https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eerUnxonS-I
A Man Among Wolves is a documentary made by National Geographic. This video is just a 3 minutes clip from the original 2-hour documentary. It mainly tells the life of Shaun Ellis who chose to live his life among a pack of wolves. The video starts with the narrator saying, “This is Shaun Ellis, he’s done something few would dare and few would understand.” Then Shaun sat in front of the camera and said, “For me, personally, it costs family, home, security, financial commitment, everything is gone.” A great portions of this video is depicting the kind of life Shaun had with wolves: he washes his hair by the river, he roars to the wolves, he howls with the whole pack of wolves, he eats raw meat with wolves and he licks wolves very intimately. The narrator then talks about Shaun’s scientific purposes, which are studying and writing about wolves in Poland and America. He dedicated all his time spending with a pack of wolves and eventually became the “alpha male” in the pack. At the end of the video, the wild life park Shaun and his pack of wolves live in was briefly introduced. There are fences separating the tourists and the animals. One scene that is very worth noting is that as tourists are on the one side of fences observing animals, Shaun is on the other side cuddling with a wolf.
Throughout the whole video, there is a very typical narrative voice of a male as you could hear in any documentary. The background sounds are wolves howling, trees whirling and bird singing. All of these sounds give us a sense of nature, telling us that Shaun and his pack of wolves are living in a truly natural environment.
This amazing video is also relevant to Malamud’s arguments in Zoo Spectatorship. In Malamud’s essay, he is completely against the zoos; he says that spectators disrespect animals in the zoos, and zoos just don’t allow animals to be themselves. In this video, what Shaun does was not just observing wolves at distant. He chose to become one of them in the most natural conditions. He didn’t disturb the original life of wolves at all. Malamud states that, “zoos celebrate people’s power over animals, our penetrating ability to keep them and watch them.” (228). However, Shaun regards himself as one member of the wolf pack. And by doing this, he could appreciate the real beauty of these amazing creatures. So I think Malamud would support Shaun’s way of interacting with the wolves even though it seems extreme to most people.
The purpose of this video is purely educational. As Shaun said himself, “ I wouldn’t be doing this if I don’t think it wouldn’t make a difference.” He successfully showed that man could live in harmony with wolves as long as man respect their way of living.
Sources:
Malamud, Randy. Zoo Spectatorship. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Print.
Wow this video was really interesting! It seems that this man has gone to even more extreme measures to fit in with animals than Timothy in “Grizzly Man.” Do you think one day the wolves will kill him? I wonder if he is only alive because of his position as alpha male. I wonder if any beta male wolves wish to overthrow him in order to lead the pack. It is amazing how intricate the behavioral rituals of these animals are that this man can imitate them just based on his observations.
I enjoyed this blog post because it was one of the few videos that show a positive spin on observing animals. I value the concept of ‘respect’ and ‘education’ that came through with this video, and how you related it back to Malamud, even though it did not relate specifically or directly to zoos.
While I agree that Malamud would prefer a wildlife park to a zoo, I still think that this video is somewhat misleading. The video originally led me to believe that these animals lived completely in the wild away from human contact. As you said, parts of the video show other humans who are tourists. This means that human contact is not completely strange for these animals, and they have become somewhat accustomed to humans. Because of this, I have to argue that these wolves may act differently than wolves that live in the wild. This may be the reason that it is possible for this man to live in harmony with the wolves.