1/ Grizzly Man (2005): The film’s metapolitical content centres on Timothy Treadwell as the archetypal naive liberal from California out of his depth in wild nature. Despite wanting to “save” grizzly bears he causes chaos, for the bears & everyone else.
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2/ Treadwell’s affection for the bears, each given a sentimental pet names, is matched by his fantastical & semi-imagined quest to “save” the bears from poachers. The poachers only seem to be a marginal threat. Treadwell spends 10 summers “protecting” the bears. But really...
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3/ (*13 summers)... it’s 13 summers of virtue signalling and returning to California to get more money for his quest. His actions go against the advice of the park rangers, the naturalists who work with the bears, & the native Americans.
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4/ Eventually, of course, in a parallel with other liberal acts of generosity and naivety the bears eat him and his girlfriend. On top of that, the authorities have to shoot the bears that are him. His actions result in the bears he sought to “protect” being killed.
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5/ We could draw a connection to mass immigration, terrorism etc here. Treadwell gets himself and his loved ones killed, puts other people at risk, and also gets the things he loved killed. It’s mainly down to his showboating and sentimentality.
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6/ However, as Herzog points out, Treadwell was genuinely an artist—perhaps of an unintentional sort. He obviously had the kind of melancholy nature associated with artists, as his monologues show. He didn’t, as Herzog notes, understand the utter viciousness of nature.
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7/ Yet, I can’t help but think that spending 13 summers touching grizzly bears was sort of an act of defiance or crazy divine inspiration (not unlike Philippe Petit tightrope walking between the WTC towers). 13 summers is 13 more than anyone would expect, given what he was up to.
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8/ “God looks after drunks, fools, and the US.” Perhaps he was lucky, or perhaps there was some kind of divine madness that protected him with the bears. The fact he spent so much time with with grizzlies & lived challenges the ethology of bears.
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9/ What do we *really* know about a grizzly’s wild behaviour? The people who sneered at Treadwell disliked him because he repeatedly defied what they knew to be true. They were relieved to be vindicated when he died, bc they were starting to doubt their expertise on bears.
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10/ End: Treadwell was the archetypal naive liberal about to get everyone killed by not understanding human nature & the cruelty of the wild. But he also contained a Dionysian artistic element that defies the limits & arouses envy from others, gifting us a new way of seeing.
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