Breaking Down the Barriers: Learning Not to Laugh

There’s an uncomfortable awkwardness that accompanies viewing people in documentaries. Asking a scientist to explain global warming is one thing, but putting a camera to someone’s face and asking them to explain a lost loved one is quite another. Witty movies like Best in Show have picked up on the humor that can be found in interviewing everyday people on camera. Christopher Guest sets us up to laugh at characters like Meg and Hamilton Swan, who take their dog to a psychiatrist to help the dog cope with the trauma she supposedly experienced when she caught them “doing it.” Meg and Hamilton, crazy yuppies who obsess over their dog, hardly elicit sympathy from their audience. The two characters are so out of line that we find it hard to relate with them and so we laugh and the problems they face.

Best in Show, a “mockumentary,” is clearly not created to be taken seriously. Many shows from the reality show genre, a fad that is somehow still growing, have also realized that they can bring added pleasure to their viewers’ experiences by portraying the people they rope in as overly zealous or as just plain odd. And let’s face it: it works. Watching the brats on “My Sweet Sixteen” or the horrible singers that assert they’re destined for stardom in “American Idol” makes most of us laugh.

Our conditioned responses to the “real” people we see on TV and in movies give filmmakers quite a challenge when they want to make us feel sympathy for strange people. Thus the coroner and the ex-girlfriend in Grizzly Man, who seem to exaggerate their sadness over the tragic death of Timothy Treadwell, make us want to laugh, not cry. And Timothy Treadwell, who excitedly feels bear dung claiming “This was inside her!” and coos to his fox friend, “You’re my little champion!” is absolutely incomprehensible. We want to laugh, but feel ashamed to do so.

Unlike the fabricated one-dimensional characters in reality TV shows, Timothy Treadwell is passionate about conserving wildlife. His cause, at least on the surface, is admirable and what’s more, the movie is made after he has been mauled by the bears he was so determined to protect. What could be more tragic than this? Yet our inclination is to laugh. Werner Herzog sets us up with a difficult task. The characters he presents us with are not easily digestible. We can dismiss the characters as crazed over-actors who are unlike us and impossible to sympathize with or we can strive to see a little bit of ourselves in them. We like the oddball characters that reality TV lets us laugh at because their flatness allows us to remain disconnected with them.

Herzog, on the other hand, implores that we look more closely at the overly passionate and seemingly bipolar Timothy Treadwell. Herzog admires Treadwell as a fellow filmmaker, showing us the astounding beauty Treadwell captures in filming, for instance, wind-blown grass. Through example, Herzog coaxes us to make the plunge and establish a connection with Treadwell and the other characters in the film. Rather than keeping the footage of the interviewees short, sweet, and one-dimensional, as do creators of reality show stars, Herzog keeps the film rolling for a longer period of time to more fully capture the characters. He keeps filming, for instance, after the coroner has given his report. Herzog pans the camera over to capture the expression on Treadwell’s mother’s face as his father is talking. Herzog urges us to catch their humanity. He seems to realize that all of us feel obliged to act on camera: to give funny anecdotes like Treadwell’s ex-girlfriend and old surfing buddy or to create heroic stories of honor at the hour of death like the story the coroner tells of Treadwell’s attempt to save his girlfriend. Herzog’s decision to leave the camera on these people and to catch them in their most exposed moments breaks down the walls between them and us. Thus, despite the ex-girlfriend’s strange job as a wench-waitress and Treadwell’s crazed obsession with bears, we can find ways to relate with them. Herein lies the challenging but rewarding beauty in Herzog’s film Grizzly Man.