I found Grizzly man to be utterly disturbing.
Timmy Treadwell struck me as childish and naive. Truthfully, I would have
expected the behaviors exhibited by Treadwell from one of my young cousins who don’t
know any better; they are fascinated by big scary animals, because they don’t know
that they shouldn’t. This was exactly how Timothy Treadwell came across. It
seemed almost as though he was insane. He very flippantly gave up his otherwise
normal life to go out into the Alaskan backcountry to tend to grizzly bears that
were already in a federally protected national park. Why?
Moreover, Tim had a name for every animal regardless
of the fact that, well, they all look alike and are prone to comingling. So,
how does Treadwell keep track of all the animals? My guess is that he did it
not so much to keep track of the bears, but rather to justify his “intimate”
relationships with them, despite the glaring fact that there were none. He made
himself feel as though he was accepted by the bears, even though he wasn’t. In
all honesty, I would venture to say that one of the reasons he lasted so long
in the wild, among the bears, is because he appeared to be more trouble than he
was worth. The bears were not interested in him. He did not get in their way
and, for the most part, their lives were not terrible inconvenienced. They did
not see him as a threat so they just didn’t mess with him. A similar line of
thinking is that we are not inconvenienced by the existence of the deer on the
Hamilton Campus; they don’t pose a threat to us and they don’t interfere with
our lives. So, we let them live on and don’t pay them much attention. I by no
means am attempting to justify his actions. I sill think Treadwell was absolutely
crazy!
I think much of your assessment of Tim is valid: his cause was questionable and there are certainly inconsistencies, at least in the material presented in the documentary. But I think the motivation for his yearly excursions might be more innocent than simply a deranged man running wildly through Alaska. Tim had a devotion to animals and a curiosity that toppled both innate fear and raw danger a like. I think his curiosity was the true driving force of his summer romance with bears, a need to discover what one of the most feared, rightfully so, animals really was like.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Treadwell seems childish and naive, and maybe even slightly crazy. Anyone who would be willing to live with bears for several summers would have to be a little crazy, but very passionate. I don't think he was as connected with the animals as he claimed, although they don't seem to mind him most of the time. But I do think his intentions were pure, in that he really did want to help the bears; Treadwell just didn't approach his goal in the right way. Also, I don't think he really thought his methods all the way through. For example, Treadwell was protecting bears in a federally protected park, so he wasn't really contributing to the bear's cause that much.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we may see Treadwell as crazy, I think it's interesting to consider his perspective on his own reality. For the past many weeks we have been talking about the subjective nature of reality and the infinite possibility of perception. Treadwell believed that he was doing important and necessary work to save the bears - that was his reality. In his perspective, the bears and foxes were his dangerous friends, and who are we to say that they really weren't? Are we truly in a position where we have this somewhat omniscient power to project our realities onto that of another and say that their reality is false and/or insane?
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