"Grizzly Man"

Madison Ellis

TMA 273

Response Essay

           Despite its fatal topic, Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man” takes a leisurely approach to the life and death of Timothy Treadwell. Utilizing interviews, narration, and a hefty chunk of Treadwell’s own footage, Herzog provides a (relatively) nonobjective view into Treadwell’s story. Herzog himself had a very active roll in the film—he voiced his own narration and frequently asserted his presence in interviews. In one particularly emotion interview, Herzog himself gives the subject advice about what she should do with one of Treadwell’s tapes. The constant tie-ins to Herzog’s processes made the film an interesting viewing for film enthusiasts, but it felt alienating. Self-aggrandizing. It created a barrier between the film and me that didn’t need to be there. Treadwell’s story is about identity, obsession, paranoia, and activism. It didn’t need to be about Herzog, too.

            The scenes in this documentary that made me care were the ones where Herzog stepped back and let Treadwell tell his own story. Where Timothy filmed take after take of himself running down the same hill. Where he chased after the foxes. Where he asserted himself among the bears surrounding him. Treadwell’s footage was full of emotional, magical moments that humanized him and his struggle to the audience. Sometimes Herzog’s narration added to the wonder, but it wasn’t needed to create a connection to Treadwell’s character—Treadwell did that all on his own.

            As effectively as Treadwell attracted my interest, however, he also alienated it. The scene where Treadwell is yelling for rain affected me deeply. Up until that point in the film, I related to Treadwell like I would to any other socially awkward, post-alcoholic animal lover. At that moment, though, Treadwell crossed beyond my line of empathy. I couldn’t follow him that deeply into his psyche, and the rest of the film left me grappling for some basic, pieced understanding of Treadwell’s character. Even when he returned to the normal, sweet, charismatic teddy-bear holder, I couldn’t recover my empathy for him. After that point in the film, I watched Treadwell’s inevitable decline with a sort of detached horror. Treadwell let his paranoia and obsession overcome his humanity, and he ultimately paid for his instability.

As many issues as I have with Herzog’s self-characterization in the film, I feel like he treated Treadwell very truthfully. He didn’t manipulate Treadwell’s issues for sensationalism, but he also didn’t shield society from Treadwell’s truth. The film started with a Treadwell-esque treatment of Treadwell’s views on bear conservation and his mission. Slowly, Herzog introduced the other conflicts that muddied up Treadwell’s story and his intentions. Ultimately, I finished the documentary with an understanding of Treadwell’s point of view, Herzog’s interpretation, and my own opinions on what happened. Ultimately, “Grizzly Man” felt like a pure approach to Treadwell’s story.

Group Therapy: Fireside Edition

           It’s funny how we can hear a concept again and again in hundreds of different contexts without it truly sinking in. Religion waxes poetic about “free will” all the time. Somehow, though, I never connected the power of choice with the meaning of life. Freedom to do what we want with our spirits. Freedom to tint our own perception. Freedom to choose whatever we can to develop our inner selves into something we can be proud of. That is meaning. Our journey to something More, through our pain and sorrow, developing along the way--the opportunity to nurse our own strength, morality, spirituality, and interpersonal relationships is what we truly live for.

            It only took me nineteen years, a healthy dose of Viktor Frankl, and this fireside chat assignment to figure out one thing I truly believe in: the power to control one’s reaction to circumstances, and the meaning we find in doing so. We as humans cannot control the conditions of our lives, but we can decide how they affect us.  That is an incredible amount of power to have.

            I tried to portray the importance of choice in my fireside chat. I went through a few old journals of mine and picked out two entries—one extremely negative one and one from the day I finished reading “Man’s Search For Meaning”.  I had a few trusted friends read my entries out loud while I played with the volume of their voices. With a meditative 1.5htz delta binaural beat thrumming in the background, I controlled which story I listened to.

            Watching everybody else’s projects was both touching and humbling. I felt honored that they were willing to share their beliefs in such vulnerable ways. This class has given us all the special gift of an open place to share our art. Listening to everybody else’s stories was an overwhelmingly sweet experience, and I feel so much closer to everybody who shared.

            I don’t know how my project read to the audience. For me, however, the experience of controlling my own stories and listening to everybody else’s combined into something very intimately powerful. The fireside chat provided me (and, hopefully, everybody else) with a safe space to share and apply our beliefs about the world around us.

Concerned Citizen

Addison Jenkins, USGA President

In her essay “Human Rights and Culture: From Datastan to Storyland” Arlene Goldbard analyses the intimate relationship between stories, culture, and inherent human rights. Through her work, Goldbard explores ideas of societal recalibration, the efficacies of cultural roots, and the strong people who forward their causes.  She insightfully states, “...we understand that the resilience that sustains communities in times of crisis is rooted in culture, in the stories of survival and social imagination that inspire people to a sense of hope and possibility even in dark times.”

Our society is not without its crises and dark times; luckily, people like Addison Jenkins--an impressively mustacheoid man in charge of former-BYU support group USGA (Understanding Same Gender Attraction)-- are willing to actively involve themselves in providing Goldbard’s hope and possibility in their community.

As a student at BYU and a queer male, Addison understands how hard it can be to strike a healthy balance between personal tendencies and institutional expectations. Because queer tendencies are so vehemently discouraged around the BYU campus, it is often difficult for the LGBTQIA+ community to find the positive support they need to cope with the social backlash and controversy that surrounds their sexuality and gender identities. Addison himself struggled to admit his own homosexuality. Now, however, he is actively working to provide a safe and supportive community for other queer BYU students.

Our video reflects Addison’s careful attention to the needs of his USGA members. Since a queer identity can be difficult to admit-- especially at a place like BYU-- Addison respectfully requested that we leave faces and identities out of our video. Faced with this challenge, we shot plenty of b-roll footage at the library where they were having their meeting and superimposed Addison’s interview over the top.

For Keith, this assignment was an eye-opening excursion. Finding a person at BYU with different viewpoints and a different lifestyle was striking. We discovered a new diversity in our culture-- our concerned citizen lives in a balancing act between religion, school, and sexuality, and he is actively working to help other queer people strike their own balance.

Role Assignment Chamber

World Building

Different Bodies, Different World

        In his essay on design fiction, Julian Bleecker explores the relationship between science, fiction, and design. Essentially, Blecker concludes that the three are invariably connected when it comes to how we perceive, understand, and create the world around us. If we look at today’s artifact culture as an example, we are surrounded by items that help us function smoothly in society. Cars allow us to get around, beauty products make people look younger and more attractive, psychological and social sciences inform us how other people work, textbooks teach doctors how to fix bodies, etc. One of the most fitting representations of our culture is, perhaps, the magazines such as Time or Cosmopolitan that synthesize our advertisements, trends, theories, and sexual attractions into one concise representation of our world.
        So what if our world were different than it is now? What if we changed something fundamentally and watched a new culture, a new design, a new magazine develop from the results? Our group decided to develop this new design culture in a world where people woke up in different bodies every day.
        The first cultural design element that would change is our experience of human aesthetic. Suddenly, we wouldn’t have the constancy of our bodies to rely on every day. Our group figured that body shape, size, color, etc. would lose most of their significance. Makeup as an enhancer of physical features would, therefore, be useless. People would, however, be looking for ways to distinguish themselves every day. A name tag, of sorts, constructed with cosmetics. Instead of relying on faces for recognition, people might depend on individual makeup branding.
        With our ever changing aesthetic and cosmetic insignias, we would need a different convention for defining attractiveness. Perfume fits the bill. Scent is a non-visual element, yet it plays a major role in human magnetism and sexuality. We decided that if all visual cues for allure were gone, scent alone would define youth, fertility, and beauty.
        Since we would not be able to control our changing bodies or their internal health, health care in our hypothetical world is based on the idea that body transitions aren’t all that comfortable. If we lived in a world where everyone’s body was constantly being altered, it would be logical that the healthcare system would try to make those transitions as painless as possible. Most health would be devoted to giving sedatives to people who experience painful transitions.
        Psychology introduces another interesting aspect of a changing society. How do people rationalize individual identity with such a liquid physical representation of self? How, more specifically, can parents teach their children self esteem when the idea of ‘self’ is so abstractly disconnected from anything concrete? At least for this issue of our magazine, we decided to focus on the development of a consistent sense of self as a spotlight issue in psychology.

Webspinna Battle

Open-Interpretation, Cyborg Makeup, and Shameless Thievery

When we were talking about the Webspinna project in class the week before we were to do It I was honestly very confused. I looked forward to dressing up, being creative and performing but I just did not understand what we were actually doing. I was kind of frustrated for a bit about having such little direction. Now that all is said and done I am really grateful for the lack of direction because it helped to foster creativity and get my mind going. It kind of reminds me of the difference between 2001 a Space Odyssey the book and 2001 A Space Odyssey the film.

The book gives specific descriptions and explanations of most of the concepts and ideas and even goes as far as to explain the purpose of the monoliths. The film on the other hand gives little to no explanation of anything happening at any point. While I don't think one way is better than the other ( I honestly prefer the book) it's hard to deny that the film is more successful in getting your mind turning and thinking in ways that it has rarely had to think before. This push was what made the experience such a fun event for the class. We were all in the same boat of confusion and it made it easy to share ideas and interpretations.

Our internet pirate vs. FBI warning battle started, oddly enough, with a costume idea. Kyler knew he wanted to dress up as Captain Jack Sparrow, and a day later he came up with the idea of cyborg makeup. Neither of us really knew what to do beyond that point, though. Cyborg Jack Sparrow? How would we sculpt a grand conceptual battle from that?

The ultimate idea birthed itself from our readings about plagiarizing, copying, and ‘borrowing’ other people’s art for our own purpose. The line (if there even is one) between Jonathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence’ and the dozens of other works he referenced, quoted, and cited is very thin. Lethem’s essay depended entirely upon our foreknowledge and associations with other pieces of literature. So. Was it original? Was it clever? Was it Lethem’s own work, or did he….. pirate it?

With these questions rolling around in our minds, the only logical interpretation of Kyler’s costume idea was internet piracy. Our webspinna battle would be a decisive fight between the scumbags of digital downloading and the high morals of the FBI Anti-Piracy warning. Right vs. wrong. Dark vs. light. Property rights vs. free access and rights-free media manipulation.

Ironically, we relied on that free access and rights-free media manipulation to pull off our battle. We took other people’s creations and blatantly misappropriated their meaning, intention, and result for our own selfish use. Our web battle spun itself into an original anti-piracy ad made exclusively from pirated materials.

And if that doesn’t represent art, I don’t know what does.

Textual Poaching

Selfie

"It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easy, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

--Marjorie Williams Bianco, "The Velveteen Rabbit"

        I don’t know what my body looks like. Does that seem strange? This vessel I live in-- have lived in since birth—should be the most concrete thing in my life. I should be able to look at my body and be comforted by its constancy. By its reality. By my ownership of it. But I can’t.
        Body Dysmorphic Disorder is characterized by obsessive thoughts about trivial or nonexistent flaws in one’s body, often resulting in a distorted body perception and deep shame.
        My body is an enigma to me. Every time I see it in the mirror, it looks different than it did before. Distorted, somehow, and new, with varied imperfections popping up every time I scrutinize it. Sometimes it feels like the mirror is melting in front of me, distorting my perception of myself beyond recognizability, beyond hope, beyond love.
        The only way I know what I look like is through old pictures. Pictures taken months or years ago, where my face and body are captured inalterably in time. Pictures don’t shift. They aren’t projections of my perceptions, they simply are, and I can usually trust the way I look in them.
        “Selfie” explores this fragmented, constructivist way I see myself. I photoshopped identity-defining photos of my body, my eyes, my nose, my torso, my hands, and even my favorite hairstyle over a Jean Metzinger's "Tea Time" painting. True to its cubist heritage, this painting looks like a shattered conglomeration flesh-colored shapes. It suggests a body with shape and form and color, but it remains abstract. Disjointed. Unsure of its own reality. Cubist paintings explore visual existence from every point of perception. Pieced together from these shards of ulterior perspective, cubism almost perfectly represents the way I have found my body. My body is a hodgepodge of old social media photographs pieced together into a frankenstinian reality—still distorted, maybe, but significantly more realistic than the way I see myself in the mirror.
        The longer I exist with my cubist body, the more I understand Marjorie Bianco’s quote from “The Velveteen Rabbit”. With the help of old pictures, other perspectives, and the ideals of cubism, my body is slowly Becoming. Becoming what? Something perfect? Something untainted by distortion? Not quite. My body may never become something constant, but it can become Real to me. My disjointed perception probably won’t be beautiful—like Bianco's rabbit, I’ll have handled it and obsessed over it so many times that my perception gets shabby and overworked. At least I’ll have that perception, though. And I think any perception, new or worn, loved or unloved, is beautiful as long as it’s Real.