After watching the documentary film Grizzly Man, by Werner Herzog, one will realize the different perspectives people have on life and nature. Werner Herzog's film is about a person named Timothy Treadwell who decides to live in a national park in Alaska for 13 years. While Treadwell is living in Alaska and trying to form friendships with the grizzly bears, he gets brutally eaten and killed by one of the bears. When Treadwell was living there, he decided that his purpose in life was to protect the wildlife and nature in the area. His opinion was very different from Herzog's opinion. Herzog believed nature was perfectly fine on its own and it was Treadwell who disrupted it.
Herzog pieced together many hours of footage that was filmed by Treadwell over the last 5 years that he was living in Alaska. You can clearly see in Treadwell's videos that he believes the grizzly bears are his friends. Although Treadwell is aware that the grizzlies are very dangerous creatures, he believes that he has earned the trust of the bears by showing no fear. Treadwell even gets a few shots on camera of him petting the grizzly bears and playing with the foxes. He believes that the bears are in a lot of danger and need protection from poachers and other harmful humans.
Herzog believes the opposite of Treadwell's opinion. He thinks that nature can protect itself from humans and that Treadwell was doing more harm to the bears than good. By familiarizing the grizzly bears with human contact, Werner Herzog believed that the bears would be more likely to approach human habitation in search of food which would lead to the use of animal control. Also, Herzog thinks that because of Treadwell's contact with the bears, it would take away the bears fear of humans and cause the grizzlies to approach poachers.
Although both Treadwell and Herzog have different opinions about the way humans should view wildlife and nature, they both have one similar intention. This intention is to keep the peace between humans and grizzly bears, whether or not it involves interacting with the creatures. I personally believe that Timothy Treadwell was wrong and should have kept the bears alone simply because of what happened to him.
Chelsea,
ReplyDeleteThe way that you explain the perspectives of Treadwell and Herzog on nature is very well done and clear. I thought your statement that Treadwell and Herzog both had similar intentions regarding nature was very interesting and I definitely agree. I think that since they are both of such different opinions it is easy to overlook any commonalities between them, so I appreciated the connection you made between the two. You mentioned that you disagreed with Treadwell's actions because of what happened to him in the end, would your opinion be different if he had survived? Thanks for sharing!
I believe we both made similar points in our posts on how Herzog and Treadwell have completely different opinions. You mentioned how Herzog believed nature was perfectly fine on its own, which I disagree with. I think Herzog believed that nature was hostile and corrupt in itself. There will always be a human presence within nature, and Herzog believed that nature was the one disrupting human activity. I think your point on how Treadwell and Herzog have one similar intention is interesting, and I never looked at it in the way that they both wanted to keep peace between humans and grizzly bears.
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