Last night I saw Disney's new Earth Day movie, Oceans. While the fact that the divers were able to get SO close to the marine life and still see them acting naturally in their homes produced some absolutely amazing footage (and most of the animals were really cool looking and sometimes even cute), let's just say if I was a little kid and my mom took me to that movie, I would NEVER...EVER go in the ocean again. Not even the horribly cheesy, Demi Lovato/ Joe Jonas song at the end could have eased my fears.
Truth be told, despite growing up on a beach and living in Florida for the majority of my life, I have always been a little afraid of the ocean. I often attribute this fear to two things: snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef at a very young age and seeing what I believed was a Barracuda, and the plethora of shark attacks off the coast of Florida (Insert Jaws theme song here). Neither of these reasons, curiously enough, is being "whipped" and stung by a man-o-war (which definitely happened). Side note, whenever I think of getting stung by a jellyfish I think of the episode of Friends where Monica gets stung by a jellyfish, and then remembers that peeing on it can take away the pain. Monica "can't bend that way", Joey gets "stage fright", and ultimately Chandler has to do it....Things after that... just get...awkward. It's pretty classic Friends amazing-ness. Anyway, despite my fears, I still love the Caribbean (mostly because the oceans are so clear and you can see any and all animals), enjoy snorkeling, and love collecting cool ocean objects on the beach (my collection is much better than just shells as I have found a seahorse--a complete one might I add--, a backbone of some big saltwater vertebrate, sand dollars, and sea urchins just laying on the beach), but, when I actually think about surfing or going off deep into the water, I get scared and think twice about going. To put things bluntly, if this movie existed when I was little, I would be scared shitless. This fear would have been brought on by the feeding scenes (include a half eaten fish floating around in the ocean still alive and waiting to be FINISHED), and would have perhaps extended to a fear of the beach itself after watching dozens of cute little baby sea turtles hatch and one-by-one get plucked up and eaten by birds until only "1 in 1000 survived". Seriously Disney,...could you really not just tell me that statistic??! Was it actually necessary for me to watch the mass murder of the cutest baby sea turtles ever?....I think NOT. Oh, and Disney, just because you had a diver swim in harmony with a Great White shark without even having the shark think twice about biting him, I am not convinced that they are actually misunderstood, kind, gentle creatures. Yes, that's right...Sharks still BITE (pun intended).
Truth be told, despite growing up on a beach and living in Florida for the majority of my life, I have always been a little afraid of the ocean. I often attribute this fear to two things: snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef at a very young age and seeing what I believed was a Barracuda, and the plethora of shark attacks off the coast of Florida (Insert Jaws theme song here). Neither of these reasons, curiously enough, is being "whipped" and stung by a man-o-war (which definitely happened). Side note, whenever I think of getting stung by a jellyfish I think of the episode of Friends where Monica gets stung by a jellyfish, and then remembers that peeing on it can take away the pain. Monica "can't bend that way", Joey gets "stage fright", and ultimately Chandler has to do it....Things after that... just get...awkward. It's pretty classic Friends amazing-ness. Anyway, despite my fears, I still love the Caribbean (mostly because the oceans are so clear and you can see any and all animals), enjoy snorkeling, and love collecting cool ocean objects on the beach (my collection is much better than just shells as I have found a seahorse--a complete one might I add--, a backbone of some big saltwater vertebrate, sand dollars, and sea urchins just laying on the beach), but, when I actually think about surfing or going off deep into the water, I get scared and think twice about going. To put things bluntly, if this movie existed when I was little, I would be scared shitless. This fear would have been brought on by the feeding scenes (include a half eaten fish floating around in the ocean still alive and waiting to be FINISHED), and would have perhaps extended to a fear of the beach itself after watching dozens of cute little baby sea turtles hatch and one-by-one get plucked up and eaten by birds until only "1 in 1000 survived". Seriously Disney,...could you really not just tell me that statistic??! Was it actually necessary for me to watch the mass murder of the cutest baby sea turtles ever?....I think NOT. Oh, and Disney, just because you had a diver swim in harmony with a Great White shark without even having the shark think twice about biting him, I am not convinced that they are actually misunderstood, kind, gentle creatures. Yes, that's right...Sharks still BITE (pun intended).
Besides being completely scary, this movie also failed to explain...well, anything. It is all well and good to talk about how humans are destroying the oceans (and I am pretty sure that was this movie's propagandistic purpose), but as an audience of eager learners, we could have used more intellectual facts about the ocean species, their feeding rituals, etc. For example, they showed one scene where orcha whales basically beached themselves to attack and eat baby seals on their way home. I, for one, had no clue how they could swim in such shallow water, or even how they made it back into the deep. In this case, the picture needed the thousand words. Yet, perhaps by including more discovery-channel style educational info, the message of saving the Earth could have been spread at a faster rate, as kids could be forced to watch this movie in lower school as a way to learn about ocean life.
Ultimately, if I learned anything from this movie, it was that Finding Nemo did a damn good job making the cartoons look real (seriously everything from the "squishies" to the school of fish that provided directions was awesome and during Oceans I kept being like, "psshh SEEN IT... in Nemo"). In fact, I actually think I might learn more (and laugh a lot more) rewatching that movie instead. Bring on the Nemo foreign language instruction (Whale-ish).
Watching Oceans also reminded me how cute baby belugas are, and how every time I see them (or even hear their name), I am prompted to sing the song by Raffi (no, not Down by The Bay--despite my now strong urge to break out into that song--but BABY Beluuuuuuuuuga). OK, so sometimes I might wish I was still a little kid (and might even occasionally act like it)....but, at this point, I think my Raffi days can best be relived through my ADORABLE 6 month old nephew and re-run episodes of Full House. On a related note, I may or may not have gotten a pencil bed because Michelle had one...and may or may not know EVERY word to MK & A's first few cds/videos (Shout out to my favorite twins with the twin classics, I am the cute one AND Identical twins). But, you will never know the extent of my Olsen Twin love for sure, because, in the words of that creepy character Brittany Murphy (RIP) once played in Don't Say A Word..."I'll never tell".
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