This week I watched the documentary film Grizzly Man and I found some of the ideas intriguing and applicable to this class. The film is about a man named Timothy Treadwell who lived alone in the Alaskan wilderness and tried to make friends with grizzly bears. In order to help protect grizzly bears and spread awareness about them he films himself and makes documentary-style clips of him going through outdoor survival practices as well as explaining facts about the bears he spends time with. After about 15 years of living with and filming these bears as well as some other woodland friends (the movie feels a bit like Snow White with schizophrenia at some points) he ends up getting eaten by one of the bears he previously called a friend. Because he was making the film of his interactions with the bears he left the camera rolling during the entire time Treadwell and his girlfriend (who was accompanying him on the trip at the time) were struggling for their lives and eventually were eaten by the grizzly bear. In one clip of the movie Werner Herzog, the director of the film, listens to the audio from the bear attack (the video wasn’t recorded as the lens cap was left on the camera) and his reaction is what one would expect when seeing someone listening to the audio of another person dying a violent death.
[youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUf0QFFi2Mk&w=560&h=315%5D
I find the existence of this recording to be a unique type of ghost-centric haunting and I can’t honestly imagine why anyone would want to keep the footage. I think the reasons are grief-centric, making me think back to our post-modern grief-based product design and wonder – if a business offered to sell people audio or recordings of their loved ones’ final moments would people buy them? Would they listen to them? As with a lot of these goods and services I can’t imagine investing myself because it’s very disturbing to me but I actually think people might like the idea.