Jeffrey Varnado

Former Ebay Sellers vs. Ebay, Inc.
2019-10-10 18:18:44 (UTC)

All Teeth and Claws: Constructing Bears as Man-Eating Monsters in Television Documentaries Michael Fuchs, European Journal of American Studies

The voice-over narration underscores the brutality of the attacks. For example, when describing an incident at Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park in British Columbia, the “Killer Bears” narrator uses language with a clear goal. Patti McConnell walks “into a death trap” and is “frozen with fear” when she spots the bear. Moments later, “[t]he 400-pound beast viciously attacks Patti. … The bloodthirsty beast tears into Patti.”2 When a man tries to save her, “[t]he bear’s reaction is explosive,” as the animal kills the intruder in a heartbeat and begins to feed on the human body. Alerted by the noise, more people arrive at the scene and “desperately try to keep the furious bear away from Kelly [McConnell] and his mom [i.e., Patti].” However, they soon come to understand that the “only way to end the carnage is by killing the bear. … But this vicious predator is not done with his bloody rampage.” As the bear gets closer to another group of people, “running bodies trigger the bear’s killer instinct. The massacre won’t end until someone kills the crazed beast.” The numerous plosives and sibilants used to describe the bear and his actions support the traits ascribed to him and the words referring to him: The bear is a bloodthirsty, crazed beast that viciously massacres human beings (which, on top, are only “bodies”) on a bloody rampage and leaves behind carnage. Clearly, this bear is a monster hungry for human meat.




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