Respond to Werner Herzog’s film here.
UPDATE:
As you think about how to respond to Herzog’s film (on its own and/or in relation to Torres’ novella), please remember to not just discuss (evaluate) Treadwell as a figure/character/person, but also to consider HOW Herzog is using the medium of documentary film (the techniques of) in order to represent very specific ideas through his particular aesthetic lens on Treadwell. You must treat Treadwell as a subject of the art object (film) itself, even if/though it is a “real” story; it is still a crafted (version of the) story. It is Herzog’s story. And Herzog’s is one of many lenses that could be put on the question of “our nature,” human nature, through telling the story of Treadwell exactly as he does—how does he? Why does he make certain filmic choices? How does his storytelling as the narrator (the insertion of himself into the story) and the various other techniques employed, visual and otherwise, shape our understanding, our critique, our judgment, our empathy, etc. of and for Treadwell? How does he get us to probe our ideas about wild vs. human nature, about what he calls “the common denominator of the universe…chaos, hostility, murder,” and many other intellectually provocative concepts. [The responses posted so far about the film are very good in weighing in on the ethical and psychological aspects of Treadwell, but I’ll just point you to Rhys’ direct address of Herzog’s filmmaking (and the connection drawn to Torres’ writing), which is what I expect you to be doing with all texts this semester.]
One thing that I couldn’t get out of my head after watching Grizzly Man was the idea of the tape of Treadwell and Huguenard’s deaths. I cannot even begin to imagine what that audio recording would sound like. The screaming from Timothy as he realized that he was going to die at the hands of something that he’d devoted his life to. The screaming from Amie as she too, realized that she was going to die, but only after she heard her boyfriend dying. And against all that, the sounds of the grizzly. It must be one of the most disturbing audio recordings in existence. The reasons for Werner Herzog not including that audio in his movie are obvious. Some things are just too disturbing for television.
What I wondered about, though, was why Herzog chose to include a scene of him listening to the audio in the film. He was clearly disturbed by it after listening, and perhaps that was why he did it; he wanted to convey to us how terrible Treadwell and Huguenard’s fates were without subjecting us to the content of the video. In my opinion, this was the best possible option for including the tape in the movie, along with the coroner’s horrifyingly descriptive narration of what happened in the clip. The audience has a morbid curiosity about how Treadwell and Huguenard died, but we don’t want to know too much, either. The morbid curiosity of humans has its limits. And yet, when I was researching the fate of the audio, I ran across several fake audio tapes of the deaths made by other people. Why would they do this? In my opinion, their motivations for this are the same as the explanation for why the coroner’s account of the death is included. We want to know what happened, but we must hear it through something else, some account that isn’t the real thing, so that we can always maintain some plausible deniability in the back of our minds that we didn’t hear the real thing. I think that if the people who made the fake audio recordings heard the actual audio recording of Treadwell and Huguenard, they would be deeply disturbed.
I was curious about whether the tape had been destroyed after Herzog told Jewel that she should destroy it without ever listening to it. I looked it up, and from this source, it looks like Herzog actually later took back what he said about the audio, as he later said it was “stupid” and “silly advice,” and that he said it mostly because of the shock of listening to it. He added that instead of destroying it, Jewel put it into a safety deposit box in a bank, a choice that he approves of. The source is here:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2007/04/werner-herzog.html
I wonder, though, what is the difference between simply destroying the tape and putting it into a safety deposit box without intent to ever remove it? In the end, both ways make it inaccessible to everyone. If no one is meant to ever listen to this, why not destroy it? Why, if Herzog no longer wants the tape destroyed, does he still want it in a safety deposit box, where it effectively has the same fate? Maybe this is a part of human nature, our relentless thirst for knowledge that demands we keep all knowledge we acquire, no matter the consequences of keeping that knowledge. Simply the fact that we still have the Treadwell tape is enough to satisfy Herzog’s documentarian thirst for knowledge.
In “Grizzly Man,” Herzog manipulates Treadwell’s footage to illustrate the border between the natural world and the human world. Treadwell was depicted on the border of the human world and bear world because he chose to live with animals that would never accept or understand him, therefore ostracizing himself from his human community. Treadwell is seemingly in transition between communities, but through the intense loneliness captured in Treadwell’s footage, it becomes clear that Treadwell is stuck between, and unaccepted, by both worlds. The exclusion that Treadwell faces reminded me of Anzaldua’s description of home in “Borderlands” when she says, “this is my home, this thin edge of barbwire.” Treadwell has inadvertently made himself a home on that barbwire, and ironically, he does so in an attempt to find himself. Treadwell’s initial endeavor to save and protect the bears turned into his own journey to find a sense of belonging and acceptance; however, Treadwell ultimately never found acceptance in his lifetime. Herzog’s resurrection of Treadwell’s footage allowed him to be understood to some extent. Although Herzog disagrees with Treadwell’s intentions, the audience is able to empathize with Treadwell because Herzog reveals love and emptiness in the lives that Treadwell touched.
Another aspect of the film that intrigued me was how silence was used, especially when Herzog noted that Treadwell’s films contained a silence that said more than words. The weed’s rustling in Treadwell’s footage represented the loneliness of living on the border of two worlds, much like how Bechdel used silence to demonstrate awkward tension in the multi-frame car scene in “Fun Home.”
Although Herzog used Treadwell’s story to exemplify his own opinion on human interaction with nature, his film captured the profound and touching aspects of Treadwell’s life.
At first, I took Treadwell’s obsession with achieving perfection in his shots and persona as a manifestation of his suffering for his cause- that he wanted everything to be at the level of perfection that the bears deserved. I believed this for a little over half of the film. However, when Treadwell’s ex-coworker compared him to Prince Valiant my image of him began to falter. This image eventually crumbled when he mentioned that Treadwell had a receding hairline. It seemed as though Treadwell was trying desperately to hide his own psychological battles through his appearance and his character. After this scene, I noticed every bandana and their strategic placement and every time Treadwell fidgeted with his hair. By first building Treadwell up to be this hero whose mission was to save creatures who could not save themselves, and then slowly revealing his flaws, Herzog creates a more tragic fall because Treadwell does not fall at once, instead he is constantly at an edge.
His most physical flaw, his receding hairline, and his need to hide it shows that he was fighting feverishly to control what cannot be controlled such as his genetics, the passing of time, and nature. His ongoing struggle to understand that some things exist and unfold without our direct interference became more apparent after this scene and reminded me of Manny’s obsession with God in We the Animals. Here, Manny is confused by God’s “magic”, his involvement (or lack of involvement) in their lives. The narrator takes the time to note his obsession saying that “lately, Manny was always trying to explain to Joel and me about God”(Torres 87), as if Manny felt he could teach his brothers about this greater knowledge that he did not have. Both Treadwell and Manny pour so much energy into trying to explain what is inexplicable by nature. While it is one thing to wonder and admire the wild as something that is “bigger” than us, I think that Herzog’s inclusion of Treadwell in his imperfect moments where his flaws are not just apparent but glaring, says that if we go too far, if we start to lie to ourselves and believe that we have all of the answers, that we have somehow “conquered” nature, we will always fall.
I find it fascinating how Herzog creates the whole movie about a single ending. He manages to remove almost all the traditional aspects of a story (beginning, climax), while also making his documentary wholly engrossing. The beginning especially drew me. For the first ten minutes or so, he never mentions Treadwell’s death, but Herzog ties in Treadwell’s death in all the same. The question of how the death comes to pass looms over the film, to the point where I was more uneasy in those first couple minutes then I have been in any horror film. Every shot of Treadwell increases the tension. Treadwell’s description of surviving as a samurai, his interview where he defends what the interviewer calls the deadliest animals on Earth, it all draws to mind his later horrific death. The reader constantly wonders: is this it? is this the moment he dies?
Part of what adds to this tension is the way Herzog frames Treadwell. Herzog mentions Treadwell having shot hundreds of hours of footage, yet Herzog specifically chooses footage where Treadwell mentions death. Death comes up constantly. Whenever he sees a grizzly bear come even remotely near to him, Treadwell reminds the viewer of the importance of not appearing weak. If Treadwell is anything but the perfect grizzly bear, one of them will eat him for his failures. Herzog frames Treadwell not as someone who attempted to cross the border between man and animal, but as one who failed. No matter how grizzly Treadwell may act, no matter how many times he may refuse to turn his back or yell “no!”, the grizzly bears know he is not one of them. Whenever we see a shot of Treadwell, the bears inevitably turn toward him and the camera to conduct an inspection. He is the other for them, something they need to inspect to understand. And Treadwell himself is so used to his treatment as the other that he calmly shoos them away.
But could Treadwell have become part of the bear community? Could he ever truly leave the world of humanity. He’s a smart man, Herzog specifically includes someone stating that for a reason. Maybe the issue was Treadwell’s intelligence. He thought about why the bears did things, whereas the bears just act. They don’t narrate the actions of humans to video cameras. Maybe if Treadwell hadn’t thought, he would hear the bear sneak up before it had the chance to kill him. Or maybe no one could never fully cross the border.
Through Treadmill’s trials with nature, Herzog questioned whether or not a human being can assimilate themselves with animals, to which, the answer is no, despite any degree of wilderness within a man. Herzog overlaid the dialogue of the last part of an interview with the curator of Kodiak’s Alvtiiq museum with a scene of Treadmill entering a body of water with a swimming bear. As Treadmill stepped into the water, the curator explained that Treadmill “crossed a boundary […] an unspoken boundary, an unknown boundary” that humans and bears had been living with for thousands of years. He added that when people cross this boundary, they will “pay the price,” referring to Treadmill. Herzog chose this scene to pair with these particular lines from the curator as a way to show Treadmill’s physical crossing of this boundary as he stepped into the water. He crossed the border from a civilized society to wild life. He went as far as to attempt to touch the bear, but it quickly turned around in preparation to attack, and Treadmill flinched away. If Herzog were to have edited out the end of the documentary clip where Treadmill flinches in fear, the scene would have seemed serene, and in a way, magical, as the man finally becomes the animal he craves to be. Instead, he kept in that part to show that nature is not made out of tender moments, and that Treadmill could never have been accepted as a bear because he was never able to acknowledge the wild’s duality of beauty and brutality, including death. He acknowledged that it happens—as he says in response to the remains of the baby fox and cub—but he could never accept it as being right. “It just doesn’t seem right,” he said as he looked over the animal corpse. In this scene, Herzog interjected Treadmill’s voice with his own opinions as a way to bring reality to Treadmill’s crushed fantasies. He also decided to bring attention to the fact that at that point in the film—or of Treadmill’s thoughts on nature—was where him and his subject differ. Unlike Treadmill, whose universe was supported by “harmony,” Herzog believed that the “common denominator in the universe” was “chaos, hostility, and murder.” In the wild, there is no “right” or wrong, only life or death. Treadmill would never have been able to fit in with the animals because he could never depart from the innate characteristic that made him human: empathy. In the final scenes, Herzog included one of the last recordings from Treadmill. He videotaped a bear, presumably his killer, as he and Amie sit by several feet away. While Treadmill might have viewed this bear as majestic and otherworldly, the creature that gave him life and a reason to live, Herzog once again interjected his own voice to provide a perspective void of wild madness. As the camera zooms into the eyes of the bear as a way to gain access to its soul, Herzog sees “no kinship, no understanding, no mercy” in this particular bear, only the “overwhelming indifference of nature.” Despite any madness or mayhem, Treadmill was a creature of love. He was genuinely empathetic towards the animals. He saw himself as the bridge between the spices. “I love you,” he continuously told the bears, the foxes, and the bees, but the emotion was never and could never be reciprocated because the wild does not love man. The wild can only instinctually long for survival.
Werner Herzog’s film Grizzly Man is a curious adventure into the life and mind of Timothy Treadwell. At times I found it uplifting, while at others I found it to be deeply disturbing and upsetting. I think that this was totally intentional on the part of Herzog, as he, through both the filming techniques employed and the overall narrative of the film, as Herzog seems to use Grizzly Man as a means to develop a narrative around the life of this deeply troubled man.
As I was watching this film, I couldn’t help but notice the way that Herzog’s filming technique seem to mirror the techniques used by Treadwell himself. Between the somewhat low grade camera, the handheld point of view, and the lack of the crew, Herzog seems to attempt to capture the same “realness” that Treadwell was able to get through his clips of film from the field. Herzog talks about how he revels in how Treadwell was able to get the closest thing to film of animals in their natural habitat because he had such an intimate relationship with his camera as a means to tell his story. Moreover, comparing the film Treadwell was able to get through his simple, one man crew, working with his handheld camera, was able to capture a much more genuine representation compared to something like the Planet Earth series, that, with its scores of high tech cameras, was able to produce incredible visuals, but don’t seem to have the same depth as Treadwell’s. It is almost as though Planet Earth is more a simulacrum of what occurs in the natural world, while Treadwell’s work can be seen as a more accurate reflection of these bears in the wild.
The movie seems to take a sharp turn at about an hour in, as Herzog shifts lenses from Treadwell’s public perception, and his personal psychotic break. For the first hour or so, Treadwell seems to be portrayed as somewhat of a hero, a martyr dying for what he believed, a valiant crusader for justice for the bears, as someone to be admired for his self-sacrifice and whose work is validated by the manner of his death. During this portion, Herzog plays a role in the narrative, conducting interviews with those both close to Treadwell, and those involved in the Alaskan peninsula. However, as the focus of the film changes, Herzog’s narrative also shifts almost entirely to Treadwell’s own film, and becomes more of a psychoanalytical window into the breakdown of a man teetering on the edge, as Herzog tries to distance himself from the character that, through his own directorial or historiographical lens, was once seen as someone to be admired.
Grizzly Man was a film that provoked a lot of questions for me that I had while also reading Justin Torres’ We The Animals. Such questions include what is dangerous intimacy? How far are we willing to go to break from civility? Are animals capable of love?
Herzog included the footage of Treadwell’s tent from the inside as animal paws appeared on top of it from the outside. This scene stood out to me and made me think of the description of the stars in the text, We The Animals. The camera was really still for the moment but the paws were moving all over suggesting we can’t control the wild. This is the same notion as “boys will be boys.” I also thought that the paws symbolized the “stars” in the text. All throughout the film Treadwell was trying to capture these “stars,” but perhaps he should have shot them down.
The very cycle that the speaker in We The Animals is trying to escape is the very society Treadwell was trying to escape. The constant close-up of people’s faces kept enforcing the cycle and distracting from Treadwell’s story. Similarly in the book, it talks about the observations of the speaker but doesn’t mention his feelings. We are constantly reading about the opinions and lives of everyone else but the speaker.
It’s also very interesting to highlight how Herzog chooses to show the female figures in the film. I’d say that they were definitely given a voice in the film. But their brief camera moments made them look soft, thus reinforcing the need for a masculine caretaker. One particularly important character was Amie. The similarities between Amie and the mother in We The Animals is striking. Little background information is provided about Amie. We are only told that she was Treadwells lover. The only times she comes in the frame is the few moments that Treadwell, himself captured her. We are told that she feared the bears, yet stuck by Treadwell till death. It’s fascinating to think about how she just “gave herself up.”
Not unlike the speaker in We The Animals, Timothy Treadwell is pushed far beyond the societal norm of what it means to be a civilized human being. Although I disagree entirely with Treadwell’s ideas of how to protect nature, because he is interfering with nature, I did find Herzog’s film to probe ideas of what civilized humanity is. Both Treadwell and the speaker in We The Animals are essentially pushed out of society by other forces. In We The Animals, the speaker is homosexual and his family deems that abnormal sending him to live in a mental institution. In Grizzly Man, Treadwell struggles with drugs and alcohol and must find some other outlet than substances. Treadwell has an extremely addictive personality and seems to replace his substance abuse issues with a drive to protect bears. As Herzog presents this story, he puts in many perspectives on Treadwell, while also showing direct footage of Treadwell in Alaska. Most professionals in their fields believed Treadwell was not doing the right thing by living with bears because of the danger and potential impact to the bear populations. Treadwell did, however, have many supporters including Aimee who died along with him. By inserting himself into the film, Herzog makes the film more of a story than a history. Although most of the film could be summed up as a fact sheet, Herzog creates an extremely emotional retelling of the story. The scene where Herzog listens to the final footage of Treadwell was extremely impactful because he films his first reaction to Treadwell’s death and cries on film. Although I disagree with most of Treadwell’s work, I do find this film to break down a barrier between societal outcasts and the rest of society.
The movie Grizzly Man astounded me with the multiplicity of the man displayed. When I was discussing it afterward, I was unable to form a concrete opinion of the man Timothy Treadwell, of humanity, or of the differing viewpoints of the director Werner Herzog and the subject. I think that was the point. Herzog analyzes Treadwell from so many different sides. He interviews people who loved Treadwell, who hated Treadwell, and who were simply present during the major events of his life. This alone is enough to create compassion for Treadwell. The gut-wrenching introduction of Treadwell’s death, the detailed interview with the coroner who created a story for Amy and Treadwell’s love, the slow close up of Jewel Palovik‘s face while watching Herzog listen to the audio tape of their death all serve to create a familiarity, compassion, and understanding for Treadwell and the mission he was willing to die for.
However, as the film progresses, Herzog reveals more and more of Treadwell’s inner demons. The description of the camera as Treadwell’s near constant, seemingly “omnipresent” companion and the treatment of it as a confessional, Herzog blends the identity of Treadwell – where did the actor end and the director begin? The persona Treadwell built for himself – the accent, the childhood in Australia, even how he never showed his forehead in public for fear of his receding hairline – funnels into the mythical character he played: the “kind warrior” who was always alone. This “kind warrior” had an amazing relationship with the bears but also felt that he was the only one who knew how to protect them. However, the part of Treadwell Herzog admires the most is his directing and cinematic capabilities. Herzog values the film and the beautiful, unscripted scenes of Treadwell’s time with the animals, but he also admires the persistence and meticulousness of Treadwell as a director. The line between actor and director blur within Treadwell. At the point when he is cussing out the Parks Department and phallically gesturing in anger, Herzog remarks “the actor has taken over the director.” He is no longer able to separate himself from the persona he created.
The blur between actor and director is also blurred within Herzog, however. He parallels himself with Treadwell, stating his opinions in agreement or opposition to Treadwell. For example, he states he does not see compassion or friendship in the bear’s eyes, only cold indifference, whereas Treadwell claimed these animals as fast friends. Herzog also inserts himself into the film, specifically through those opinions and commentary but also when he listens to the audio of Timothy and Amy’s last moments. Herzog himself becomes an actor in the story he has created around Treadwell. He includes himself in humanity and the “the common denominator of the universe…chaos, hostility, murder.” No one can escape this story.
Herzog succeeds in providing a multifaceted perspective of Timothy Treadwell as a human being, while staying true to Treadwell’s main hope for the documentary. Treading the border between viewpoints of insiders and outsiders, Herzog incorporates clips of those who contradict, pity, and praise Treadwell. In a way, assembling and organizing the 100+ hours of footage could only have been completed by an outsider, disattached from what occurred in the Alaskan peninsula. Because the film was created without Treadwell’s influences, it better resonates with viewers’ thought processes. As the film constantly transitions from Treadwell’s vlogs and others’ interviews, it navigates a series of borders. These borders wrestle with praise, mortification, civilization, environment, order, and chaos.
One scene that especially stuck out to me was Treadwell’s reaction to bear feces. Romanticizing these wild animals with only the most innate of characteristics, Treadwell truly believed these bears are his closest companions and “special to him”, so much that he was comfortable with their excrement. Although Timothy bridged the border between human and bear species, the bears were not his friends. A recurring situation was Treadwell demonstrating affection for the bears, but the bears not reciprocating and proceeding with their lives in a disinterested fashion. Specifically, Treadwell had to act dominantly toward “The Grinch,” who was on the verge of biting him. He then proceeded to repeat, “it’s ok, I love you, I love you, I love you,” as the bear walked away. Treadwell crossed an unspoken, unknown boundary of nearly 7000 years by living with these grizzly bears, due to his natural tendency towards chaos. The film covers his chaos to its full extent, but is also rounded out by interviews of those who contradicted Treadwell.
The man who collected Treadwell and his girlfriend’s bodies thought Treadwell lost sight of “what was really going on,” and criticized him for believing in universal connection through all animals. While the film was disrespectful towards for Treadwell in this manner, it reaffirmed Treadwell’s inevitable death. Several times throughout the film, Treadwell himself claimed he thought “die for these animals,” and made it clear he had dedicated his life to his project. He even went so far as to say his death would benefit the film. He mutated into a wild animal to fully embody the experience he wanted, incessantly and openly loathing the “people’s world.” Protecting the animals and educating the public resulted in the ultimate sacrifice.
I appreciated what Herzog did with Treadwell’s footage while divulging in the death. The low set clip of plants waving in the breeze looked as if it had been from Treadwell’s viewpoint, while the bear mauled him. However, Treadwell pops into the shot a few moments later. Perhaps Herzog is implying that Treadwell was not a tragedy, and lives on through his legacy despite his estranged ways.
Through the telling of Timothy Treadwell’s story, Werner Herzog examines not just the removal of boundaries between nature and man, but also permits for the voicing of various perspectives regarding the actions of Timothy, both throughout life and in specific relation to grizzly bears. Although as a filmmaker he took obvious inspiration from Treadwell’s documentation, along with his cinematic style, this did not limit Herzog’s scale of study to Timothy as an isolated individual. Reaching out to members of the very same society from which Treadwell sought to escape, Herzog examines the broader impact of Timothy’s existence. Through interviews with family, friends, and other persons connected to his death, Herzog reveals various opinions (welcoming both criticism and support), emotions, and explanations regarding a range of aspects across Treadwell’s life. In looking at Timothy not just as a tragic death resulting from his impassioned work, but rather as a friend, a son, a lover, a struggling individual, a deluded ecologist, a radical environmental protectionist, viewers are exposed to the reaching scope of his impact and actions demonstrated throughout the film, left to choose the perspective with which they most align.
For me, the most intriguing scene from Grizzly Man was Werner Herzog’s discussion with Marnie Gaede. It is in this conversation she reasons his experience was, perhaps unconventionally, religious. Throughout the film, viewers are granted intimate access to Timothy’s thoughts and emotions, which at times could become overpowering. Through this and knowledge of his troubled past, the audience comes to understand the significance of his transformation resulting from interaction with these bears. Whereas Timothy often found himself at odds with the rest of society, among these creatures he was able to find companionship and a purpose. In dedicating himself to this self-proclaimed duty, only in isolation from the human world could he find redemption. This experience in itself could be classified as a spiritual awakening, reaching salvation within this wild territory. If his passion in protecting these Alaskan animals could be identified as a religion, he was certainly a devout follower. His perpetuated desire to cross the line between civilization and wilderness demonstrates the intense connection between him and things considered to be outside of human understanding. Throughout the film, Treadwell challenges many borders: those between human and animal, social expectations and personal desires, past troubles and present hope, internal struggles and outward love for his surroundings. Although his death was undoubtedly tragic, Gaede reveals that, for Timothy, this was perhaps necessary. He was willing to sacrifice his life for these creatures and their protection, often times considering if through death he would be able to more effectively spread his message. Regardless of the conditions of his passing, his love of these animals and their home place has been solidified in his legacy, his intense relationship between these lands eternalized through the ultimate spreading of his ashes among the Alaskan flowers.
Also, similar to Rhys’s note, in watching this film, I was reminded of a podcast detailing the story of a man who blindfolds himself and lives outside in an underground tunnel eating grubs in order to better understand the life of a badger. It is a very brief, interesting story. (First audio clip, 8 ½ minutes) https://www.thisamericanlife.org/596/becoming-a-badger
Timothy Treadwell’s story raises some pressing questions about human’s place in the natural world. In an effort to try and “protect” these animals, Timothy places himself in the lives of bears, seemingly unfit for any human, by modern standards. I found it telling when Werner Herzog interviewed Sven Haakanson Jr., the native Alaskan, and how he talked about Timothy as “disrespecting bears,” “[crossing] an unspoken boundary”. Does this human-animal boundary truly exist, or did humans just create it as a way of differentiating themselves? Are humans not animals? Maybe we are more intelligent, but it is obvious by Timothy’s (and many others’) ability to survive within the Alaskan wilderness for so long that this boundary us humans have created is not as defined and clear as some may like to believe. I don’t think Timothy was “disrespecting” the bears by any means, although he may have been invading their territory, his commitment and passion to understand them helped to educate others. Even if the typical person found Timothy to be “out there,” some considering his death as deserving, his connection and respect for these animals inspires me.
Whether his protection of these animals was needed or not, it gave him a purpose. Who are we to judge someone for making sense of their own lives, applying themself to a cause? If anything, we should thank Treadwell for bringing the problems created from having such a distinct boundary between humans and animals (leading to a lack of respect), to current discourse.
To comment on Herzog’s style, I found his filming to make Treadwell’s story to seem tragic, with the dramatic close ups and interviews. One scene that particularly stuck out to me was him interviewing the coroner, when it zooms up on his face, as he is talking about receiving the deceased bodies of Timothy and Amy. This graphic description and dramatic filming style makes the viewer empathize with Treadwell, as opposed to dismissing his efforts at “saving the bears”.
In thinking about the film Grizzly Man, I thought about how Timothy Treadwell lives so far outside of any societal expectations of him, how this break from the human world was completely unprecedented and naturally provoked some intense value-based responses from the people close to him. The same is true of the main character of We the Animals, who at the end of the novel finds himself completely at odds with his family’s expectations of him. What interests me most is the similarities and differences in how Treadwell’s psyche, and that of the main character of We the Animals, are depicted by their respective artists. Herzog gives much attention to Treadwell’s motivations for his project and his consciousness in general, including his background with drinking and drugs, his intense connection to the animals, and the juxtaposition of his cinematographic instinct and his very personal moments. However, Herzog’s narrative arc that he created to tell Treadwell’s story put a major focus on Treadwell’s own sense of persecution or his own perception of himself as the sole protector, the savior of these animals. The main character of We the Animals never displays this same persecution complex, but the climax of Torres’s narrative arc has a similar contradiction to it. Especially in “The Night I Am Made” and “Zookeeping,” the human/animal line that Torres’s character lives on is blurred. Through his actions at the bus station, he is “made,” but “Zookeeping” questions in which way this being “made” tips the scale, toward human or animal. In a way, both We the Animals and Grizzly Man subvert our own expectations by being absent of any major judgement. Herzog gives a breadth of perspectives on Treadwell’s actions, and inserts his own opinion only through his art. Torres leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions about the ultimate desires of his protagonist.
Also, tangentially related topic that Grizzly Man reminded me of: there’s a British designer who created a set of prosthetics and an artificial stomach to live as a goat in the Swiss Alps for several days (not 13 years).
https://www.npr.org/2016/05/14/477964010/when-being-human-got-his-goat-this-designer-became-one
The story of Timothy Treadwell is one of loneliness, recovery, and adventure. But what fascinates me is where his story intersects with others: those of the grizzly bears, that of society’s expectations. In living among the grizzly bears in Alaska, Treadwell puts aside numerous entrenched conventions. The comfort of modern society is first and foremost among these, but he also breaks longstanding traditions of mutual interaction between humans and bears, whether this be the struggle of power between the two (with humans almost always coming on top) or the mutual distance kept, as the Native American from the museum speaks about when he says “He crossed a boundary that shouldn’t be crossed.”
It is impressive that Treadwell completed the achievement that he did, but did he deserve to be there in the first place? Proponents of his work often focus on the radical idea of what he did, but I believe some of the most important pieces of his life was what he did outside of the wild. Treadwell educated, for free. He wanted to spread respect and increased knowledge and empathy for animals, all things that are often sorely lacking in modern society. But critics of his lifestyle say that he endangered the bears more than he helped them by assimilating them to humans (others who wouldn’t be as friendly) and by bringing unwanted attention to their homeland.
This question can be broadened to the theoretical idea of borders as well. Most all conversation has focused on breaking down borders, and indeed in the age we live in that is one of the most pressing issues. But when is it unwise to venture across borders and attempt to break them down? For example, if a well-intentioned American set up shop in a poor Southeastern Asian country, they may build a hospital or fundraise some money for them. But if the American didn’t fully understand the culture, they may challenge established traditions or disrupt ways of life.
So does Treadwell understand the Grizzlies’ way of life enough to truly help? He speaks their language, in a way. I don’t believe, however, that he ever truly crosses the human/animal divide. But even by our discussion of his life, Treadwell does blur the existing line; he thins the border that has been upheld — and this is no meager feat to achieve.