They say the best climbers are the ones with the worst memory. That is how National Geographic wunderkind Jimmy Chin remembers it, anyway. If you’re familiar with the Sad Dudes Who Climb Stuff genre, you will recognise Chin from his academy award-winning documentary Free Solo, which sort-of follows Alex Honnold’s ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan. Or Meru, a cinematic lament for the tragedy of heterosexuality.
My issue is not simply how ghoulishly self-serving these stunts are, but how they’ve come to represent thriving industries built on erasure and exploitation. Proliferation of the Sad Dude makes corporations like National Geographic and The North Face complicit in ecological destruction by commercial mountaineering—a problem so widely documented it has long been impossible to ignore. But I digress.
The latest provocation from Chin and director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is Everest: The Other Side. The doco’s trailer introduces Hilaree Nelson and Jim Morrison, Hyrox-coded lovers whose dream is to climb up and ski down the world’s least climbable and skiable mountain. Two boys gaze awkwardly at dinner plates as their parents excitedly plan to abandon them. For science…? Dramatic violins play.
That the trailer itself is a work of artifice should not be a spoiler to anyone familiar with the National Geographic oeuvre in its Disney era. However, the uninitiated may be surprised to learn that Everest: The Other Side promises more than hetero-capitalist propaganda, it is glorified snuff in IMAX. If you think my critique is on the nose you should probably skip the Australian premiere next month—Chin and Vasarhelyi’s cameras were rolling when Hilaree Nelson was swept off a mountain and died during their film’s production. But the show must go on! For Sad Dude reasons. Which got me wondering: what won’t men do to avoid therapy? If my partner dies and I don’t take a commercially sponsored jaunt down the world’s tallest mountain, have I truly honoured their legacy?
Which got me wondering: what won’t men do to avoid therapy? If my partner dies but I don’t take a commercially sponsored jaunt down the world’s tallest mountain, have I truly honoured their legacy?
The National Geographic cinematic universe has made it their business to answer these questions and more, with thanks to the invisible hand of free market capitalism of course. Rumour has it that if you tilt your head and stare at your screen for long enough, you can see it fist pumping our myopic heroes on an icy mountain top.
Bethany Miguel 
Tarkyn Sharples 
Sonya Murphy