Decades ago, a young Susan Swanberg and her family moved west from her birthplace in Massachusetts. Growing up first in Massachusetts and later in California, she spent her childhood chasing butterflies and lizards before pursuing a career as a biologist, geneticist and science journalist.

"My dad had a lot of wanderlust and wanted to live out West," said Swanberg, now an associate professor in the University of Arizona School of Journalism, where she researches the history of science and environmental journalism. That wanderlust, she said, was inspired in part by Disney's "True-Life Adventures," a nature film series launched in 1948.

One film in the series, "The Living Desert," was filmed in Tucson and claimed to depict scorpion courtship, tortoise battles and desert mice outwitting predators. Still available on Disney+, it won the 1954 Academy Award for feature-length documentary, was shown in classrooms and brought brief fame to Tucson.

However, the film is not entirely scientifically accurate, according to Swanberg's latest research article, published in the inaugural volume of the International Journal of Disney Studies. 

Swanberg talked to University of Arizona News about some of the film's inaccuracies, the benefits it brought despite misinformation, and how the public can be more discerning when consuming information intended to entertain.

Q: What do you remember about seeing "The Living Desert" as a child?

A: When I first saw it, I thought it was really fun and entertaining. From my youngest days, I was interested in nature, and I collected butterflies and lizards. It was kind of my entree to science, into nature. So, this film really grabbed my interest. 

Q: How did you come to investigate the film's scientific accuracy?

A: I would show the movie to my students, sometimes as a discussion topic, and we would talk about implementation of the information and what they thought about it. And very quickly, the topic of misinformation popped up. It was something that was already on my radar, but it kept coming up in the student discussions, too, which was kind of interesting. 

I started researching what newspapers wrote about the film at the time. One of the first things I found was the fact that a lot of the animals in the film were borrowed pets, and that many of the sets were created rather than being natural habitats. 

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Q: Are there other examples of ways it failed to live up to what we think of as a documentary?

A: In the scorpion courtship sequence, there are parts of that are realistic. But they over-produced it, setting it to square dance music and adding a stop and reverse action with editing. At the end, the male scorpion drags the female down into a burrow. So, parts of it are realistic, but the anthropomorphizing is the big thing.

Then, you've got the tortoise courtship scene. The behavior of the two male tortoises with one female tortoise was framed as courtship, when it was really a repeat of interactions among roommates. These tortoises were pets, and they lived together. Their owner was interviewed in the Arizona Daily Star. 

Q: Did Disney intend to lead viewers to think this was a true documentary, aside from being labeled a "true-life adventure"?

A: There was some suggestion in articles during my research that Walt Disney himself invented the word "edutainment," but I couldn't find any proof of that. But I did find a 1954 article in the magazine Women's Home Companion where Disney explained that it wasn't his intention to be educational.

Q: Did any positive aspects come from the film and how the public views desert ecology?

A: One of the positives, I think, was it made the desert more intriguing, because there is a lot of life in the desert, and it did highlight that life. So, I will give the film credit for doing that. 

I also looked at the comments on Amazon for "The Living Desert" and found one from a Janet L. Jones, who mentioned that her husband, Larry Jones, who was a herpetologist, was inspired by "The Living Desert." So, it did have its purpose, and it did inspire people.

David Attenborough and the British nature film tradition are much more scientific, much more serious, and much less a form of edutainment. As a scientist, that's my preference. If you're going to inform people about the natural world, in my opinion, it shouldn't have the overlay of cultural values and anthropomorphism.

Q: Is there a lesson here for the public as consumers of information?

A: I teach my students a technique called lateral reading, which basically means to vet things. Vet the expertise, vet the information that so-called experts are telling you, find out what other people have written. Look at the expertise of the people and rely on not just one expert – find multiple experts and read what they're saying. 

One of my questions is: Did movies like Disney's shape a generation in such a way that it impacted how we view nature? As a result, do we think nature can take care of itself? We need to explore whether some of these movies or things we've read have created an expectation that nature is fine on its own. Nature needs our assistance and our care to survive.