In case you missed it… :)
Discovering Bigfoot Part One: An Overview
Bigfoot Discovery Part Two: Winning the lottery
Bigfoot Discovery Part Three: “Proof”
Today, I want to talk a couple of things that I feel are imperative to any discussion of Bigfoot “proof”.
Context
In 1967, Roger Patterson, with the help of Bob Gimlin, set out to film a bigfoot documentary in Bluff Creek, CA. On October 20, Roger took 24 feet of color film on a handheld 16mm Kodak movie camera that would change history for many.
While nearly everyone in the free world has seen the footage of the creature they filmed that day, striding up Bluff Creek, very few people have seen any of the other footage shot while the men were on that expedition. Why?
In his excitement over the “creature footage”, I think Roger Patterson made a very understandable, though very important, mistake.
The Patterson/Gimlin footage was not released IN CONTEXT. The creature footage itself has been played and replayed ad nauseum as a curiosity and the images therein have become synonymous with the subject of bigfoot. But the details regarding the footage – how it was obtained, what was happening at the time, what was done with the footage shortly after it was obtained, what the men were doing prior to that fateful moment – have been hard to come by.
BECAUSE THE FOOTAGE WAS NOT RELEASED WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF AN EXPLANATORY DOCUMENTARY.
Had the footage been released as part of a full-length film detailing the backstory and profiling the men involved and their thoughts and actions on that trip, the public’s ultimate perception of the subject today might be very, very different.
Context – or backstory, if you will – provides a starting point for one’s ability to gauge the truthfulness and authenticity of a piece of evidence. The Patterson/Gimlin bigfoot has become the poster child for just about every print and news media dissertation on bigfoot, tongue-in-cheek or not, and the constant exposure has turned “Patty”, and bigfoot in general, into a bit of a celebrity. That’s not a good thing, Martha.
Bigfoot Paparazzi
In the last few years, I’ve experienced this bizarre phenomenon to a certain extent. I call it the Celebrity Swoon. *grin* It’s been awkward, to say the least, but it has given me an interesting perspective on the bigfoot phenomenon.
It started after Mysterious Encounters began airing. Suddenly, this girl who grew up in a town with a population of 210 people and had quietly been doing bigfoot research in her own backyard in Oregon was showing up two-dimensionally on people’s television sets all across the country.
Now, “Autumn Williams” hardly became a household name. Unless you were a bigfoot aficionado, liked watching professional bull-riding on OLN and your usual prime-time PBR schedule was rudely interrupted with “some show about Bigfoot”, or you were channel surfing and happened to land on it, you wouldn’t know me from Adam. Or Eve, rather.
But those people who found the show and tuned in regularly saw thirteen episodes of this blond chick running around the country chasing bigfoot. Everyone became intimately acquainted with the inside of my nose thanks to the retarded “backpack” cam they made me wear. Me and my deviated septum were blazoned across millions of TV sets in living rooms from Florida to Washington.
And something weird started to happen.
I first noticed it on the public bigfoot forums. People began talking about me as if I were some thing… not someone. The initial criticisms of the show from the armchair quarterbacks were brutal. “Autumn Williams” was fair game, and it was hunting season. I read lewd comments about my physical… erm… “attributes”, snide commentary on everything from my clothing to my nose to my manner of speaking… Anything in the show that they didn’t like was my fault. I was the host of the show, after all – therefore, I MUST have complete control over every aspect of the series. I was publicly tried and found guilty of being less-than-perfect in a hundred different ways. And how dare I be? I was on their televisions, after all, and only perfect people end up on television!
It was hurtful. I had been a member of these forums and these peoples’ peer in the research field for years and suddenly they were talking about me as if I didn’t exist and couldn’t read the horrible things they were saying. And I guess, in a way, I DIDN’T exist anymore. I had suddenly become two-dimensional. I was “different”. I was on TV. I was suddenly, as one guy put it, “Ms. Hollywood”.
After the initial hubbub died down, another aspect of the phenomenon began to take hold. People started acting… weird. They’d hang back quietly at conferences, staring at me, finally coming up with a permagrin and saying things like, “I’ve seen all of your shows. I can’t believe I’m meeting you. Will you sign this?” Or I’d call someone to discuss an issue they were having with logging in to their member’s account on the website and they’d say, “I can’t believe I’m talking to ‘Autumn Williams’!”
Egads.
I went from being publicly tarred and feathered to dealing with starstruck “fans”, all in the course of a few months. And I was completely bewildered. I was the same girl who’d grown up in a small town, the same down-to-earth, approachable, everyday person I always was.
But I had suddenly, in a way, become an “icon” of sorts. A two-dimensional creature on a film screen. A poster child for a cause.
Suddenly, I felt like Patty. And I didn’t like it one bit.
We are constantly exposed to celebrities in two-dimensional settings. On TV. On film. In papers, magazines and print. We “learn” about them through those two-dimensional means. And we think we know them. Their names become synonymous with what we think we know about them. The name “Michael Jackson” brings to mind all sorts of preconceived notions and connotations – some positive, many negative, but all are a conglomeration of what we’ve “learned” about that person through two-dimensional exposure. Did any of us really KNOW Michael Jackson? Has any one of us really thought about the fact that he would wake up in the morning, maybe rub the goop out of his eyes, pour a bowl of cereal and channel-surf, just like everyone else? It’s difficult to get past all of the sensationalism and picture him that way, isn’t it?
If I’ve learned anything about “celebrity”, it’s that it is somewhat uncomfortable and often dehumanizing.
You can tell when you’ve become a celebrity, because people seem SURPRISED to see you in the flesh, living and breathing, in a three dimensional “real world” setting. And they let you know they’re surprised. “I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you!”
It would almost be funny… if it wasn’t so damned creepy.
That’s why the paparazzi make the big bucks. It’s almost unfathomable that Britney Spears might actually drive through Taco Bell like everyone else. Capturing images of two-dimensional, celebrity ICONS doing everyday things in the “real” world is big business.
Think Bigfoot hasn’t become a celebrity? Isn’t Patty’s image instantly recognizable? What are we, really, besides a bunch of bigfoot paparazzi, running around with cameras trying to capture the “money shot” of this two-dimensional icon doing normal, everyday things in the “real” world?
What was Patty doing on that fateful morning? What had she had for breakfast? Where was she GOING when she was captured on film, striding purposefully across that sandbar? What was she feeling? Where did she sleep later on? What was she thinking about these two little hairless fellas who pointed those things at her and showed such interest in her footprints?
How would YOU feel if someone walked up to you and said, “I can’t believe you’re real!”?
As always, your comments and feedback are welcome and appreciated. :)
