Through the Lens of Our Selves

I've just finished watching Grizzly Man again in preparation for our viewing it in class on Tuesday. This is the third time I've seen it, and I think the experience of it only gets more extraordinary. The film is about Timothy Treadwell, but I love how present the filmmaker Werner Herzog makes himself in the film. In most documentaries, the filmmaker tries to remain hidden, tries to keep his or her own opinions out of sight - doing so, I suppose, in the interest of objectivity or at least, in the interest of seeming to be objective. But Herzog openly tells us what he thinks. He is the narrator - we hear his voice - we know it is he who is, in some sense, fashioning and shaping our vision of this grizzly man. He tells us that Treadwell had a "sentimentalized view that everything out there was good and the universe was in balance and in harmony,” and then he says of himself, "But I believe the common denominator of the universe is chaos, hostility, and murder." In the end of the film, too, he says that he believes the footage Treadwell took “is not so much a look at wild nature as it is an insight into ourselves, our nature . . . and that, for me, beyond his mission, gives meaning to his life and to his death.” He tells us how he personally interprets Treadwell's life and death. His use of "I" and "me" is refreshing because we can try to be objective, we can pretend to be objective, but, surely, we can never be truly objective. Our subjectivity always intrudes. We always gaze at the world, at others, through the lens of our beliefs, our individual quirks, our likes and dislikes, our education, our family history, our selves. That is not to say I think everything is relative, that nothing can be known for certain, but I do believe we must acknowledge our own subjectivity and recognize it in others to begin to see with clearer vision.