Invisible Woman

[smokingboot]

Behind every great man...

I've been a bit ill over the last 24 hours; weirdly, my creativity is sparking up and more than one new project is waking in my head. Not that I know how to carry these through of course; they're just randoms in my head.

Amie Huguenard. I learned this name last night on watching Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, a film based on the life and footage of Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell was an amateur wildlife enthusiast, with a special interest in the Bears of the Alaskan peninsula. He would spend summers there, getting phenomenally close to the bears. The last two seasons he was joined there by his girlfriend, Amie.

In 100 hours (I think) of footage in which Timmy bounces from friendly foxes to growling grizzlies (he bestows them monickers like 'Mickey' and 'Mr Chocolate') Amie turns up twice, momentarily, once with her hair and hands obscuring her face, once with a mosquito net covering her. We never get to see Amie properly let alone know her, though some sources do cite other footage, claiming she sits close to some bears and is very uneasy at their proximity. Again, not seen. But in the end, she can be heard.

One night at the end of the season, when food was unusually scarce, a visitor found Timmy's camp. The camera wasn't on, but the audio was. Herzog's documentary doesn't play the recording, but it is described to us: Timmy moaning and telling Amie to run away... and Amie hitting a grizzly bear with a frying pan, fighting for her life (and his) for 6 minutes.

6 minutes.

What was at the heart of her then? They say she was deeply in love. Was this what made her stay and fight? Or primal shock/fear? Or nowhere else to go in the middle of the night? Was there ever the moment of realising that Timmy's way might not be her way? He is quoted as believing(some say wishing) to die eaten by bears, considering it an honour. On a shamanic level, there's a sense in it, though I wonder if he knew what he was wishing for. But Amie?

She didn't want to die, clearly.

It's such an irony that we barely see her and her words are reported to us. Invisible Woman, not exactly waltzing with the wild. I went to bed on this thought and woke this morning, wondering where Amie's documentary is.

Comments

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

It's a good question. I often find myself asking similar questions.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Is this a Woman thing do you think? Are we trained by society to take on 'Our Man''s ambitions and dreams and identify with them as our own?

I wish I could hear her voice. Or maybe not actually. My imagination is grotesque and miserable on this matter. I see Amy pursued round the tents in the dark, while Tammy Wynette's 'Stand by your Man' plays in the background.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

*snorts*
There's a kind of black humour in that.
I think without hearing Amie's take on it, it's hard to say, for me what's more telling is that nobody thought that she might be a more interesting subject than him. Then some of these questions might be answered.

On a totally unrelated note, I read your book last week. Thank you. I enjoyed it a great deal.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised she is initially lost in the Tale of Timmy, because his antics are huuuj and overt and making a statement and showing a world and she is...well, no-one knows. Until the end, and even that's only the beginnng of getting her. Timmy is clearly a movie. She's barely an epitaph, though this morning I made up a song and sang it for her. I was interrupted by my cat complaining; frankly, it was a rubbish song. She deserves better.

I am so glad you enjoyed the book. I am enjoying your icon!

[blackcurrants.livejournal.com]

This was the perfect thing to read this morning!

I had heard of him, even read about him a little - and never of her. I wonder how many Invisible Women stories there would be, if someone wrote them down? The ones you find tend to be unbearably bleak, or dark and funny (a la "The World's Wife) - but I find them compulsively interesting.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I have never read 'The World's Wife' - I'll look out for it.

Yes, invisible women, bleak, dark and funny...there's a horrible humour in this story too. According to transcripts, as the bear attacks Timmy, it is startled off by Amie, who then goes over to her beau (she's a physician's assistant) to help him. The bear returns and forces her back towards the tent, and then starts dragging Timmy away. It seems she may well have actually followed the bear beating it over the head with the frying pan...

Invisible women. How to find their stories, let alone tell them?

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, I've just been reading a review of Barbara Greene's Too Late to Turn Back, a narrative of her travels in Liberia in 1936 with her cousin Graham. Graham's much more famous book, Journey Without Maps, mentions her by name once and as 'my cousin' on eleven other occasions in 300 pages.

Treadwell was a few bales short (and a con artist).

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Is it a good book?

I find her cousin faintly unbearable.

Re Timmy, it's clear that he's also all about himself in a thwarted way, but I can't deny some of the fantastic footage he creates. A man who spends every summer alone in the wilderness isn't your textbook narcissist. I didn't know he was a conman - what did he do?

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

I loathe her cousin. :D I'm reading a book on books and have put Barbara Greene on my 'get soonish' list. It sounds as if it's well worth reading.

As for Treadwell -- living near large carnivorous wildlife as I do, I have no patience with people who don't maintain an appropriate distance or take reasonable precautions and who endanger the wildlife. That aside, this pretty much sums it up. I was somewhat captivated by the myth when he was alive. Now -- not so much. I can't help but feel that Amie was sucked inside his sphere of influence and couldn't get out again.