The Grizzley Man

First off, I'm sad I had to miss the class screening of this film (I had a soccer game), but I would love to hear some of the things you all discussed. I hope to raise some questions everyone can respond to as well.

So, in summary, this documentary shows Timothy Treadwell and his footage from living with grizzly bears in Alaska for 13 summers. Timothy wrote that he felt more at home in wild nature than in the human world. He speaks of his troubles with women and from his tapes of himself you can tell that he is a unique individual who does not fit in with our world. This documentary is so significant because his life's work was to protect the very species that ended up killing him. Some may view this as ironic or horrible, but his friends in the film emphasized how Tim wanted to die out in Alaska doing what he loved. He always left the same woman's house before camping in Alaska and would say on his way out "I love you" and something to the effect of If I don't come back, it's what I want.

Timothy obviously does not feel comfortable in the human world, as is emphasized in his decision to stay in Alaska because of airline difficulties, which was the decision that ultimately proved fatal. Living in Alaska gave Timothy a replacement for social interactions because he viewed the foxes and bears as his family, naming them and loving them as such.

The eerie thing is that in his last few days, Treadwell emphasizes the danger he lives with every minute of every day.

He knew he should camp in the open, but he set up camp in the brush and made himself invisible in the Grizzly maze. He talks about how this is the most dangerous living situation than in human history:

"every second of every day...i am right on the precipice of great bodily harm, or even death...there is no,no,no other place in the world that is more dangerous, more exciting than the grizzly maze. come here, come here and try to camp here, do what i do and you will die. you will die here, you will freakin die, here. they will get you. I found a way, I found a way to survive with them".

So Timothy knew he was tempting fate by not abiding by his own safety rules and in the end, he ended up dying for his carelessness. One question that arises here is Do you see Timothy as someone with a gift, able to cross lines that have been established for thousands of years dividing humans and bears? Or is he undoing work and further endangering these bears as one man suggested in the film by allowing them to think that humans are compassionate and not dangerous, when the reality is that groups of poachers come into the area every year? Tim obviously views himself as at home with the bears and having a special relationship with them, but in the end he is obviously killed by these animals who were supposedly his friends or family. Is this because we as humans are not naturally allowed into their world? Is there inherently something that divides us as humans from the base nature that bears, foxes, and the like live in?

Overall Timothy seems to have a skewed vision of nature, ignoring the natural dangers or sadnesses that occur (such as the Grizzlies killing their young to survive the drought), but is there something to his vision that he has made a momentous step towards connecting with this species? Or is all of his work undercut because he was killed by the very animals he was defending?

The last point I want to touch on is how this film related to our reading from yesterday. Tim mentions how he lives on the edge of life and death each day in Alaska. Hatley hypothesized that this feeling you get when looking into the eye of death, as Tim was each day, you are given a new perspective on the world and a whole new moral compass in a sense. Do you think that Tim's skewed vision of the world and displacement from it was because he spent so much time with these creatures in constant danger and this drove him to consider the world totally different than other humans? Or do you see him as a unique individual who had his views set before he lived with Grizzlies?

Personally I think his experiences changed him, especially because of his parents' description of him when he was growing up, but I don't want to go into that because I want yall to have some input. Thoughts??

betsy