"Grizzly Man" and Homophobia

I wrote a review of Grizzly Man, the Werner Herzog documentary about a peculiar man named Timothy Treadwell, who lived amongst and was eventually devoured by bears. It remains a popular post to this day, because a lot of people continue to search Google for "Timothy Treadwell death audio," and I rank relatively well for the term. (Treadwell did, in fact, record his own demise, but the audio itself is not heard in Herzog's film, prompting some curiosity, I suppose.)

The visitors who find my blog post are most likely disappointed, as I don't have the recording available for download, but some of them leave comments anyway. These remarks are uniformly ugly, reveling in both homophobia and an unhealthy delight in the man's demise. A sampling:

TIM TREDWELL what a asshole anybody who would put his hand over a pile of bear shit, and go hmmm hmmm good it came out of her. what a asshole what would he do if i took a shit in the woods i bet he would put his nose up to my trud and go sniff sniff hmmm hmmmm good he was very sick

This is one of the most tame and respectful comments (that weren't left by people I know, discussing the film thoughtfully, that is). It's still highly crude and takes some amount of pleasure in the fact that Treadwell was apparently a somewhat disturbed individual. Please note that the author (who is most likely a male) concocts out of whole cloth an elaborate scenario in which Treadwell smells the author's feces approvingly. Which really couldn't be more transparent. This guy is himself having a sexual fantasy about Timothy Treadwell, and then fantasizing about punishing Treadwell for it! (Also, is that last "good" a typo or a Freudian slip? You decide!)

This next one's more typical:

Tredwell was a dumbshit.
Started out as dumbshit.
Played with bearshit.
Acted like a dumbshit.
Ended up bearshit.
Fitting.

Is that really "fitting"? Did he deserve to be eaten for being naive and kind of silly? I mean, who's this Anonymous person to judge? Hasn't he or she ever done anything stupid, just because he or she felt like it?

I don't understand this next one at all, but it still seems pretty mean-spirited and vicious:

Tim was a bit of a nutter but I'm all for his reasons, behind being a nutter. It was a bit over rehursed for my liking and it would of been interesting to hear the audio of his last moments, to see if the love was still there?

Yes, you're right, Timothy probably was not as pleased with bears during his final moments as he had been the rest of his life. So what?

I like how this person tries to play off his or her bloodlust, as if it's caused by some external individual and not themselves. He or she wants to hear Treadwell die because he otherwise came off as rehearsed, not because the commenter him/herself is just grim and wants to hear a recording of another person dying. There's nothing inherently wrong with morbid curiosity, but it's so lame to act on it without admitting it, even to yourself.

Tim treadwell was def. homosexual

If you say so. He did have a girlfriend, and claimed to be heterosexual, and no man has ever, to my knowledge, claimed to have had a romantic relationship with him. And now he's dead, so it hardly even seems to matter in any way. But okay, Anonymous Weirdo, you got it. Tim Treadwell, gay. Feel better now? Your universe is set right again?

tredwell was a homo, no doubt

This commentor seconds that emotion! You two should form a club!

I think the bear that killed tredwell attacked my wife.

I just put this one in here because it's strange. Is it a joke? How would you know it's the same bear? Is his wife okay?

I loved this movie, it was an interesting psychological study of how someone will choose a cause to avoid or to explore their own issues, such as their sexuality. Maybe it was easier to face the bears than to face the world's reaction to what you really are. I think that we all knew from the first frame that this was the story of a gay man. It made it more interesting because that is probably a lot of what pushed him to do the things he did, and it made it sadder that he would rather face the bears than to face the reality of a cruel world.

This is all just so weird to me. The entire movie is not about Treadwell's homosexuality, and there is nothing at all that would tip you off to it being about his homosexuality in the "first frame."

Yes, there is a long sequence (in the middle) in which Treadwell openly discusses his sexual orientation, and Herzog implies that Treadwell's conflicted sense of his own desires may have been a factor in his decision to live in the wilderness with bears. But to say you love the movie, and then to say that it's really just all about a gay guy who can't face being gay, is just strange. There's a lot going on in this movie besides the gay thing.

For some context, I mentioned the homosexuality sequence once, briefly in my original review of the film. Because it's not the most central thing going on at all. Here's what I said:

At various intervals in the film, we hear Timothy discuss his intense anger at those who don't respect the environment, his sadness over being unable to maintain a healthy romantic relationship, his problems with crime and drugs, and even his questioning of his own sexuality.

That's it. It's a fairly long review and this is the only time I made mention of Treadwell's sexuality (and I didn't even come to the conclusion that he was gay. Just confused.) Clearly, my commenters feel otherwise, that the possibility the film's protagonist may be gay overshadows all else in terms of significance, which I can't help but find disheartening, kind of like the people who feel that the two most salient things to say about Barack Obama are that his middle name is Hussein and his pastor sometimes gets kind of agitated.

So here's the most recent comment on the Grizzly Man review. I have to admit, I find this one pretty disturbing.

One of the better documentaries I've seen and psychologists should study this. I think ALOT of people miss the point that this guy is not an environmentalist at all...but a complete social maladjust that had no business out there at all "protecting" these bears. He obviously had no respect or understanding for bears or nature. Herzog makes it clear from the beginning that this movie is not about bears or conservationalism but about this guy's issues with himself and escape from reality (and probably his own homosexuality)...I found it a masterpiece of irony by Herzog and actually laughed my ass off most of the time. I'm most annoyed that the Discovery channel version didn't portray him as the self-obsorbed, self-destructive, loser that he was. Watching the full grizzly man I really felt like i was watching a 12 year old girl the whole time. Since I couldn't hear the audio of him being mauled to death my only solace is to know that the bear that killed him got killed (which Treadwell would hate) and that Treadwells remains were removed and not digested into the bear-shit that we all know he loved--which would have validated his own existence to himself.

It starts out well enough...The person liked the movie. They correctly surmised that it was more a character study than a film about environmentalism (not that this is terribly hard to surmise, and they did it by using the tortured near-Bushism "conservationalism," but still...credit where it's due.)

I even agree with his point that Herzog's making a film about an eccentric man with some amount of social and personal dysfunction.

But then it just gets creepy. There are scenes in Grizzly Man that I suppose are kind of funny, but you'd have to be kind of a strange, maladjusted person yourself to "laugh [your] ass off" at the home movies of a troubled man who died. Then the comparison of Treadwell to a "12 year old girl," which is just weird. I can't decide if it's homophobic or misogynist (probably because it's both.)

Then the fact that this person has to take "solace" that we don't hear audio of Treadwell dying. What pleasure could possibly have been gained from such an act? Again, I'm not totally dismissing morbid curiosity. It may have satisfied some primal, reptilian urge to hear what it sounds like to get mauled...but the shattering disappointment of being denied this ritual causes this person to seek solace? Weird...

And that last part is just sick, reveling in the death of not just a man but also an animal, and hoping that Treadwell, even in death, would be disappointed and punished for his supposed transgression (which really only hurt himself and only put him and his girlfriend, an apparently willing participant, at risk.)

So this all leaves me with a question...Is Grizzly Man itself a mean-spirited or misogynist film? Or is it just too complex for most viewers, who misunderstand Herzog's intent and instead replace it with their own superficial, unconsciously bigoted hang-ups?

(And I do think it's unconscious. I'm not sure any of these commenters would say they hate gay people. They may not realize that they secretly hope for these people to be punished and hurt, and take joy in their suffering.)

I'm going to go with the second one. Herzog certainly does judge Treadwell, but his critique isn't moralistic or rooted in intolerance. He just disagrees with Treadwell's perspective on some fundamental levels, and believes he may have been mentally unbalanced. The viewers themselves are bringing their prejudices to the film, I believe, turning a beautifully-rendered, nuanced portrait of an idiosyncratic man into a gleefully cruel condemnation of a dumb queer. What a shame.