A confused Grizzly Man

I absolutely loved Grizzly Man, potentially for the wrong reasons, but evidently, through the vast variety of differing of opinion on Timothy Treadwell it could very well be justified. My opinions on Treadwell are almost identical to that of Paul Arthur, who critiques this film along with others from Werner Herzog’s portfolio in his article Home Video, Personal Confession, and the Archive. I would just like to make it clear, that I think Treadwell was a completely delusional child of a man. He lived in a fairytale land where he was the protector of the bears who apparently enjoyed his company and would respect him as an individual. I am not denying that Treadwell was brave (or just suicidal), even though I really question if he gave the bears any respect. I hate the fact that he thought his words did anything to defuse the bears, because evidently from his demise, if one really wanted to kill him it was only a slight inclination away. I believe that living with the bears gave him some sick pleasure, and an escape from his past drug and alcohol problems. Paul Arthur agrees with this in his article, “Like Other Herzogian misfits, Treadwell is plagued by inner demons which he attempts to exorcise through incredibly risky behavior”(43) Additionally, I believe Timothy was very confused with his sexuality, evident in how he tried to baby talk the animals, like a mother would do to a child. Herzog additionally implies this confusion through showcasing a long scene of Treadwell walking, where he claimed ‘ I wish I was gay’ and seemed to hint on past feelings that he had struggled with throughout his life. He really comes across as a very lost person. Through his self chosen isolation, he confronted himself through the camera. It was as if he felt it was weird to talk to himself, but the camera gave him an excuse to finally do some soul searching. Arthur touches upon this, commenting that, “Treadwell is a dogged self-dramatizer with a thirst for abject camera exposure”(43). He seemed to be his own psychologist through the camera.

His personal issues aside, through this film I can really give him no credit for his ‘work’, other than his impressive footage of the bears in their natural habitat. He constantly referred to his work as watching and protecting the bears, however, not in one frame did we ever see him actually do anything helpful to the bears…or for that matter see a frame where it was at all obvious that the bears needed anyone’s help. These were the beginnings of his clear delusions of grandeur. He saw himself as a hero or believed he was doing something very noble. As the native museum guide quite rightly points, he most likely caused more harm than anything else. He could potentially familiarized bears to humans, this could throw both endanger both species by bringing them closer together.

Furthermore, Treadwell tries to act as if he is an environmentalist when throughout the film it becomes painfully obvious he knows almost nothing about nature or the environmentalist practises. Arthur similarly pointed out Treadwell’s lack of knowledge, “Treadwell has little interest in conveying concrete information, there is hardly a whiff of animal biology or environmental science in the entire film” (45) He continually interferes with nature’s natural course. )This was most blatantly obvious when he attempted to direct the salmon through the stream by creating a path through the low water to feed his hungry bear friends. He sees the fish as the bear’s food instead of another organism, most likely because he didn’t have a fish for his stuffed animal as a child. He seems to have adoration for cute and cuddly animals ie: bears, foxes and even a bee, anything else he is simply not interested in. To interfere with nature and to show such preference is not the environmental way, since nature works by population control, it sometimes does not always favor the cute and cuddly animals. This highlights his idiocy and the childishness of his grizzly aspirations.

After all these factors, I still think the most disgusting thing about Treadwell was his hypocrisy. In one shot he would claim bears are misunderstood, but in another he would say that he is constantly in danger of being killed by the same animal. These conflicting statements indicate one of his many attempts to idolize himself. Additionally, he tried to make his living with the bears out to be for the animal’s benefit and protection; that he was selflessly in their service, when in reality it was all an act to get attention for himself.

I believe it was Herzog’s intention to show a steady decline in his personality throughout the film. Initially, Treadwell may come across as an adventurous and caring individual, but as the film progresses it becomes obvious he is just obsessed with the celebrity which had spawned from his insanity. He was clearly a different person during his speeches than when he was essentially off camera between takes, which was obviously never intended to be seen by the public. During planned footage, his character was calm and happy, out of this setting he was unstable and constantly cursing at society, and at one point even a fox. He created the false character of a lone outdoorsman, friends with all the cute and furry animals. He even lied to his audience in this regard because he pretended to be alone when in fact his girlfriend was with him during one of his expeditions. He created a likable character to get publicity, potentially to make up for previously failing to appear on the popular sitcom “Cheers” earlier in his life.

All in all, I loved the film for getting me so angry at this unfortunately pathetic person. Even though, I am sure Treadwell meant well, he just had absolutely no comprehension of reality, and eventually his luck ran out, it is just unfortunate that he took his girlfriend’s life with him.

[ TAKEN FROM DOCUMENTARY PROJECT 1 REFLECTIONS]




For the Interview I used the built in recording capabilities of my Mp3 Player, the Creative Zen Vision M. As is evident by the picture, it is a very unassuming piece of technology and did not require a microphone to record the interview. It was simply left on my grandma’s (Yvonne May) bed side table and left to record. There was a meter which showed how much sound the mic was picking up, I played with the sensitivity so that everything was audible but not overpowering. The device recorded the interview perfectly and encoded the interview as a wav file, which I could then refer to either with the player or through my computer. I was very happy with the recording function of the device. I believe that the unobtrusiveness of the device allowed the interview to go ahead very casually, as if it was just my grandma commonly telling me one of her stories from her past. The answers she gave me all seem very natural and unforced.

I am very pleased with the final product, mainly because I have a timepiece of my Grandma’s life, that will always mean something special to me. I was extremely interested in her stories, both personally, how she met my grandfather (who I have never met, he died of a brain tumor before I was born) and historically, learning about what the world was like in her time. I noticed some very interesting trends in how she looks at the world compared to how I would, along with some similarities between her day and ours. It was interesting how she refers to the English and allies as ‘we’ and never really separated herself from that. Throughout the interview and in her stories in general my grandma is very proud of her English heritage.
The transcribing process was not very difficult for me, since I could type her words almost as quickly as she spoke them. The hardest part was deciding on punctuation, since we do not talk with the same structure that we write.

Seeing as how my grandma is 91, she does repeat herself a lot, at points she will even repeat whole stories that she had just finished recounting. The rearrangement of her thought was the main focus of my editing to make the interview seem fluid and not confuse the reader through the constant repetition. She speaks in a very English manner, which includes of self reflexive comments such as “I think”, “I would have you know”. I had to take out a lot of those to make the piece flow. Additionally, she would ask herself questions after I asked a question, as if she was searching her memories for the answer. I had to take all of these instances out. Apart from that she is an incredibly eloquent speaker and a very good story teller.

Her life in Edinburgh seemed almost like a fairytale, especially her anecdote about how she met my grandfather. It seemed as if it was right out of a movie or novel. In fact, I really like this style of storytelling, it seems far more human than formal writing. I wish I could write how she talks. It was really fulfilling to shape a fluid story through the answers, it was a really fun editing process. I tried not to change her words or sentence structure as much as possible to maintain her presence in the writing. Through her age, she didn’t completely finish some thoughts, and I tried to finish them to the best of my ability.

The interview itself comes across as a comparison between a person from the mid 1900s to a person today. Particularly poignant moments in the interview were when she contrasted between then and now with regards to the media and news coverage. It was really amazing how cut off she was from the truth of the front line during the war. She has told me on numerous occasions that she had the time of her life during the war, when you would have thought times should have been tough. World War 2 was one of the biggest conflicts of our race’s existence, and had drastic consequences if Germany annexed Europe. It really surprised me that the situation did not weigh heavier on her conscience; she could have been invaded by fascists, who were not known to be the nicest of people. Today the public attitude and media landscape are completely different. I can only imagine the fear mongering that would be going on if we were facing an enemy as powerful as fascist Germany was back then. This is completely contrasted by our mediascape today, where we have images from the front line available 24/7 along with commentary from analysts and soldiers themselves. Furthermore, our media would underline every event, and make sure the general public knew, to some degree, what was going on. The world has clearly gotten a lot smaller through media technology. My grandma referred to Edinburgh as ‘her own little world’, to be so isolated from the rest of it seems really strange by today’s standards.

Another contrasting element to my grandma’s interview was how much she appeared to enjoy her job compared to some of the people in Stud Terkel’s Working. She seemed to have a definite feeling of pride for the work she was doing, something the majority of jobs are lacking in the book.

Not only am I pleasantly surprised with “Working” by Studs Terkel, but I definitely agree with all the acclaim it has obviously received, evident through the critic reviews plastered all over the front cover. Business Week wrote,“ Splendid…important…Rich and fascinating… The people we meet are not digits in a poll but real people with real names who share their anecdotes, adventures, and aspirations with us.” This reaction definitely captures what this book, and a Studs Terkel interview offer. This book is essentially a time capsule for the civic attitude and makeup of our current day society. This book does not censor the interviewee’s feelings in any shape or form (which is at all obvious). The people’s point of views, whether they are offensive or even racist are kept free of political correctness and censorship. Through this, Terkel achieves a sense of honesty with this book, and provides a window into the minds and attitudes of the western world. The way the interviews are presented is not meant to judge the individuals, but to showcase the worlds in which they have grown up in and are currently living. The interviews and anecdotes both explicitly and implicitly touch on society’s problems.

The majority of stories almost come across as if the people are beaten, that they are unhappy with their work (and lives) and are trapped with no way out. There seems to be a large degree of helplessness in peoples lives, these feelings seem to point out the economic and political shortcomings of our day. As a student I can relate to the struggles that the majority of these people face.

One of the characters who really hit home was Mike Lefevre, the steelworker (preface 1). Funnily enough this was the first interview that I read, and it sparked my enthusiasm for the rest of the book. I found that Lefevre represented the common labor class worker. He hates his job but needs the money to support himself and his family. He seemed very selfless, just doing his job, trying to get through his life…regardless if he’s particularly happy with it. His modesty towards himself and his quite poignant criticisms of the working world gave me a great deal of respect for him:
“You can’t take pride anymore…You remember when a guy could point to a house he build, how many logs he stacked. He built it he was proud of it…It’s hard to take pride in a bridge you’re never gonna cross, in a door you’re never gonna open”(xxxi)
In this response Lefevre directly criticizes Taylorism and is expressing his hate towards the dehumanization of labor. He goes on to constantly see his profession as pointless, claiming that a machine could do what he does, ”your doing manual labor you know a machine can do”(xxxii). It is one thing to hear these theories in lecture but to hear this first hand from someone experiencing it, really emphasizes that these things are real and are happening to people in the world.

I deeply enjoyed his theory that if the working class were not so beaten down, and if they had the money and the time to pursue their interests and educate themselves that they there would be more Albert Einstein’s, more revolutions in the world. However, he quite rightly points out that, the government probably would not want that to occur. This attitude touches on a general mistrust that the public has of its government, in current and past days.

Additionally I wholeheartedly agree with his outlook on workplace authority and rules.
“He was chewing me out and I was saying, “yeah yeah yeah” he said, “what do you mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, sir.” I told him “who the hell are you, Hitler?” what is this “yes sir bullshit” I came here to work, I didn’t come here to crawl” (xxxiii)
I love how Lefevre comes across as if he is the complete embodiment of Marxist theory. The line where he says he came here to work not to crawl, captures how ,in these type of jobs, workers are definitely proletariat slaves to the bourgeoisie. Workplace chain of command have always frustrated me. Most of the time your manager is just trying to make them self feel more useful or in charge by flexing their ‘power’. When the work is so menial, (Steelwork in his case, Walmart in my case) it takes you a lot of discipline to not snap on this manager who is just as frustrated with their job as you, but tries to feel better by pissing you off. Managers act as if the job should be the world to us, or that we should care about it, when in reality, all it is, is a pay cheque. Taking pride in ones work when there is no pride to be had is difficult, and robs individuals of their self confidence. Taking pride in that sense is being proud of being used and abused by the bourgeoisie.

Looking back on Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes I am really surprised how much it hit people in the class. I understand that these were actual people being cut open, but as far as we know they died of natural causes and are having common procedure carried out of them. I even thought to myself (even in the previous response) that this film was different than conventional Hollywood brutality, but to be honest my view has changed. A few days ago I saw Hostel: Part 2 (Eli Roth), and this movie has crossed the line, and has definitely surpasses the gruesomeness of The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes in my opinion. The screenshot I captured demonstrates just how horrid Host: Part 2 gets. This was one of the worst scenes in the movie for me. Essentially, this scene acts out how an unknown buyer tortures Lorna (Heather Matarazzo), who is one of the main characters. This buyer undresses and lays in a bath tub and proceeds to cut Lorna up, appearing to gain sexual pleasure from the blood drenching her, and Lorna’s screams of pain. This scene was extremely hard for me to watch, and quite sick to entertain the idea that this could happen…and amazing that a large audience of people has seen this. Just because the story is fiction does not mean it really hits you on a different level. The effects are so real it is impossible to really distinguish between a fake cut in Hostel: Part 2 and a real cut in The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes. Additionally, through the narrative of a movie you personalize yourself with the characters, so there is at least a minimal emotional investment. The simple fact that you see these characters beg for their lives and scream in pain makes the viewing of their torture that much more graphic than Brakhage’s silent film. It seems difficult to call The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes a documentary when those images could have just as easily been in a Hollywood horror movie.

When I first heard we were going to be watching a Stan Brakhage film, I was not really looking forward to it. My past film classes left me unimpressed and very cynical towards his work. We studied more of his post modern films such as Black Ice. These films were similar to the colored and textured framed shorts that were shown in class. My film teacher justified his ‘genius’ by saying,“ You may think you can do the same thing as this, and that it would not be difficult…but you didn’t and he did. “ I also recall my teacher saying Black Ice took him a year to make, and it was merely 10 seconds long. I had a hard time giving Brakhage any credit or respect for these shorts because my computer can generate much more diverse and fluid colors in motion than these films. People will say, but that’s a computer and he did it himself, but I say what a waste of time. Despite this, I was pleasantly surprised to see another side of Brakhage’s film portfolio, even though it is incredibly morbid, in The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes.

The Act of Seeing with One’s own Eyes had a huge initial shock for me. Once the premise and material set in I really had no aversion to watching what was being shown. I think the only thing that made me a little uncomfortable was the fact that these were actual people being examined and taken apart. Testa touched on this in the reading, “even when stilled in Death they suggest a person, a subject” (Testa 279) As far as I know I am not the squeamish type (at least through the screen), so the gore and brutality against the human body was not really an issue for me. Just knowing that we were witnessing an actual person being cut open made the experience a little more visceral than fictional Hollywood or television violence and special effects. Once I attached reality to the autopsy and saw the lifeless human beings, I found my that my mind was toying with the actual repercussions of the loss of these lives ; ie:The Family members and friends that are all mourning the loss of this person, this person who I will never know.

If the bodies were anyone who I knew, I cannot even imagine what it would be like to see them on that mortician’s table. Seeing someone you know having these things done to them would come across as one of the greatest of insults (in my opinion). One of the most the most memorable scenes was when the mortician hollowed out the peoples’ chest cavities. The removal of all the organs left both a physical and metaphorical empty shell. This organ evacuation felt very dehumanizing (this could be the justification I’ve been seeking to rationalize not wanting to be an organ donor). I think this is because as humans we think we are more than just a biological organism made up of flesh, blood and bone. We like to imagine a soul or something intangible which can explain our consciousness; we have a misconception that we have control over our bodies. Testa mentions this as one of the movies main effects:
“The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes is that this is a special space of transformation: universal, for we all die, but also a space with a decided threshold. The film has transformed that space by seeing it—in the most literal, documentary fashion—from a secret, forbidden zone into a space where the body at once ceases to be human in our usual sense.” (Testa 283)The autopsy, similar to the film itself, shakes this conception we have of ourselves and reaffirms we are still mortal with or without modern medicine. The title of the film quite explicitly hints at this concept.

Through the absence of any sound, and Brakhage’s careful cinematography, I found this film to be extremely reflexive. The purely visual experience made this film impartial and un-biased. The viewers’ reactions were directly linked to whatever emotions were evoked through the film. In more conventional films, Filmmakers distort and shape anything they shoot by adding or emphasizing certain sounds, or create a certain narrative through editing. Testa confirms this, citing that, “No overall narrative evolves” (Testa 269). In fact the only input that Brakhage really gives to this film is the wording of the title itself. The strongest way that Brakhage achieved this reflexivity was how he initially withheld any solid shot of any one body’s face. The camera was mainly focused on a certain part of the body, or an action of the mortician (whose face was also not captured until the end). It seemed Brakhage intentionally did not want us to identify the body as an ‘other’. It is as if he wanted us to personalize us more with the unknown bodies, potentially making viewers imprint personal losses onto them or, for myself (who fortunately, have not lost anyone close to me), feel the fragility of life in general, including my own.