#grizzly man

[lampshadeleaf]

Timothy Treadwell in 1990

[victusinveritas]

Grizzly Man (2005)

Director: Werner Herzog

(Caution, astoundingly rough movie. Even for Werner.)

[morbidology]

Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist and bear enthusiast, dedicated thirteen summers of his life to living among the grizzly bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve. His passion for these magnificent creatures, however, ended in tragedy in October 2003 when Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were mauled to death by a bear.

Born in New York in 1957, Timothy Treadwell's fascination with bears began after he moved to California and became deeply immersed in environmental causes. He overcame personal struggles, including addiction, by dedicating his life to wildlife preservation, particularly grizzly bears. Treadwell's devotion to these animals was profound; he spent months each year camping in the remote wilderness of Alaska, filming his interactions and documenting the behaviors of the bears he so dearly loved.

Treadwell's work gained significant attention through his book "Among Grizzlies: Living with Wild Bears in Alaska" and numerous television appearances. He founded Grizzly People, a non-profit organization aimed at preserving bear habitats and educating the public about the plight of grizzly bears. His unique approach to conservation, which involved close and personal interactions with the bears, was both praised and criticized. Supporters admired his dedication and the insights his footage provided, while critics warned that his lack of formal training and his tendency to anthropomorphize the bears put both him and the animals at risk.

The fateful events of October 2003 occurred during Treadwell's final days of the season in Katmai National Park. A bear, likely struggling with a scarcity of food before hibernation, attacked and killed Treadwell and Huguenard in their campsite. The aftermath was gruesome, with park rangers discovering their partially consumed remains along with the audio recording of the attack, captured inadvertently by Treadwell’s camera. The bear responsible was later identified and euthanized by park officials.

Treadwell's tragic death raised many questions about the ethics and safety of his methods. While his close encounters provided valuable insights into bear behavior and garnered public interest in grizzly conservation, they also highlighted the dangers of habituating wild animals to human presence. Many wildlife experts emphasized that Treadwell's approach blurred the lines between humans and wildlife, potentially leading to fatal consequences.

Filmmaker Werner Herzog explored Treadwell's life and death in the 2005 documentary "Grizzly Man," which combined Treadwell's own footage with interviews of those who knew him. The film painted a complex portrait of Treadwell, showcasing his passion and the stunning beauty of the bears and their habitat, while also delving into the inherent risks of his unconventional lifestyle.

[cassowariess]

-Timothy Treadwell (1957-2003)

[justplainsimon]

Was watching the Gordy's Home scene from Nope, I noticed someone commented "if this were real, it would be lost media and the studio would try to bury it" and the thing is, Jupe says that they did. The lost media community is... morbid like that. But what makes my hair stand on end is the fact that the cameras cut right as the attack happens. So theres people, champing at the bit, to find audio of this animal attack

[00j---x]

Werner Herzog, 2005.

"I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder."

Documentary about self proclaimed "troubled" Timothy Treadwell and a journey into his psyche.

[haverwood]

Grizzly Man Werner Herzog USA, 2005 ★★★★★ I bet the coroner guy really wanted to be an actor, and I imagine his schoolmates rolling their eyes whenever he got a big part in the school play, dreading the moment he was going to be in the spotlight, delivering his lines, eyes wide-open and immediate disconnect with the rest of the work once his part was done.

but whatever, I'm giving this one 5 stars now, top fucking shelf

[sephirajo]

A very good essay despite the clikcbaity thumbnail.

[waxminutes]

I literally cannot stop thinking about the alternate timeline where Timothy Treadwell played the bartender on Cheers and Woody Harrelson was eaten by bears.

[alicedyerappreciator]

on human animals and animal humans. (reposted school essay)

Humans navigate the boundary between humanity and animality and where we draw the line of personhood.  We allow some animals to cross the boundary and become persons, and some humans intentionally cross the boundary and become animals. When humans cross into animality, they may look at the boundary of personhood from a different side – the animals become persons, and humans unpersons. In ‘Grizzly Man’, Herzog (2005) presents the idea that Timothy Treadwell retreated into the animal kingdom to avoid his ‘human’ problems. Patricia Taxxon (2023) proposes using the identity of an animal to reclaim the dehumanisation of being marginalised.

Living with bears is made to parallel Timothy changing his name and lying about his heritage – a way to reinvent himself. He seemed to refer to himself as on the bears' side, wanting to “mutually mutate into a wild animal” (Herzog, 2005). There is also a continuous reflection on his lack of connection to ‘the human world’, particularly his struggles with women. One could argue that the reason he died is because he went back to the bears after being rejected by the human world (getting into an argument with an airline employee). But this wasn’t about the bears. In his retreat into working with bears to avoid his problems, he did it for his own gain and still maintained anthropocentric beliefs. Instead of seeing humanity as uniquely special, he saw himself as uniquely special, able to defend and help bears with a problem they barely needed help with (the documentary emphasises that poaching was not a big problem in that region) (Herzog, 2005). Sven Haakkanson argues Treadwell’s self-centred ‘help’ may have put the bears in more danger, as it familiarised the bears with humans (Herzog, 2005).

Animality can be retreated to in more ways than just leaving to live in the wilderness. In her video ‘On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People’, Taxxon discusses her relationship to furry identity as an autistic person. She notes the dehumanisation of people who display autistic traits (particularly children) and how comparisons to animals have been used to dehumanise a multitude of marginalised groups – like the positioning of Jewish people as mice or rats in anti-Semetic propaganda to frame them as vermin (Taxxon, 2023). For her, furry identity (engaging with an anthropomorphised animal state and portraying animal traits) is a way of reclaiming this dehumanisation. To see non-human animals as people is to see humans dehumanised into being animalistic as people. As she says “I was treated like a failed human my entire life and […] my response was to become a dog”. But being a furry does not mean seeing yourself as the same as non-human animals in the way Treadwell tried to be (Taxxon, 2023 ; Herzog, 2005). There is an acknowledgement of the human body's limitations (Taxxon asks us to imagine the tail that is wagging) and there is no idea that being a furry makes someone uniquely capable of understanding or engaging with animals (Taxxon, 2023). Once again, it is a retreat into animalism that comes from a human perspective and responds to human problems.

Retreating into animalism is often done for human reasons, and I wonder if connection with animals is even possible through these means. Will we always be just humans in animal costumes?

Bibliography:

Grizzly Man (2005). United States : Discovery Docs, Real Big Production .

Taxxon, P. (2023) On the ethics of Boinking Animal People, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/ws9g3igw51s?si=5_76TYhrHesSrxJx (Accessed: 09 February 2024).

[letsdocuboutit]

- Let's Docu 'Bout It -

Episode 14: Grizzly Man

This week I recap and talk about the documentary, Grizzly Man. Filmmaker Werner Herzog profiles grizzly bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell, who was killed by one of the animals he studied in 2003.

Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts!

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Photos - (Row 2: Tim petting a wild fox with a Grizzly bear in the background, Tim and Amie Huguenard in the last photo taken of them) (Row 3: photos of the bears he studied and taken by Timothy Treadwell)

Grizzly People

[tilbageidanmark]

KLAUS

[codewitch]

People love to clown on that guy who went to live in Alaska with the grizzlies and then was killed by a grizzly and perhaps that was a foreseeable outcome but more importantly to me that man came to my elementary school in Colorado every year to talk about his life up there and it was the best assembly we’d get for the year. Dude had some foxes for friends that he would show us pictures of and tell us about. He died like a year after the last assembly we saw him in but I’d moved to a different school so nobody said anything.

[bebe-benzenheimer]

Clearly the only way this fucking man or bear meme can die already is for Werner Herzog to release the Grizzly Man audio.

[daisies-and-caramel]

does Jay McCarrol just have a thing about bears

[apenitentialprayer]

Kinda obsessed with Timothy Treadwell, ngl