Paul Peters

Whitefish Pilot

What's in the eyes of a grizzly bear?

If you missed "Grizzly Man" last week, you missed a great film about… people. The film was about bears too, and our relationship to the wild, but, I think it's best to go into this film not expecting it to be a wildlife documentary.

It documented the life of Timothy Treadwell, a man who spent 13 summers living with wild grizzlies in Alaska, only to be eaten by them along with his girlfriend, Amie Hugenard. The story is told by director Werner Herzog, his interviews with people who knew Treadwell and his work, and, mostly, through Treadwell's own footage of himself in the wild.

The film explores Treadwell himself, and why a person would deliberately put themself, and others, into a dangerous situation.

Treadwell videotapes himself saying he does it to protect the bears, and because he loves them. But it is clear throughout the film that Treadwell is neither honest with his camera, nor himself.

These bears were never in any danger. According to Herzog, there was a very small incidence of poaching in that area, which is a national park.

Treadwell does seem to have a love for animals, although it is clouded by his love for himself. This love manifests itself in the way that Treadwell attempts to treat these wild animals — as humans.

He talks to them, jokes with them, and pets a fox he has befriended as if it were a dog, and even touches some of the grizzlies he is really familiar with on the nose.

But is this love mutual?

At one point in the film, the enormous face of a grizzly takes up the entire screen, and we watch his eyes move. Here, Herzog says that Treadwell saw some sort of sentience, in which there is the possibility of a bond. But Herzog says he sees nothing but an indifferent eating machine.

Treadwell's own footage gives us clues that this was at least partially true. At one point we see him picking up the detached fore-limb of a grizzly cub. He is visibly upset. Herzog tells us that often male grizzlies will kill cubs so that the females will go back into heat.

In another scene we see what at first appears to be a grizzly having fun snorkeling around under water. But then we see that it was actually diving for the scraps of a dead fish to fight off its gnawing hunger.

Although many in the film try to say that Treadwell was trying to become a bear, his willingness to leave the harsh facts of the wild unexamined point toward a different sort of dementia. Treadwell wanted the bears to turn into people.

In some ways, Treadwell was able to make this happen. The group of bears he habituated himself to seemed fairly tame around him. You almost wonder, if he had only stayed around these bears, would he have made it? In the end, he was killed by bears that were not familiar with him.

But I doubt it. At one point in the film, we find out that during a drought, the females begin eating their cubs for food. Chances are, if they would do that, they would have eventually eaten Treadwell also.

Herein lies the essential difference between us and the wild. The bears have no taboos. They do what they must to survive, there is no right or wrong. Humans, on the other hand, are able to suspend their survival instinct if surviving means parting from ingrained moral values.

This difference between humans and bears, between the civilization and the wild is perhaps best illustrated in the film when we find out that, as Treadwell was being mauled to death, he was screaming at his girlfriend to run away, to leave him so that she could save herself. At the same time, Hugenard refused to run, but instead tried to beat the bear with a frying pan and save Treadwell.

This is an extreme example, but it is the essence of love — putting others before yourself. And love, it seems to me after reflecting on this film, is the essence of humanity, and civilization.

Treadwell may have succeeded in making these wild animals appear to be civilized, appear to be capable of loving. But when it came down to it, they had no empathy for him, as they had none for their cubs.

The question this leaves for us humans is, are we wild animals pretending at civilization, or civilized animals waiting to go wild? We seem infinitely capable of regression, as evidenced through wars, torture, and the various acts we commit without empathy.

In this light, Treadwell's work seems misguided. He is working in the wrong direction. Before we can proselytize to the wild in animals, we must find out who we are.