I’d like to look at Grizzly Man and some aspects of the movie that I found interesting. First I would say to everyone that has not seen the movie, watch the rest of it, because it is really interesting to see the different aspects of his life and the rest of the footage that he shot. We were discussing in class whether or not Treadwell would be considered insane. I made a few comments and I don’t think that I fully expressed what I was trying to argue. I would not say that he was “crazy” but I would argue that he was not completely mentally stable. When you specifically look at the scenes where the fox steals his hat and then, later in the film (we did not watch it I class), he goes off on a ten minute rant about some environmental group. He yells and curses and freaks out, uncontrollably. I would use these two scenes and the failures he had in his past would show that he was not mentally stable. I would also argue that stability is what he was looking for in the wild. He thought he could find the stability in the bears and thought that they would provide him an answer.
These aspects of what he was looking for are what seem to echo so closely to what we have discussed in class as being characteristics of a religion. He was looking for answers and purpose in his life. He was asking the questions that religion are supposed to answer, however he focused so closely on being with and like the bears that he could not find what he was looking for. I feel that he would have been more successful if he had taken a step out of the wild and been able to look at it more objectively and through a lens that keeps him separated from actually living with the bears.
Looking at his motivations for his actions is the most interesting aspect of the film. He describes his motivations as being for the bears and he wants to protect them. However, I feel that his motivations are much more internal and selfish than he makes them out to be. I feel that, though he is sincerely trying to help the bears, he is more concerned with satisfying some internal need that has not been filled for him. As many experts in the movie describe, he was actually doing more harm to the bears by living amongst them. Also, the fact that he was not educated in how to deal with bears, or have much real knowledge about bears when he went into the wild suggests that his motives were not for the bears. If he really wanted to help the bears, he would have educated himself properly before he made any sort of drastic moves, like living amongst the bears. The fact that he jumped into a situation without having extensive knowledge about the bears shows that his motivations were internal. It’s very interesting that the things he was looking for are very similar to the answers that religion usually provides.