Bindi: The Jungle Girl
July 18, 2007
Is the frenzied marketing of "Bindi the wildlife warrior" appropriate?
Bindi Irwin
Little Bindi Irwin has hit the hustings since her father's death last year. She's been everywhere -promoting Australian tourism, performing on Broadway, addressing the National Press Club in Washington and somehow finding time to film this 26-part wildlife series.
Watching the plucky eight-year-old host her own show is macabre yet mesmerising, right from the moment her grinning, khaki-clad father appears in the opening credits. Just as the associates of Tupac Shakur cobbled together a posthumous hip-hop album, this show revisits Steve Irwin's tangles with the animal kingdom that never made it to air, overlaid with his proud daughter's slightly manic narration.
Psychologists could make hay out of Bindi's alternation between past and present tenses when referring to her father. She giggles as he tickles an orang-utan and mocks a scary rhinoceros. "My daddy is ready to move [away] quickly if he has to," Bindi assures us, her eyes shut tight. Our knowledge, however, that Steve was not stomped on by a rhino but killed by a stingray puts paid to any suspense.
Is the frenzied marketing of "Bindi the wildlife warrior" appropriate? Conventional wisdom is she should be processing her father's death away from the limelight, instead of draping herself in snakes for the cameras. There should be grief counsellors. There should be social workers. There should be comforting, fluffy toys. It's not for us to peer into this little girl and discern whether she is happy. Are the people pulling her strings blinded by dollars? You have to pray that someone, somewhere, has her best interests at heart.