Man vs. Wild -- No, Really

No, this isn't about the so-called three kinds of conflict. I'm literally talking about a new show on the Discovery channel, Man vs. Wild. There's this British guy with the wonderful name of Bear Grylls who is dropped into some harsh territory, like the Alaskan mountain range or the Costa Rican rainforest, and he attempts to survive and make it back to civilization, usually with no more than a water bottle, some flint, and the clothes on his back. Obviously, he (and his camera crew) make it every time, but it's always pretty gripping.

But why should it be? Again, it's not like Mr. Grylls is going to die on camera, and if you watch the editing closely, the way the shots jump from the crew's camera to Gryll's personal camera, it's clear that, while what we're seeing isn't necessarily staged, there's some typical reality-show-style trickery going on. (Hey, Bear's swimming down those rapids, but we just saw him talking to his camera and now the camera isn't there!) I don't mean this as a criticism, either; this stuff is what makes the show work. But while in other shows, these kinds of shots stick out like a sore thumb, I'm nearly always swept away (no pun intended) by the show. Again, why?

After watching four episodes, I think I figured it out -- the show, while maintaining a documentary feel, uses the time-tested three-act structure. After Grylls is dropped into the wilderness, he's faced with a series of obstacles to overcome, and they steadily build to a climax. Each obstacle is discrete, with a clear set-up of the problem and a clear resolution. While it's a given that, with no food, he's very hungry, this only comes into play during the "scene" where he tries to find something to eat. More often than not, there's some kind of reversal, especially between "acts" two and three. In the Mount Kilauea episode, in the first act, he crosses a lava field, to make it to, in act two, a rainforest that he thinks will lead him to the shore, only to discover, at the beginning of act three, that he has another lava field to cross, only this one is jagged like glass. In the Sierra Nevada episode, he happens across some wild horses, and actually tries to snag one with a rope made from a vine. Of course, this fails, but a story wouldn't be a story without some setbacks. In two of the four I've seen, the last obstacle is a body of water between him and some kind of indicator of civilization -- a house or a road. I mean, that's basic visual storytelling right there.

This use of three-act structure in a documentary form isn't completely unheard of. While we usually think of documentaries as something unmediated, an account of stuff that "just happens" (despite all the work that goes into getting the shots and editing them together) I can think of two documentaries that brazenly adopt the three-act structure to great returns: Capturing the Friedmans and The Times of Harvey Milk. Is the use of the three-act structure "cheating"? Is placing all the events of your documentary in such of way that rising action and tension are created -- is that manipulative? I'm not sure. Yeah, Frederick Wiseman wouldn't approve, but it's hard to dismiss the power it creates.

All in all, it's a great show, but if it makes me think anything, it's: goddamn, I wish I'd seen the Moab Desert and Mount Kilauea episodes before I started writing the novella of Little Black Stray. The drama of it is just right there for the taking. I might even finished the stupid thing by now.