Bear Nation (2010) Reviews

• Did I see the same film?

  pieandicecream2012-07-26

  First of all, I am very familiar with "bear" culture in both Portland, OR and San Francisco, CA. The start was interesting, nice footage, raised my expectations, but from what I saw after that, *spoiler alert* most of the film was interviewing a handful of people who were NOT bears about what THEY thought about bears. I got very bored with these "non-bear" interviews quickly, so I flipped my NetFlix to Fast Forward, looking for where the interviews ended and some actual "bears in the wild" footage of ACTUAL BEARS doing BEAR EVENTS, or maybe even some bears being interviewed. Bear culture is complex and has changed a lot since it was originally conceived as a backlash against the "shaved, coiffed, ripped, 23 year old" culture of LA gays in the 80's, and also as an anti-AIDS message of a healthy man with weight on him. So I waited as the sampled frames scrolled by. And I waited. And I waited. The entire rest of the film seemed to be interviews with non- bears. I was amazed. It would have been very easy to find bears to interview, but we did not see them. Yes, they discussed issues of body image, the feeling of being excluded from cliques, the search for a niche, and all of these are good and valid issues. But they should have been discussed by actual BEARS, not a handful of bear-chasers. If I have missed something by fast-forwarding through the non-bear interviews, PLEASE contact me and let me know. Because I would love to see that I've missed some actual value from this film.