On Bears

An unknown man or a bear. Those are the choices presented in response to the question of who one would prefer to run into while alone in the forest.[1] The microphone’s branded orb is placed in front of a diverse range of women. Different skin colors, ethnicities, hair textures, accents. But their tongues, as though stitched together with one voice, proclaim in no uncertain terms that, every time, they will choose the bear. The men are confused. How can anyone prefer to encounter a bear in the wild over one of them? A bear with no utilitarian component to human companionship? Can a bear take his Swiss Army knife to kill and then roast you a rabbit for dinner? Can a bear consciously shield you with his body from all manners of affliction? Can a bear assemble a tent? Start a fire? Carry you on his back? 

 

Surely, women considered all the proposed benefits of running into A Good Man. But, as the responses on the internet demonstrate, the initial inquiry did not provide that the Man in the Forest is A Good Man, just that he is an unknown one. The internet is a funny thing, with its real-time actions and reactions in a space that is both overpopulated and intangible. And in the chorus of the populous voices of this place that is neither here nor there, public opinion is swiftly formed each day. And here, the opinion is overwhelmingly resolute: for women, a wild bear is safer than an unknown man. As commentary continues to accumulate, women are called upon to defend their decisions. And their defenses are formidable despite their delivery through shaky voices, unsure inflections, downcast eyes. 

 

A bear will either attack you or leave you alone. In the space between those two possibilities, a man can do an endless number of harms, both predictable and unpredictable, some sinister in their creativity. One woman explains with the assurance of an academic that the bear is the only logical choice, detailing that men are women’s only natural predator. Another explains that, even if you adjust for population, you are still far more likely to be killed by a man than by a bear in the United States.[2] The men grow more furious as they listen to this, posting responses using inflamed language that further proves her point. And as all formations of alphanumeric usernames battle across the spectrum of Man-or-Bear, one woman records herself explaining her reasoning, completely non-reliant on population trends or attack statistics: At least if I am hurt by a bear, people will believe me. 

 

As girls, we are taught to kick and scream if a man tries to shove us in the back of his car. To scratch and bite him so our DNA is in his skin. We are taught to run for our lives if we manage to break free. To die on the road if we have to, it would be better than wherever that car is headed. We are taught that there is an especially finite universe of men we can trust, and most of them live with us already. We are taught that men are suspect until they have proven they are not, that most people swipe away an Amber Alert on their phone screen so they can continue scrolling their feeds where we debate spiritedly over Man-or-Bear. We are taught that men are so protected, so peacefully and unobtrusively left to their devices, that if we ever find one forcing himself on top of us, we should scream “Fire!” if we want even the remote possibility of someone peeking out of their window and maybe calling for help. 

 

A bear will not tie you up and torture you in his basement for weeks.

 

A bear will not drug you and defile your body in ways from which you will never recover.

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A bear will not poison your dinner so he can collect the insurance money. 

 

A bear will not pile your people onto a ship, force them to cultivate stolen land. 

 

A bear will not dance in the streets in its combat boots after bombing your village to talc powder. 

 

A bear will not poison oceans that existed in perfectly good health for centuries before we got here. 

 

Another woman records her response through dead eyes. A bear will never hold me down while he waits for his friends to finish. 

 

As children, our initial relationship with bears has none of the trappings of fear or avoidance. Bears are to children what reality television is to adults—common, sweet, sometimes dumb releases of the day. Bears are introduced to us wearing pajamas, with twinkly eyes, and kind smiles. Winnie the Pooh’s pudgy belly is the first bear we see in the forest. He coexists with all variety of forest life, the trusted companion of a human boy, even his anger is a thing of adoration. Yogi Bear also resides in an animated forest, his only controversy the failed Yogi Berra defamation suit against Hanna-Barbera.[3] Kung Fu Panda domiciles in the bamboo forest, where his martial arts propensities make him quite the useful companion should you encounter a strange man. The Care Bears came to us as a sleuth, teaching us virtue ethics and radical kindness. And then we have Baloo in the jungle, his name simply being Hindi for “bear,” teaching Mowgli to live a life detached from the unrelenting wheel of capitalism and empty desire.

 

Continuing the tradition of tenderhearted bears, Paddington Bear, in his serious duffel coat and darling bucket hat, teaches children superlative kindness and the downfalls of being far too trusting. Bear in the Big Blue House is gifted to us as a menacingly large bear, for a change, who wants nothing more than to teach us all about exploration and problem-solving. Even Fozzie Bear, with his sloppy tie and fall-flat comedy, skillfully taught us to keep going until we hit the one joke that lands. 

 

Bears are packaged and marketed to us in early life as safe mediums through which we can learn and understand the world. It is not until we are older that we are taught to recognize their many harmful inclinations. The transition from friend to antagonist is a slow one to register once we look away from media and into the forest of bear country. The disconnect is stark and undeniable. For certain, it is disingenuous to draw parallels between cartoon bears and real-life men—this implies that we can dismiss the very real dangers of crossing paths with a real-life bear. But to be similarly certain, as children we have been conditioned to adore bears and carefully scrutinize men. It is because, still, our caretakers knew that one is far more dangerous and more likely to hurt us than the other in the wild.  

 

The most dangerous thing my grandmother knew was a man. Made her flee the only country she knew to start all over working jobs that paid her shit, but at least didn’t squeeze her windpipe at night. 

 

The most dangerous thing my friend down the street knows is a man, who she feared so much she couldn’t bring herself to write everything he did to her on the police report. 

 

The most dangerous thing I know is a man. I think he will read this, but I am not scared anymore. 

 

In Russia, bear wrestling was once a form of traditional entertainment—an indication that Russian men recognized bears as conquerable to male prowess. Some men fought with trained bears, though they still risked being seriously injured. Other men fought wild bears, which drew out larger crowds than the trained fights, and required men to fight with emergency spears, just in case. In both formats, men knew they would likely (but not always) come out alive, that they could overpower their animal opponent if they really had to. In both formats, whether they acknowledged it or not, men recognized that they could be the far more lethal of the two. 

 

In India, dancing bears were a popular entertainment source for both the social upper-crust and the poverty-stricken alike, before it was outlawed in 1972. Tribal kalandars used to tie the snouts of sloth bears to rope and then poke them with hot rods to cause them to stand and sway and jump before a clapping and laughing crowd of spectators. You cannot force a man to dance, to do anything, without there later being a discussion of his deprived agency and the reparations owed. You cannot force a man to do a damn thing without there being a reckoning coming your way, either through him or the vengeance of his kin. Baloo in The Jungle Book bounces and sways to a beat from an unknown source along a river, eating from the land, imploring Mowgli to accept the bare necessities of life. The patron saint of surrendered agency, of performative joy for the sake of our leisure.

 

Baloo’s life philosophy of frugal detachment is an apt representation for what bears symbolize in basic economic terms. When the stock market sees sustained periods of decreasing stock prices, this is termed a bear market. And just as bears are known for their cyclical hibernation periods, bear markets are cyclical and are often markers of periods of prolonged retreat through recessions and high unemployment rates.[4] The biggest bear market the United States has ever seen was during the Great Depression, when men flung themselves from their office windows after watching their life’s savings evaporate. The sign of the bear market is typically short-lived, but wealth managers largely agree that the average person can expect to live through roughly fourteen of them.[5] The market always generates them and the market always survives them. Savvy investors become richer as a result of these bears in the market, buying up all the cheap stock that others have sold in fear. You can outlive the bear market if you’re smart enough. Surviving a bear is simply a matter of skill. Surviving a man, a matter of luck. 

 

The “Bad News” Chicago Bears have been in the sports equivalent of a bear market of sorts. These Men-as-Bears posted their worst season of record back in 1969 [6], but to be honest, not much has improved since then in a sport of tackling, pushing, and overpowering. With the name they don, one would imagine a worthy team of players with broad backs and hefty rears, domineering any opponents in their path. Head coach Matt Eberflus’ name flashes across the live news ticker at the bottom of my laptop screen. Eberflus has fired a second offensive coordinator in just ten months, says he takes the failures of the Bears “very seriously.” I think about how the skills required for success in American football are learnable, trainable. For the right amount of money, anyone can learn to push, throw, tackle, kick. Just like the Bad News Bears, bears in the wild are not known to be highly offensive, but very defensive in reaction to their environments. I think that maybe these Men-as-Bears have never been in the wild. How else can decades pass without realizing the name fits just right? 

 

It is autumn in New York and the living room is already dark at 5 p.m. The only light that dusts the room is the blue-green screen framing a scraggly Leonardo DiCaprio, alone and cautiously pacing through a depressingly cloudy day in the forest. The barrel of his gun lifted to his eyes, aimed all about him as he searches for threats, and then, for a moment, pointed in the direction of bear cubs in the distance. He does not shoot, the cubs are not interested in him. But it is too late. The careful quiet of the scene is disrupted, and from the far-left corner, a grizzly bear dashes into the foreground and starts dragging Leo like a rag-doll across the 4K screen. I do not know if she mothered those cubs, but I can only assume that she did, because I recognize that I, too, would undertake the shredding of any man who dared to point the barrel of his gun in the slightest direction of my young. I remember a scene in Working Moms when Kate runs into a bear while jogging with her baby in the park. The bear takes a break from eating trash to growl at the mom and babe. Kate, trembling, horrified, stands in front of the stroller, bends at the knees, and screams a scream so shrill that I’m sure the milk in my morning tea has curdled. The bear backs off, retreating in a way that says, “Nah, this bitch crazy,” respecting the clear act of protective motherhood on display. I am waiting for Leo to receive the same grace but it is not coming. I want it to come, but it does not. 

 

I cannot sit through it. I want to. I instinctively want Leo to be victorious. I question why I am not rooting for the bear even when I have just recognized something like myself in her protective nature. I don’t know his character enough yet, it is barely twenty minutes in, but I decide Leo still isn’t deserving of the fate he is meeting so violently. I cannot stomach the gruesome and likely accurate portrayal of the bear attack any longer. I excuse myself to the bathroom. I pee. I wipe. I wash. I smear lavender lotion on my hands. I adjust my hair so that the man I am cuddled up with watching this movie might hold me in his gaze for a moment and think, “Wow, she just looks like that without trying.” By the time I saunter back to the living room, Leo is lying underneath a lifeless bear. The Man I am Cuddled Up With does not peel his eyes from the images on the screen. The bear has critically injured him, but it is Leo’s own men who lay a dirty rag over his eyes and leave him for dead. Leo is injured, and he cannot save his son. Leo is injured, but he heals. Leo is injured, and he wears a bear for a coat.

 

The battle of man and bear, of bear mauling man, of man wearing bear, all of it is a poem of power struggles of sorts. Early civilizations revered bears as symbols of power, strength and love. Power and strength gleaned from their obvious physical prowess across species. Love gleaned in the ways they show affection to each other, love gleaned in the way they will risk their lives to protect each other, in the way they will destroy a man even vaguely pointing a weapon at one of their cubs. One of the most affectionate expressions of love that we use in everyday language is the “bear hug,” wrapping your arms so entirely around someone and squeezing them against your person. The subconscious dressings of bears as lovers is so seamlessly hidden in the beds of our tongues.

 

In Germany, bears are symbols of peace and tolerance. The inventor of the Bear Claw, a German pastry chef, named it such for its five fingered dough and soft almond paste filling: a flavor profile befitting a creature of a peaceful, warm-and-fuzzy-by-the-fireplace disposition, until provoked to be none of those things. Across Native American folklore, the tribes largely agree that bears are icons of courage and strength, of introspective reflection and healing. Many also believed that bears possess supernatural healing powers, as bears were thought to be capable of healing themselves with the way they can keep fighting even after being seriously wounded.[7] But outside of fables and culture and symbolism, scientific data seems to support these conclusions regarding the many impressive traits of bears. Scientists have found and reported that bears are not only highly intelligent creatures, but they are creative ones. They are problem solvers and critical thinkers. They have even been observed using tools in the wild—tree stumps as foot stools, their claws to pick rusty locks.  

 

If these are the most prominent characteristics of bears across disciplines and mediums and cultures, then it is no wonder why some of the most celebrated academic institutions have chosen bears as their mascots—UC Berkeley (the golden bears), UC Los Angeles (the bruins), Cornell University (the red bear), Brown University (the brown bear), to list a few. Adorning a university pennant with a symbol of high intelligence and creativity is an obvious choice, a wishful and ambitious manifestation for its alumni, a boastful perceived understanding of the self. 

 

One grimy Chicago eatery is in an enduring state of pandemonium and Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto continues to demonstrate just how much he deserves his Ursidae nickname. The Bear roams his kitchen in full survey, back of house and front. He shouts with bared teeth until stiff wires of veins emerge on his neck, his hands clenching at his hairline in perpetual frustration. The Bear, wading through health-code violations, a mountain of debt, and raucous employees, is constantly on the precipice of a massive pulmonary embolism. The fact that he evades one, that a pot-bellied blood clot hasn’t already launched its way to his brain, is a skill in and of itself, as I am on the verge of a cardiac event by just watching him. Carmy The Bear is a culinary genius, a die-hard perfectionist, a caring soul with no other way to grieve his dead brother than to push through the absolute shit of life. He is powerful, he is courageous, he perseveres in spite of his very deep wounds. He is the portrait of the Native American conception of a bear.  

 

Carmy leans his head to the right as he tells Claire that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell she knows what he’s going to name his new restaurant—a restaurant he is opening against all logic and against all his knowledge of the depressing lows of the culinary profession.  Claire has not seen him in years, the scene makes that much clear. She is on her way to becoming an emergency doctor, her life’s storyline running completely parallel to Carmy’s before this by-chance intersection in the supermarket. Carmy says emergency medicine sounds intense, in a way that says he appreciates that it can somehow be even tougher than his days filled with exploding toilets and blown fuses, fire marshals threatening to tear the whole house down. “How could you remember the name?” Carmy asks her incredulously. There is no way she could know the name. “Because you’re The Bear, and I remember you,” Claire responds. 

 

The news ticker on the bottom of my laptop screen flashes a new headline. A man has been arrested for the murder of another man in the mountains of Tennessee after a month-long manhunt.[8] A plotline too delicious not to click on. The victim’s body was found off the side of a cliff, an ID in his pocket that isn’t his own. The investigation was brought to an end with the killer hiding in plain sight, having made the first 911 call himself to report the victim’s death, blaming it all on a fatal bear attack. I suspect his victim would have much rather preferred the bear.