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White Wilderness
1958 · Film · documentary · 72 min
Part of True-Life Adventures Collection
Directed by James Algar
A fabulous new adventure in exciting entertainment.
6 negative3 neutralfrom 9 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
> No-one is adding fictional details to how incredibly well-preserved this wreck is.
No? You know this how?
A reference to a previous Disney documentary, fwiw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)
I asked ChatGPT why lemmings choose to jump off cliffs,
"The idea that lemmings intentionally jump off cliffs and into the sea is a myth. This misconception likely originated from a 1958 Disney documentary called "White Wilderness, ...."
The scene may have been staged, but Wiki's entry on them suggests the demonstrated behavior is completely authentic, instead taking a more semantic argument about the term suicide:
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"Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they are driven to commit mass suicide when they migrate by jumping off cliffs. It is not a deliberate mass suicide, in which animals voluntarily choose to die, but rather a result of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. They can swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. In such cases, many drown if the body of water is an ocean or is so wide as to exceed their physical capabilities. Thus, the unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings, and perhaps a small amount of semantic confusion (suicide not being limited to voluntary deliberation, but also the result of foolishness), helped give rise to the popular stereotype of the suicidal lemmings, particularly after this behaviour was staged in the Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness in 1958.[12] The misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th century. In the August 1877 issue of Popular Science Monthly, apparently suicidal lemmings are presumed to be swimming the Atlantic Ocean in search of the submerged continent of Lemuria.[13]"
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The Disney Film narrated the event (from the article) as, "A kind of compulsion seizes each tiny rodent and, carried along by an unreasoning hysteria, each falls into step for a march that will take them to a strange destiny. That destiny is to jump into the ocean. As they approach the sea, they've become victims of an obsession -- a one-track thought: Move on! Move on!"
That does not seem especially inaccurate.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming
> Like lemmings off a cliff.
I just want to mention that actual lemmings are not doing this. This was faked by Disney employees throwing lemmings out off a cliff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Controversy
I have a good example of irony.
The right wing / conservative people in my country frequently call their political opponents "lemmings", to imply they're deluded, misinformed and mindlessly rushing towards their deaths.
The mass suicide of lemmings is a myth. The most notable perpetuator is Disney, which in a 1958 documentary movie "White Wilderness" staged a "suicide" scene, complete with pushing lemmings off a cliff. There were more cases of involving Disney.
So whenever right winged/conservative describe people with opposing views as "lemmings", they accuse them of being misinformed yet are proving themselves to be misinformed.
To top it off, the "documentary" movie won an Academy Award, which is also itself ironic, because misinformation has been rewarded as educational.
> lemmings don't really jump off trees
Trees? Isn't the traditional myth they jump off cliffs to drown in the ocean, as exemplified by the old Disney documentary where they filmed it, but in reality it was a river they were crossing, and the species depicted isn't even known to migrate?[1]
Not trying to be pedantic, it's just interesting how these things shift and mutate over time and culture.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Controversy
Why the downvotes?
From White Wilderness, as the movie shows drowning Lemmings, put there by Disney employees, the narrator goes:
"And so is acted out, the legend of mass suicide and destruction of a species."
https://youtu.be/xMZlr5Gf9yY?t=2m50s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
Which among many other things, mentions the Lemming Suicide myth:
> Lemmings do not engage in mass suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating. This misconception was popularized by the Disney film White Wilderness, which shot many of the migration scenes (also staged by using multiple shots of different groups of lemmings) on a large, snow-covered turntable in a studio. Photographers later pushed the lemmings off a cliff.[234] The misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th century.
Not to mention the Lemmings documentary...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness