From misfit to non-human: How the exclusionary anthropocentric system killed Treadwell

‘If I show weakness, if I retreat, I may be hurt, I may be killed. I must hold my own if I'm gonna stay within this land. For once there is weakness, they will exploit it, they will take me out, they will decapitate me, they will chop me into bits and pieces. I'm dead. But so far, I persevere. Persevere.’

-Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005)

Except for his wavy blonde hair, Timothy Treadwell bears no colour other than black. His sunglasses, black too of course, cover his eyes and with it the true colours of his character. We find ourselves observing an insecure, lonely, yet passionate outcast squatting in a large, green valley at the edge of the world, surrounded by grazing grizzlies as he speaks to the camera about his special bond with these predators. This man must be ill, right? How else can you explain these dangerously unnatural circumstances he has put himself in. How else can you motivate his decision to swap our safe and comfortable society for one in which he is forced to sleep in a tent and share his living space with 300-kilogram weighing omnivores that could kill him without even thinking about it? Treadwell appears to be an exemplary case of a misfit trying his luck elsewhere. However, Treadwell’s story is about more than one disturbed, seemingly ill man with a puzzling passion for grizzlies. His story mirrors the pathologies of our culture, and clearly illustrates the deficits of our anthropocentric system which abandoned Treadwell, turned him outcast, and eventually let him die.

            In this essay, I will argue that the anthropological machine, a performative device for human-realisation posed by Giorgio Agamben, can be deadly, as Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005) dramatically demonstrates. Agamben states that by distinguishing themselves from whatever it is that they are not, humans disregard those from whom they separate themselves so severely, that those lives and deaths become of no value to them. Treadwell’s early life hardships, as the narrative of Grizzly Man tells us, made him feel alienated in human society and eventually twisted his sense of self. In an attempt to cope Treadwell chose to flee to a place where he could dance on this invisible human-nonhuman boundary. However, as I will claim, in the eyes of the anthropological machine he was no longer human− and therefore already dead.

I will refer to Dominic Pettman and Colin Carman, whose combined views in their respective articles Grizzly Man: Werner Herzog’s Anthropological Machine (2009) and Grizzly love: The Queer Ecology of Timothy Treadwell (2012), support this thesis. Pettman’s view on human identity as formed through opposition, technology, and superiority, reinforce the idea that the nature-culture divide Treadwell internalised and struggled with, advanced his demise. Additionally, Carman’s conception of Treadwell as a queer ecologist helps understand the latter’s escape into bear-country by emphasising his sexual repressions and his passion for interspecies romance. I will subsequently explicate my thesis statement by a close reading of the most indicative scenes in Grizzly Man. Finally, I hope this essay will help you realise that though Treadwell might have been ill, our system is too.

 

The anthropological death machine

In between airing BBC’s Planet Earth, The Discovery Channel ran advertisements by chemical companies focusing on human identity that starkly contrasted the ecological and animal-focused content of the documentary. How to explain this paradox? Society is ill, is Pettman’s answer, and for him, this crude act is just another symptom. By starting off his article with an anecdote that illustrates humanity’s narcissism and the fragility of the human identity via the question ‘What constitutes humanity?’, Pettman lays the groundwork for the argument he eventually posits: ‘Man is the animal that must recognize itself as human to be human’ (Pettman 2009, 7). By opposing ourselves to what we are not we construct the image of our essence in our difference from others, he states (I will further explain this thought later). The root of this process, Pettman states, lies in our contemporary fear of human insignificance, which he says leads to the illusionary need for a ‘human element’ in the global periodic table. Contrasting this anthropocentric question of human essence and value, is a reframed version that examines human position, posed by Peter Sloterdijk: ‘Where is the human?’. Sloterdijk believes examining the relations humans have with the world around them is a much more valuable approach to interspecies balance than wondering about who we are (Pettman 2009, 2).

The reason the first version of that question (What does it mean to be human?) is prominent in modern anthropology is because the workings of the anthropological machine have distorted our human perspective on the world, Pettman argues (Pettman 2009, 6). The concept, originally formulated by Agamben, highlights the way humans systematically distinguish themselves from other beings, from non-humans; namely, through opposition. This opposition can be realised in myriad ways, the leading of which are our technical memory, and our ability to reflect (Pettman 2009, 6). The fact that we have built tools, and can retrace our technological developments, has helped humans oppose themselves to non-humans throughout history. The moment neanderthals started building spears, they distanced themselves from other, more backwards creatures. In Grizzly Man, Treadwell, while desiring to transcend the human-nonhuman divide, still implicitly opposes himself to the bears: he brought his camera, and so, human culture.

The opposition between human and non-human normally tends to escalate to a devaluation of all that is determined to be non-human; once dehumanised, one's chances of survival in a human-dominated environment evaporate. A clear example of this is the mass bio-industry. The reason we justify slaughtering millions of animals each year is because to our perception these animals are different from and inferior to us. Our desire to appropriate their bodies and lives to fuel our own, surpasses any form of interspecies equality or empathy. Important to note is that historically, but still today, non-human status not only applies to animals. Marginalised ethnicities, social classes and communities continuously face the wrath of our dehumanising anthropological machine, of which the Atlantic slave trade is usually the  example given, it being so clearly a product of the Western imperialist machine. Pettman, too, comes to this painful conclusion:

 

The animal which mimics the human is a delightful distorted mirror to those who consider themselves to have permanently transcended their animal origins; which is why European royalty liked to listen to parrots, dress monkeys in clothes, and – moving to the New World – put a pygmy in the Bronx Zoo. (2009, 8)

 

This human-nonhuman divide has been the cause of countless fatalities throughout history. As I will illustrate in this essay, one of those was Timothy Treadwell.

 

Treadwell the queer ecologist

An important effect of the anthropological machine that accelerated Treadwell’s death was how he was transformed into a queer ecologist. Let us dissect this line of arguing.

Carman first describes queer ecology, a concept articulated by Timothy Morton, as a mode of doing ecological criticism that challenges conventional notions of ‘nature’, similar to how queer theory challenges norms of ‘naturality’ in sexuality (Carman 2012, 508). ‘Nature’, in both fields of study, has been an exclusionary term for describing normative ideologies: calling something natural or unnatural is in fact a discriminatory act. The idea that nature is something separate from humans is not just a solipsistic, but also a heteronormative attitude. This statement is supported by Judith Butler’s critique on ecological discourse. She notes that the human-nature divide is a gendered split: humanity (culture) is seen as active (and masculine) while nature is viewed as passive (feminine) (Carman 2012, 508).

Carman’s text is an exploration and analysis of Treadwell’s life, reflected upon through both his memoirs, Among Grizzlies, and Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man. In the eyes of Carman, Treadwell is an emblematic queer ecologist: he blurs the lines of the human-nature divide, as he seems to inhabit a liminal interspecies space, which is illustrated by him saying things such as having become a ‘wild animal-brother’ (2012, 524); Treadwell thinks of himself as part man part grizzly. And this melding or melting of species is what challenges heteronormative discourse on nature: the separation of humans and nature can be transcended.

Carman too believes Treadwell’s escape to Katmai was an escape of culture and our connected constructed ideas of sexuality, though he adds, it may have been an act of portraying masculinity to prove to others and himself that he was, in fact, a man (2012, 518). This is backed by Treadwell’s noticeable fascination with large, fierce, and thus masculine bears. Carman links this observation with the fact that in Grizzly Man, Treadwell confesses desires to be gay, and his admiration for the ‘wild’ sex he assumes all homosexual men have. Could this be paralleled with the concept of ‘bears’ in gay communities, where the archetypical ‘alpha male’ is idolised for being the epitome of masculinity? Perhaps, since in his memoirs Treadwell goes into almost erotic detail when describing bear mating scenes and is most fascinated with the raw power and wildness of the acts. ‘Treadwell shares with many gay men a fascination with bearishness as a sign of male power’ (Carman 2012, 522). The following connection can thus easily be traced: Treadwell is projecting his repressed desire of having an alternate sexuality onto the bears. In that sense Treadwell is a true queer ecologist, as not only his species-identity, but his sexuality too, deliquescences into his surroundings as something posthuman, ‘unbound by all societal constraints’ (Carman 2012, 521).  

Examples in Grizzly Man

Having discussed both Pettman’s and Carman’s views, the theoretical groundwork for my thesis has been laid. In this section, I will clarify my interpretation of Treadwell’s story by close reading some scenes in Grizzly Man through their combined lenses.

            A few scenes convey Treadwell’s belief that he has ‘become a bear’, and thus transcended the human-nonhuman boundary. One, however, I think displays this most clearly. In this scene (30:12-30:49) we see a medium-long shot, angled slightly down from a high angle, of Treadwell getting into the water to swim with and pet a large adult grizzly.   

This footage is accompanied by a diegetic narration of the curator of a local wildlife museum, who Herzog was interviewing in the previous scene, as well as non-diegetic, melancholic cello music. The curator shares his belief that Timothy crossed and disrespected an invisible boundary between man and bear, that the locals had respected for thousands of years, and thus ‘paid the price’. This scene sparked my interest because it shows the extent to which Treadwell believes the bears have habituated to him. It illustrates his confidence in being part of the bear community, as he gets within an arm’s length to a bear that could so easily kill him; if he did not truly believe he had somehow become a bear, and earned their trust, he would not risk swimming with one. When viewing this scene, Pettman would point out that the anthropological machine has twisted Treadwell’s sense of self by opposing him to society and culture, to the point where he thinks of himself as nonhuman as bear. Carman would state that this is a clear example of Treadwell’s queer view of nature: he views interspecies relationships as natural and has released demarcated notions of species as he has become part man part bear. Having this somewhat serene (be it absurd), colourful image of a man’s attempt at intimacy with a wild animal, juxtaposed with a condemning narration by the curator and melancholic cello music, creates a tension between what the viewer initially sees and what they are urged to think. While Herzog seems to refrain from directly laying value judgements on Treadwell’s lifestyle, the formal aspects of this scene clearly steer the viewer towards finding Treadwell to be not merely disrespectful of traditions, but as insane.

            The next scene I would like to discuss displays, as Carman notes, Treadwell projecting his sexual repression onto the bears (58:10-59:30). Shortly after having filmed a fight between two bears, Treadwell sets the camera up on the scene of the fight for another confessional session with him in the foreground and Mickey the bear in the background.

In this scene Treadwell reflects on the fight and equates the bear’s situation to the past troubles he had gotten in due to fighting for girls. As his confessional monologue progresses, Treadwell expresses his sympathy and understanding for Mickey’s desperate romantic gesture: he too sees that Saturn (the female bear in question) is a very attractive bear, and states that if she were a human, he would have pursued her too, calling her the ‘Michelle Pfeiffer of bears’. Not only does Treadwell here clearly reject the human-nonhuman opposition, he also lets his fluid sexuality emerge onscreen, for the viewer to digest. Herzog realises the importance of this confessional for conjuring up the image of Treadwell’s insanity (bestiality is commonly stigmatised), since by not adding any sounds, he lets the raw footage speak for itself, emphasizing each of Treadwell’s words. Setting up the camera in this muddy pool too feels intentional: Treadwell seems aware of the ‘muddiness’ of his confession and lets the backdrop embody that feeling. He might be troubled, but he is not ignorant.

            The final scene I will briefly highlight is one of my favourites in the film (1:23:18-1:27:22). It takes us through an uncut series of attempts to positively conclude one of his adventures, which significantly escalates with each take, and climaxes with Treadwell angrily swearing at both the Park Service and the American government for hindering his duty as the bear messiah. 

What makes this scene remarkable is that it showcases how Treadwell’s camera functioned as more than a simple recording device. We have seen it take the role of a confessional before, but the camera now surpasses that role and becomes a catalyst of spectacle and performance. Were it not for the camera, Treadwell’s rage would most probably have been less theatrical, less artistic. And it is this very dramatic performance that put Treadwell in more danger than he realised. Recording his actions gave him a reason to get closer to the bears than he should have, to get more interesting and daring footage. The camera offered him a virtual stage from which he could show the world that he was not only a great filmmaker, but a great actor, and simply unlike anyone else. The camera was his cultural device through which he could fight culture itself.

            As Treadwell gets closer to the camera, his voice and words become more aggressive. He clearly knows where to position himself to be threatening to his viewers. Herzog’s narration, too, acknowledges how Treadwell’s mission is a movement against culture, which is one of the rare occasions his narration contained any insightful value.

 

A symptom of an ill system

I believe the scenes discussed, viewed through the lenses of both Pettman and Carman, paint a picture of a man who is victimised by the totalising force of a dysfunctional system—one that no longer saw him as human, and in which he no longer saw himself as such. After facing too many insurmountable hurdles, the extreme performance-pressure and rigid sexuality standards of modern culture treated Treadwell as a failure, a hopeless nobody. In the eyes of the anthropological machine, Treadwell had already become one with cows, pigs, sheep, chicken, ducks, rats, and ultimately, grizzlies. As Treadwell progressively internalised this sinful status, it drove him out: he became an outcast, forced to live within the wild communities to which the system made him belong. And by casting him out, this totalising system ‘naturalised’ his death—lacking any moral distinction from that of a bear in the woods.

What made Treadwell so special, however, is that he wholeheartedly accepted his new ‘wildlife status’, as he realised that the constraints of the harsh societal standards were limiting his fluid and queer view on life. Treadwell flourished in Katmai, as he truly felt as if he was becoming one with the foxes and the bears. Ultimately though, it is this genuine belief that killed him. As he thought that his sympathetic connection with the dangerous predators was not only real but mutual, he allowed himself to invade their space. Although an heroic attempt to become the queer ecological messiah and to dissolve interspecies borders at its core, Treadwell forgot the laws the local communities had honoured for centuries and found his end at the claws of the animals he swore to protect. But understanding that the exclusionary and totalising mechanisms of the anthropological machine are what transformed Treadwell into a bear, and thus eventually killed him, is crucial for viewing his story. Though, I believe that due to our pathological system, Treadwell’s story cannot have been the first, and will definitely not be the last.

 

 

Citations

Carman, Colin. "Grizzly Love: The Queer Ecology of Timothy Treadwell." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 18, no. 4 (2012): 507–28. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1600716.

Grizzly Man. Directed by Werner Herzog. 2005. Los Angeles: Lions Gate Films. Grizzly Man

OpenAI. ChatGPT. AI model. Accessed October 22-25, 2024.

Pettman, Dominic. "Grizzly Man: Werner Herzog's Anthropological Machine." Theory &             Event 12, no. 2 (2009). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/261085.

 

My use of AI and ChatGPT.

I used ChatGPT for several things. First, I let it summarize the readings I would be discussing, to make sure I had not glanced over some important parts in their lines of arguing. I do this for each text I need to read closely, especially longer ones since I have always struggled with concentrating on academic texts surpassing the length of ten pages. I also had ChatGPT analyse the texts I wrote to check for any grammar/spelling mistakes. I usually have my best friend do this for me, since he is an editor at a publishing company, but he cannot always find time to do so. Furthermore, I had ChatGPT format my bibliography since I had never used the Chicago Manual of Style citation format, and I felt too lazy to learn it the hard way. I feel AI can and should be used for such tedious tasks since they do not require any creative insight whatsoever.