Dahl and Herzog

While watching Grizzly Man, I kept coming back to one nagging thought: Treadwell is exactly like Willy Wonka. 

To be fair, this isn't as much of a stretch as it sounds. I'm somewhat of a Roald Dahl enthusiast, and for those less Dahl-savvy, let me spell out some of his main archetypes:
1. The child hero. The hero is always, always a kid. S/he is brave, purely good, and, above all, clever enough to outsmart every adult. Ever. (See: Matilda Wormwood, Charlie Bucket, James Henry Trotter)
2. The obscenely-evil-beyond-any-normal-child's-imagination villain. (See: The Trunchbull)
3. The one nice adult. Which prevented 9-year-old Lindsey from casting books aside in horror. (See: Miss Honey, the BFG, Grandpa Bucket)
3. Everyone else. Primarily comprised of dimwitted, negligent parental figures and annoying children who aren't cool enough to be the hero.

But it would seem that Dahl's most iconic figure fits into exactly none of these categories. Is Willy Wonka the One Nice Adult? Not likely. I mean, he lets a kid drown in chocolate. The guy's nuts. He's too smart and pivotal to the plot to be Everyone Else, and he's definitely not the Villain.

So what is he?

Willy Wonka is chaos. He's effectively a recluse who could go off the handle at any second, sending kids down the trash shoot or turning them into giant, disfigured fruits. But he's also the defender of the faith. He strives to protect innocence and find a worthy child with whom to share his life's work.

In many ways, this is the character Herzog has presented to us: a man who fits no established cookie cutter, who seems often on the brink of insanity (the scene where Treadwell demands his hat back from a fox comes to mind...), but who has basically good intentions at heart. Both Wonka and Treadwell fancy themselves the protectors of some wild, pure innocence, and they both have unconventional, mostly ineffective ways of going about it.

One thing that struck me about Werner Herzog is that, unlike Treadwell, he doesn't see nature as "anything that harmonious and in balance" (NPR Interview). Instead, he thinks "the common denominator is, rather, chaos, hostility, and murder" (NPR Interview). This is exactly the Dahl kind of thinking that enthralled (and terrified) me as a child. In his books, the adults don't listen, no one's in control, and the main character could get eaten or turned into a mouse at any second. His stories are based in a total lack of stability, which is how characters like Willy Wonka arise in the first place. Since Herzog holds the Dahl Doctrine close to his heart, it's no surprise that he portrayed Treadwell the same way.