Comparing Dog-Man And Grizzly Man

The ‘Dog-Man’ and Grizzly Man: Crossing the border between the human and non-human in JM Coetzee’s Disgrace and Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man.

In Jacques Derrida’s essay, The Animal That Therefore I am (More to follow), he examines the problematic issue of the animal within western human philosophy. His specific intention is to examine the space concerning what we as humans define as the animal and what we call ourselves: the non-human and the human. He states in his essay "back to the question of what I do when "I am" or "I follow," when I say 'Je suis," if I am to follow this suite then, I move from "the ends of man," that is the confines of man, to "the crossing of borders" between man and animal. Crossing borders or the ends of man
On the thirteenth summer, Treadwell along with his girlfriend and collaborator Amie Huguenard, was tragically killed and eaten by one his subjects. The documentary is made up of selected footage of the hundreds of hours of film that was shot by Treadwell alongside interviews with people connected with Treadwell and the wildlife sanctuary shot by Werner Herzog. The documentary can be read as a film about Werner Herzog’s own views on animals as much as it is on the work and life of Timothy Treadwell. When attempting to read the documentary in relation to Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I am (More to Follow) there are two angles on which to examine it; Werner Herzog’s reasoning behind wanting to make the documentary and the way in which the documentary is structured alongside Timothy Treadwell’s intensions in filming the bears. Initially Treadwell’s intensions may appear noble and good willing, simply trying to aid in the preservation of an endangered species and wildlife in general. However, when scrutinising the footage of Treadwell deeper the viewer gets the feeling that Timothy Treadwell’s project is more about himself and his own relationship with the animal. Timothy Treadwell’s attempt at crossing the invisible boundary between the human and
But in doing so he crossed an invisible border’7 Werner Herzog’s views on this ‘invisible border’ are made fairly clear from the outset and throughout Grizzly Man. It could be argued that his views are parallel to that of David Lurie’s at the beginning of Disgrace. However, Coetzee makes an anthropomorphic analogy on the very first page of Disgrace ’She is offended by the tourists who bare their breasts (udder’s she calls them)’8. David also describes many of his encounters in an anthropomorphic way, comparing his sexual encounter with Soraya to that of a snake9 and when describing his hearing with the universities board he expresses the feeling that they are ‘hunters who have cornered a strange beast and no not know how to finish it off’10 The anthropomorphic metaphors continue throughout the first third of the novel, and although they are seemingly unpremeditated at first it becomes clear towards the conclusion of the book that they are not. To contrast this with the opening of Grizzly Man the audience are instantly thrown into Treadwell’s anthropomorphism of the bears he has spent so much time with. He has already assigned the bears names, blows them a kisses and even declares his love for them. Treadwell’s opening line to the camera is ‘I 'm out in the prime cut of the big green. Behind me is Ed and Rowdy, members of