Thought this might interest you all...

Google has developed a technology to tell whether ‘facts’ on the Internet are true

Intent vs Outcome

It's hard to contrast Herzog's intentions with the actual outcome of his studies. On the one hand, it is impossible to ignore the entirely genuine nature of Herzog's summers spent isolation with the bears. It seems apparent to me that his actions were not done for any public recognition or fame, but instead because of a true love for the animals and desire to be immersed in their world. The way in which he told both the fox and every bear "I love you" every time he encountered them doesn't only show a delusional quality, but moreover a deep appreciation and reverence for the animals. After seeing these encounters, it made it difficult for me to take in the negative approaches of him as stated by the pilot and the museum worker. While I understood where they were coming from, it just seemed cruel in contrast with his earnest nature. However, if in fact his presence was hurting the bears by habituating them to human behavior and thereby creating a false illusion that humans are not a danger when in fact they clearly are, does his love for the bears justify his behavior? I guess the general question that I am struggling with here is does intent justify a bad outcome? Which is the more important of the two? I feel myself compelled to thinking that, while it may not necessarily always justify a bad outcome, in this case his actions are justified for me as I found Herzog both endearing and powerful as a protagonist in his own story. 

Chris McCandless and Timothy Treadwell

The documentary Grizzly Man reminds me of the novel Into The Wild by John Krakauer. Not only do both of these works revolve around a wilderness plot, but both main characters display similar characteristics.  Chris McCandless drastically differs with Treadwell prior to his excursions, but amidst his wild adventures McCandless demonstrates very similar qualities to Treadwell.  McCandless denied any assistance or money from others because he believed he could overcome the wild without such objects.  I feel as though this correlates to how Treadwell refused to listen to people about his safety, and how he felt obliged to “protect” grizzly bears even though they appear to be fine on their own.  Both main characters exhibit a salutary neglect of the dangers they expose themselves to and neither valued money.  Chris McCandless donated his $25,000 college fund while Treadwell refused payment for his lectures on grizzly bears.  Also, both McCandless and Treadwell both meet their fate through following their passions.  McCandless was believed to have perished from eating a poisonous plant, but now we are finding that he actually died from starvation.  Treadwell ultimately died from a grizzly bear attack, which he seems to expect was coming from a hyper aggressive bear.  Both of these stories have numerous correlations other than just the superficial wilderness plot.  However, Treadwell’s story adapts into a hollywood story while McCandless found no fame until after his death.  This gives Treadwell’s story a manipulative feel to it.  The different perspectives of Treadwell provided by his acquaintances seem to seek the audience’s approval rather than telling his actual story.  Also, Treadwell begins to make his story with the thought of a national audience in his mind, which also contributes to the feel of seeking the audience’s approval.  Ultimately, Treadwell’s story does not seem genuine while McCandless’ story does.

The Power of the Gnats

Starting to watch Grizzly Man, I questioned myself as to how this movie might tie into the concepts of manipulation and of lying as we’ve talked about in class all semester. Nothing was dawning on me until I realized that I was absentmindedly scratching my lower arms and the back of my neck. For some reason, I felt incredibly itchy.

Then I noticed the buzzing in the background. In a lot of the interviews of the pilot who found Grizzly Man’s body, there was a swarm of gnats all around him. The gnats reminded me of a pond that I spend a lot of time at in the summer. I spend a lot of time there towards the end of the day when the bugs came out, and the noise of the bugs buzzing subconsciously made my arms start to itch. This unintentional manipulation made me start thinking about the other things that movies can force you to do without being obvious about it. The music in horror movies, for one, apparently make them three times scarier. The bugs made me uncomfortable and skewed my entire  I just found it very interesting that such a small thing, maybe even something that the producers of the movie were unable to control, had such a significant effect on my view of the movie.

Love Triangles

You can't spell gRIzzLy mAn without LIAR. See what I did there? Anyways, I am going to propose some crazy ideas here, and feel free to shoot them down. So far, we have seen 4 pivotal characters: Timothy (Bear Man Guy), Jewel (woman who used to date Bear Man Guy and now feels as if she has rights to his watch, which apparently has some symbolic value), the pilot (old guy with rocking mustache whose main purpose in life appears to be picking Bear Man Guy up every so often so he lives), and the woman who is on the island with Bear Man Guy when they both die (I forgot her name, but let's call her Lisa?). Ok, here is what I am thinking...Bear Man Guy and Lisa are living in the romantic hills of Alaska together. However, there is more to this story than meets the eye. Bear Man Guy and Jewel are still in love but decided that they will attempt to see other people, and if that does not work out by a specified time, they will fall back into each others loving arms. This is why Jewel seems to be distraught by the gift of the still-ticking watch, which represents their promise of time. In an effort to get over Jewel, Bear Man Guy finds this random girl named Lisa, who we really do not know anything about, and invites her to live dangerously close to bears in Alaska! What girl wouldn't want that!? Lisa loves not taking showers and listening to Man Bear Guy talk about how awesome he is. What a coincidence; Bear Man Guy ALSO loves these things. However, Jewel is looming in the shadows. A jealous wreck, she devises a plan with who other than the pilot, to take Lisa out of the picture. I'm still trying to work out an incentive for the mustached pilot...maybe money, or maybe he loved Jewel...that would make this story even more complicated. Anyways, the day Bear Man Guy and Lisa were killed was quite an interesting one. The pilot flew to where they were staying and brought his gun up to their campsite. Just as he was about to shoot Lisa, Bear Man Guy commanded his bear friends to attack the pilot! Unfortunately, due to an incredibly awkward miscommunication and overestimation of bear commanding power, the plan backfired. The bears, instead, attacked Lisa and Bear Man Guy. The pilot then returned to the town to tell about what had happened to the two lovers. Jewel was left with nothing but a watch and a broken heart. I know this might seem a bit confusing, but it is what I think might be explained in the second half of this film. If you want me to draw a schematic in class tomorrow, feel free to ask. 

Here is a bat eating a banana!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSUVXAsQe4I

Respect not Love

Having watched some of Grizzly Man, my impression of Timothy is not exactly positive. I agree with Herzog that Timothy's presence among the grizzly bears was disrespectful. Rather than trying to protect the bears, it seemed more as if he was doing it for his own satisfaction. He made it seem like he was doing it for the bears, but it looked more like he was doing it because he himself felt good about it. Especially since he was an addict before, it is possible that through these bears he was hoping to find some peace at mind even if that meant risking his life.

Herzog's personal disagreement with Timothy's view of nature is also definitely apparent throughout the movie. The deeper aesthetic truth he seemed to want to reveal was the truth about nature. Rather than getting involved with the bears like Timothy did, Herzog seemed to believe that he should respect them and their space. It's not about loving and protecting them, it's about respecting them. Herzog said that he didn't script the movie because of Timothy's case, but it is obvious that he wanted to portray his own view by including people in the documentary who were against Timothy. Also, the slight suicidal factor that Herzog mentioned was definitely apparent in the danger of being around the bears. I think Timothy's recordings had that deeper truth about nature and how it's a matter of not crossing borders and that is the way to demonstrate respect.

Grizzly SCAM LOL

I've always considered documentaries to be true. Watching historical documentaries throughout middle and high school, I assumed that they were completely factual with solid evidence to back up the claims. However, after seeing the first half of Grizzly Man, I'm beginning to second guess myself, as the "truths" within this documentary are ones that Timmy created himself.  Even though Timmy was probably not intentionally trying to fool us, he did so through fooling himself. I think that because of his past issues, like failing to be an actor and overcoming alcoholism, he had to convince himself that he was on top, and that he was finally understood. He did this through understanding bears, and telling himself that they understand him too. It's almost like this was his way of finally coming up on top, and proving to anyone that ever doubted him that he would succeed. And I mean, he did, he has a documentary about him. But the factual evidence, aka the connection with the bears, is something that only Timmy can say is there.

Fauxumentary

I found it very interesting how in his NPR interview, Werner Herzog talked about how he doesn’t make a clear distinction between his documentaries and his feature films, and how he stylizes documentaries.

Herzog says, "Sometimes I even invent, I script. Sometimes--not in Timothy Treadwell's case because he was dead, and you do not--you have to respect what's there, and you do not distort it or--so." However, I wonder how much of Grizzly Man IS actually stylized. It is probably not as stylized as some of his other documentaries, due to the filming by Timothy himself, but it makes me wonder. His stylization in Grizzly Man, then, is when he places outside scenes or other people’s comments at the perfect place in the film in between Timothy's scenes. In this way, he is able to sway the audience and make Grizzly Man the story that he wants it to be. Grizzly Man is, according to Herzog, a feature film.

            Werner Herzog’s comments in the interview reminded me of The Things They Carried because Herzog implies that the raw documentation of something itself is very plain and is not enough to tell the truth. This seems very contradictory because how can inventing and scripting something be more truthful than the truth? Yet, we see this in The Things They Carried in how to write a true war story. Tim O’Brien is able to share the truths and true experience of war through completely fictional stories. Thinking about this gives me a whole new perspective on documentaries and how they are really made and portrayed, and how true they really are.

 

 

 

"There's a blurred line because I stylize documentaries."

When I heard the definition of the word “documentary” in class, I was kind of pissed.

Documentary = “based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story,etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements” (from dictionary.com)

Excuse me?? PURPORTS???? I guess hearing this made me take Grizzly Man less seriously because I now know that Herzog likes to “stylize documentaries.” I’ll come back around to this.

I also think it’s interesting that Herzog doesn’t see nature as “anything that is harmonious and in balance,” but instead sees it as “chaos, hostility, and murder.” This caught my attention because we typically see nature, and the earth, as in a sort of equilibrium where everything is generally at a balance except for during an extinction or global warming, etc. I suppose that in the context of this documentary nature could be seen as hostile and chaotic, but I don’t think that that is the nature of nature itself. In this case, it’s completely Timothy’s fault. I can’t help but feel bad for him because he either thought that this lifestyle was what was best for him at the time, or is how he wanted to get famous. It’s tragic either way, but he also brought it upon himself.

Speaking of his reasons for living this way… While watching Grizzly Man I tried not to make snap judgments because, to my prior understanding of a documentary, this was something that a real person went through and I wanted to try and be empathetic to his situation. So at the end of class when people were commenting on how crazy Timothy was and how he was doing all of this for fame, I felt bad because he did ultimately die very brutally whether or not he was trying to make a show out of it, and I didn't want to think these things about someone who has died from it, and who may have had a mental illness or something like that. But now that I know that much of this could have been stylized, I have no idea what to think but I’m excited to watch the rest of it.

Invisible Cities

I just finished reading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and I can safely say this book fits in perfectly with all of the other works we’ve looked at so far. The premise is fairly straight forward: it depicts Marco Polo at Kublai Khan’s court, detailing the various cities within the domain of Kublai’s empire. Quickly however it becomes apparent that many of these cities do not exist. They contain impossible architecture and inhabitants that defy basic laws of nature. Almost every single page is a new city, with new quirks and characteristics. It quickly becomes difficult to keep apart the various cities, and several times it is suggested that all cities are one.

There are also suggestions that Kublai Khan never actually converse. The method of communication between the two quickly becomes confused: “At this point Kublai Khan interrupted him or imagined interrupting him or Marco Polo imagined himself interrupted” (28). At one point it is even speculated that neither of the two are in Kublai Khan’s court, but rather both imagine coming to that court during their journeys and are possibly connected in this dream-state. The illusory nature of the book, from the frame story to the various stories told through the descriptions of the cities, was more frustrating than any of the other “falsehoods” that I’ve encountered throughout the course. Perhaps it is because I’m reading this book outside of any course, but I just couldn’t get it. In the end, Kublai Khan and Marco Polo look through an Atlas, which showcases cities existing in the future and in fiction. Marco Polo brings the novel to a close by stating that the “inferno” caused by cities can be avoided in two ways, by joining the oblivion that is the city and ceasing to notice it at all, or by paying attention to all things that “are not inferno”. It is a decent message, and it is emphasized by the oblivion created from the many cities that have thoroughly blended together by the end of the novel. I think I understand this aspect of the novel, at least. There are so many other parts, however, that left me confused and wondering: why? The lack of any sort of overarching plot was strange and left me feeling dazed by the end. Was this intentional? What was Calvino trying to accomplish?

Grizzly Man, another lie?

As always, Professor Schwartz threw another curveball at the end of Friday’s class. After we watched a peculiar segment of the documentary Grizzly Man, she asked us questions on whether or not we had suspicions of the movie. Immediately other students raised their hands and gave out great examples of how the documentary related to our class. In my honest opinion, I was not expecting that at all. I was watching the documentary as if I was watching a biology or chemistry video, which meant that I was just paying attention to the straight facts. But after she asked the class, I began to think about the movie in a different perspective. For example, when the pilot was on the camera for an interview about when he found Tredwell. That’s when my brain began to make connections with The Things They Carried. Thinking especially how O'Brien talks about writing a true war story and how it's nearly impossible to tell a completely true recount of the event. The pilot could have been telling an exaggerated account of the event with added in details that he thought might have happened. He also had the incentive to tell a more exciting story of what had happened due to the camera. Anyhow, there is no possible way for anyone to find out what had ACTUALLY happened, unless someone had a time machine. Once again Professor Schwartz caught me off guard, now I’m excited to find out what happens at the end of Grizzly Man. 

The blurred lines between documentary and feature film

I was thinking about my blog post while listening to Werner Herzog’s NPR interview, hoping to find something I could use to jumpstart this post. Not much stood out to me and I thought I was going to just write something about the first half of Grizzly Man. At the very end Herzog talked for a while about feature films versus documentaries and how the differences between the two are not as clear as we might think.

He said, “But sometimes I try to dig into something much deeper than the superficial truth of the so-called cinema variety, which somehow is confused about fact and truth. And I’ve always looked for something much deeper, an ecstatic truth—the ecstasy of truth—some illumination in my feature films and in my documentaries. So it’s always the same quest, and sometimes I keep saying—half-serious, half-joking—‘“Fitzcarraldo,”’ which is a big epic feature film, ‘is my best documentary.’ I’m pulling a huge ship over a mountain, and the fact itself has so much quality for—well, you can really trust your eyes again. It’s not that I used a model or digital tricks or anything like this. It’s a really huge ships over a mountain, dragged by about a thousand native Indians from the rain forest.”

Here, Herzog gets at one of Tim O’Brien’s points in The Things They Carried about the difference between happening truth and story truth. For me, when he calls “Fitzcarraldo” his best documentary because the huge ship was actually pulled over mountain by a thousand people, he drives home O’Brien’s point. Although I have never seen it, I suspect that in many ways that fictional film is more real and exposes more truth than a film that claims to be based on a true story. There is a difference between being truthful and being honest to the truth. I contest that O’Brien and Herzog both value the latter much more than the former.

Timothy is a Bokononist

Watching Grizzly Man for the third time, first out of a lens of a naïve consumer, second in my “Animals in Literature” English class, and now looking for the “truth and lies” I see a different side of Timothy Treadwell. Although it seems as though Timothy was not protecting the bears, and even possibly putting them in danger, he believed that he was saving them. This brings me back to the religion of Bokononism in Cat’s Cradle, which is based on lies that raise the general happiness of the population. Treadwell used to be depressed and an addict and “taking care” of the bears presented as a purpose of life to him. He devoted his life to the bears and managed to cut out alcoholism from his life, an incredibly hard task for addicts. Timothy fulfilled his life doing what he loved and said himself “I will die for these bears”.  Although Timothy didn’t particularly know this was a lie, like they do in Bokononism, spending his summers with the bears made him happy. He was able to live the rest of the year with his mind at ease, knowing, or thinking, he was doing good for the bears. His trips also inspired projects and visitations to schools, which kept him busy during the year and brought happiness to him and the people around him. Maybe Treadwell did not do a great deal for the protection of wildlife as a whole, but he fulfilled his life and died for, what he thought was, a noble cause.

Everyone Acts A Little Weird

When the camera is on, everyone acts a little weird, maybe except the Ph.D guy. I’ll get to him soon. But for now I need to specifically fix my stand on the coroner.

The coroner was the only one that had his own special segment so far, a segment with distinctive camerawork and narrative style. Yes the pilot himself did have his moment in the spotlight. But what set the coroner’s sequence apart was the leaning in and out of the camera, plus the cohesive narration over jump cuts. The jump cuts were dead giveaway that this interview was definitely not candid, but it was the zooming in and out that was a little more problematic for me. I couldn’t accept the fact that I was forced to follow the camera to where Herzog wanted me to be. I didn’t want to be any more emotionally connected to the coroner than I needed to. But it was so clear that Herzog wanted the coroner to be more than just a bystanding interviewee - He wanted the coroner to appear like a story-teller in his own rights. Herzog had the chance to not have done what he did with this sequence, so I think there’s more to it than the superficial awkwardness and creepiness that come with the coroner.

Add that to the fact that the man’s artificial monologue is reminiscent of Spalding Gray in Swimming To Cambodia or even Alan Rickman in The Preacher. This made me hate the corroner even more because he was not a theatrical actor but his acting couldn’t be any less theatrical, in a bad way. He was overzealous and over the top, so good for him for not choosing to try his luck in the business like Timothy. But this then begs the question: was I seeing a part of Timothy in the coroner?

There are many narrators in this film. That I agree. But the one behind all this was Herzog. As the man in charge of the camera, Herzog was the one who decided what we the audience saw and how we saw it, much like Vonnegut or O’ Brien. He framed the way we saw the coroner, much like Vonnegut framed the way we saw Bokonon. And like Vonnegut or O’Brien, on the most superficial level, it was clear that Herzog inserted himself at least once into the movie and influenced the course of the narrative. Case in point: we saw him hear what can only be the audio recording of Treadwell’s final moments before death. Back against the camera, he advised the ex-girlfriend to destroy the tape. Her not so candid reaction notwithstanding, this sequence made me think of how much this film talked about Timothy Treadwell as much as it talked about talking about Timothy Treadwell. To paraphrase a character’s quote  from House of Cards, we were forced to hear the distorted voices of the people of Timothy’s lives in order to hear his (Thomas Yates to Claire Underwood, HOC season 3 - I’m sorry; I finished the whole thing on Sunday but still can’t get over it so I need to vent). My point is, to that effect, the voices of such people mirror in one way or another the voice of Timothy, so if we instantaneously think that the coroner was a creep, probably Tim was no less a weirdo. After all, the coroner did ask, half rhetorically, “Who are you Timothy?”. And through his horrid acting (but scripted by Herzog), he and ultimately the director gave us a partial answer. The rest remains to be seen. But we can be sure that the Ph.D guy would remain a beacon of legitimacy and logic (both in the context of the movie and in real life) against which Timothy is seen like a cheap knock-off.

For entertainment purpose, here's Alan Rickman in The Preacher and Spalding Gray in Swimming To Cambodia.

Herzog's Agenda

When watching Grizzly Man in class, I made an effort to look for connections between this documentary and the other readings we've done in class. I found that while watching, and looking for truth, lies, and bias, I found that the lies were more subtle than in other works that we have seen. Because all the footage was shot by Treadwell himself, and it all depicts actual events, it is hard to find lies in his footage. However, upon looking deeper, there is a lot of room for manipulation on the part of the director. The documentarian, Werner Herzog has a lot of freedom in terms of what clips to use, when to use them, and especially has a lot of control over the interviews that he includes. This allows for the film to be fairly biased even though it is non-fiction.

In Herzog's NPR interview, he even says that he believes that Grizzly Man really more of a fictional feature film than a documentary, while he says that another one of his fictional films is more like a documentary. This indicated to me that even though something uses events and interviews etc. that actually happened, that does not necessarily give it a documentary-like or nonfiction-like feel. Herzog believes that he is telling Grizzly Man's story, and he is doing it in his own way through his own biased lens. This means that we are being subtly lied to (manipulated) by Herzog. He is presenting a documentary about Tim Treadwell that reflects his personal bias, and therefore has an argument of his own that he is making. It is important for us as readers to be wise to this reality, and to take this manipulation into account when analyzing this movie.

Completely Sincere or Sincerely Delusional?

Watching Grizzly Man I was torn between thinking Timothy Treadwell was insincere in what his real “mission” was, or if he was completely sincere but also completely delusional. In his videos, Tim often took multiple shots of himself because he messed up some portion. He also would do action shots of himself running through the brush as if he were some kind of action hero. He would take some videos while he was wearing one bandana and then another when he was wearing a different one. At one point he even said that maybe some of his shots could be used for a TV show. It was instances like this that I thought he was in Alaska for more reasons than just to “protect” the bears and to bring awareness. Yes, he went to schools and made presentations without asking for any money, but it seemed like he was trying to make himself famous. Why else would he need to spend thirteen summers with the bears? Did he honestly think the bears—bears that were on federally protected land—needed protection? And if he did, did he really think that he could be the one to do this? It seemed like he thought it would make a good story. He calls himself the “protector” and the “boss”; deluding himself into thinking he was needed where he wasn’t. Additionally, although he claimed he was there to protect the bears, he was actually doing them more harm than good. One person Hertzog interviewed talked about how Treadwell was getting the bears habituated to humans by being there, which would actually endanger them more. Also, Treadwell said that he saved the bears and the bears saved him. But in reality, the bears killed him, and his death brought about the death of the bear that killed him. At the same time, there were instances where you could really see how much Treadwell loved the bears. He spoke about them like they were family, giving them pet names. It really did seem like he would rather die for the animals than intentionally harm them.