía, ahora sí en primera persona desde el punto de vista técnico, una clara correspondencia con la competencia técnica cinematográfica de ese mismo equipo.…”