32. Grizzly Man: Are We Responsible for Our Mental Illnesses?

Timothy Treadwell was mentally ill, and it led to his death and that of his girlfriend. He compensated for his sense of not being accepted in human society by projecting a persona of the protector of bears. He wasn't liked by the ladies but he believed that if they knew how good he was in the sack that they would have begged him for his company. And this sums up the lack of recognition that Treadwell projects onto the bears who would have loved nothing more than simply to be left alone to live theirs lives in the "simple enjoyment of being bears," as Herzog put it. How much should we hold someone responsible for his mental illness? There is something strange about asking someone to be responsible for something that he is not responsible for, but this seems to be the only way that anyone ever gets better from the determinate psychological conditions that often develop from a childhood that one did not chose. How responsible was Treadwell for the death of two bears, his girlfriend, and himself given the clearly psychotic state that directly lead to the tragedy depicted in Grizzly Man. And how much responsibility does a "documentarian" director like Herzog bear for said depiction, which was a depiction of a man's depiction of himself as a embattled hero, a sort of play acting that he was willing to die for?

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