An Episode of Finding Bigfoot: A Semi-Meta Study On How The Search For The ‘Squatch Reflects Self-Destructive Human Curiosity
Earlier today, I watched an entire episode of Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot. The only possible justification I can offer involves my little sister and a particularly debilitating bout of flu. As for the subsequent critically objective analysis/research paper/observational study, I cannot offer any excuse. And I have no regrets.
It all started last night: upon waking up from a monstrous fever-dream*, I found myself lethargically trapped on my hella’ comfy recliner, and considering my little sister had just come in from an ostensibly rough day at school, I decided to offer her the remote rather than continue to watch the thrillingly overblown denouement of Moulin Rouge!, which I had had only caught auditory snippets of through conscious breaks in my dream, and managed to piece together only two things about the narrative: (A) It was maleficently musical, and (B) I hated it. So thinking my sister would, at worst, throw on Spongebob or something, and considering the alternative was so much more onerous and melodramatic and fucking Baz Luhrmann-y, how could I possibly have been prepared for the upcoming sensory onslaught?
Without warning, without so much of a preliminary “Hey, have you heard of this show?” she keyed over to the On Demand channel** and selected Finding Bigfoot from the dropdown menu. My shock was almost immediately replaced by horrified fascination. I watched a solid twenty minutes of the episode before I managed to drag my bleary body from the chair and stumble, wild-eyed and infuriated, away from the television. I vowed, though, that I would return the next day — with another three or four Clindamycin in my system — and finish what I had begun.
Yesterday evening consisted of some frenetic commentary on the whole business of Bigfoot-hunting, followed by a period of self-deprecating curiosity, in which I spent an hour-or-so debating whether or not to ride this thing until the end or just drop the whole ordeal. Obviously I took the former route, and proceeded to do some affectatious research on the auteurs behind Finding Bigfoot.
According to IMDB, Finding Bigfoot is distributed by Animal Planet (owned by Discovery Communications). Spiked Heel, some unsurprisingly obtuse production company, did principal photography on four episodes. Curiously, there is no production company listed under any other episode throughout all six-and-a-half seasons***. Finding Bigfoot, in other words, just exists, without any impetus for its animation. A subject without a predicate. A gerund without a possessive. A chicken without an egg (or vice versa, whatever).
Going off this evidence alone, I have no choice but to conclude Finding Bigfoot has proved procreation false viz. irrefutable proof of spontaneous generation. I’m sticking to that, as any further research into the matter would require further research into the matter****, and I’ve already spent three laborious hours typing various combinations of the words “Finding” and “Bigfoot” and “Who the fuck makes this shit?” into Google.
Just this afternoon, armed with my scarce research and a few doses of the aforementioned antibiotic, I buckled down and commenced final preparations. Last night’s investigation turned up multiple references to a stalwart entrepreneurial figure, one Matt Moneymaker*****, “founder and president”****** of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. And so I headed back over to Animal Planet’s ostentatious Finding Bigfoot “Bios” page in an attempt to learn more about the team. Moneymaker attended UCLA, and while working with fellow collegiate enthusiasts, found his first Bigfoot track in 1987. If his obsession could have been politely called a “hobby” prior to this discovery, Moneymaker’s ‘squatchphilia definitely graduated to “commitment” once he left his alma mater. He spent the first half of the 90’s traipsing up and down Ohio, calling madly into the woods, and supposedly had his first close encounter with the beast in 1994*******. He created the BFRO in 1995, managing to navigate an inchoate World Wide Web long enough to connect with other ‘squatchphiles. Animal Planet offered him his own show in 2011, and aside from some particularly interesting anecdotes and debunkings during those interim years, the rest, as they say, is history.
Ranae Holland, Cliff Barackman, and James “Bobo” Fay round out the squad. Ranae identifies as a Bigfoot “skeptic”, but tags along with the BFRO boys in an attempt to honor her father’s legacy, because Finding Bigfoot exhibits all the expositional, Wilder-esque trims and trappings of your average film noir. Ranae and her father bonded over the Bigfoot craze back in the ‘70’s, and I guess her commitment to Finding Bigfoot stems from some filial sentiment. Cliff boasts the most enervate origin story; he sort of just fell into the ‘squatch-scene, and his longtime love for camping + a deep affection for curio = one of the largest collections of Bigfoot paraphernalia (including plaster-casts of footprints) in the world.
Now, we come to “Bobo”. I can’t quite accurately describe James “Bobo” Fay. He’s either a hyperfocused madman or a savant, inexorably fueled by trucker hats and an immortal love for the ‘squatch. He makes his living as a commercial fisherman in California, and apparently surfed in his youth, but he’s also built roads, chopped trees, and studied Native American folklore in an austerely pious attempt to ascertain the spiritual truth behind Bigfoot. He speaks with a demure sort of monotony, the kind usually reserved for chauffeurs and the Dalai Lama. On Bigfoot, his expertise and passion is unmatched. On anything else, who can say? Watching him was one of the most humbly surreal experiences I’ve ever had in front of a television.
There’s something particularly important about Finding Bigfoot. I say “important” in the sense that this aspect might function on a level beyond content-criticism, insomuch that it might act as a suitable paradigm for passion, human belief, and faith in general. The element to which I’m referring is the thesis, or modus behind Finding Bigfoot: literally finding Bigfoot. As in, not finding out whether or not Bigfoot exists. The team will neither debate the admissibility of evidence nor discount so-called sightings. The stars/hosts of Finding Bigfoot (with the exception of the supposed skeptic Ranae Holland) know the sasquatch exists. I don’t mean to imply they think these creatures are real, or expect they were likely extant at some point in history, if not now. No, the ‘squatchphiles all maintain, no matter any evidence to the contrary, that Bigfoot is real. The show is called Finding Bigfoot for a reason; these people do not ponder myth, but rather attempt to prove to everyone else, to all us naysayers and unenlightened folk, that the sasquatch is out there; it is plentiful in number, large in stature, and lives amongst rural communities in every corner of the world, and it’s after our bovines and equines and all our loyal ungulates. These believers cannot be swayed. As sure as the Pope believes in God, or Chomsky in Niceties, or Dawkins in Masturbatory Pandering, so too do Moneymaker, Cliff, and Bobo in the almighty ‘squatch.
After this final bit of biographical study, I finally felt mentally prepared for my adventure. I saddled back in that hella’ comfy recliner and turned on the same episode I had abandoned the previous evening: “Atomic Bigfoot.”
The show follows your standard Ghost Hunters formula: some rudimentary exposition followed by eyewitness accounts, a smattering of heavily edited re-enactment (complete with high-contrast snap-zooms, the poor man’s CGI, and vignettes so deep, I briefly thought I’d nicked a button on the remote and unwittingly changed the aspect-ratio), and finally the thrilling “hunt”, in which the team straps on these protuberant AV-rigs and treks out into the darkened woods to capture grainy, pixelated evidence of the ‘squatch in nauseating night-vision-viridescence. There are the predictable psychoauditory rustlings and disorienting whip-pans, the perspirant wide-angle close-ups produced by pole-mounted reaction-cams, and frantic whisper-yelling.
I wanted to keep a more dutiful time log of the episode, but honestly it was nearly impossible to maintain an empirical record when every other bit of dialogue prompted a visceral, indignant response and left me scrambling to catch up after typing some very long-winded and facetious reaction. This was more exhausting than I thought it would be. Barring re-watching the episode, there was really no way for me to pinpoint timecode marks, even if only for PoR. Unfortunately, the best I can do is offer up some sensuous rambling.
Commercial-breaks always began in the same anticipatory manner. Generic synthy wails played over a slow pan across some trees, displayed in resplendent night-vision, which then cut jarringly to the obtuse show-title in tacky block-font layered over a sloppy CGI-Bigfoot growling out from beyond the screen. This attempt at a jump-scare was so feeble, I’m beginning to catch a whiff of parody, or at least kitsch. Nowhere is this more evident than in the shittily animated sasquatch featured during those hyper-expressionistic segments which attempted to sublimate the experience of actually seeing the monster. Bad CGI makes everything look glabrous, and the terrifying contrast between the purportedly hairy ‘squatch and this smeared and undulated stain stalking across the screen screams “irony”, as if you really are supposed to laugh at how bad it looks. To cap it off, certain scenes featured a costumed actor knuckle-dragging his way through the woods in an admittedly impressive ‘squatch-suit, and the intra-episodic juxtaposition between this meticulous disguise and the abysmal computer-animation felt pitifully inconsistent.
The opening teaser mentioned how the team had previously visited the locale featured in this episode: apparently their first excursion to eastern Tennessee turned up some promising evidence, i.e. they recorded the sound of two trees falling down. According to Moneymaker, their visit prompted the local Mayor’s office to be “inundated” with reports of Bigfoot sightings. This little tidbit, mentioned within the show’s first five minutes during a generic talking-head segment, struck me as the first tacit indication of reality-TV sensationalism. Of course a flood of Bigfoot sightings would come across the desk of any backwoods magistrate after Moneymaker and Company rolled through; virtuoso monster-hunters, some abstruse television equipment, and the promise of fifteen seconds of fame in exchange for a bit of savvy reporting on the hirsute ape that stalks the nearby woods was more action than any eastern Tennessee town had ever seen. The mania surrounding the creature, and any attempt to find it, catches hold in this subliminal, nefarious sort of way that makes me think of epidemics and paranoia.
The episode trucked along, and if any narrative structure could be attributed to this forty-five minute spectacle, I suppose the proverbial “inciting incident” would be a town hall meeting, during which eyewitnesses were given the opportunity to recount their harrowing sightings to the team. A trio of most-promising leads emerged: (A) David and Matt, father and son, sitting in their car when it was hit by a rock thrown by a sasquatch; (B) Amy, exceedingly emotional, riding shotgun with her husband when a ‘squatch bounded across the street in front of them and leapt into the woods; and © Matt Seeber, wearing an “Eastern Tennessee Bigfoot” shirt complete with web-address, claiming that a bit of restricted government property nearby housed a de facto Bigfoot-sanctuary. Naturally, the team began with Seeber.
Oh, and Ranae Holland went off on her own for a solo hike/vision quest/spiritual excursion. Great. Whatever.
Matt Seeber looks like a so-called gamer’s nightmare, in that he all at once affirms and accentuates every stereotype about slightly rotund, introverted folk who enjoy spending their time watching 9/11 conspiracy videos and playing first-person shooters. He’s the “gives these people a bad name” type of guy. Seeber lead the team half a mile from a tract of government-restricted land*, and here the BFRO boys gave me my first glimpse at their expertise.
Jargon seemed very important in Bigfoot-hunting. The team tossed around some very cliquish terminology; words like “howl” and “long howl” and “knock” and “knocker.” A “knocker”, just in case you were wondering, is a small cricket-bat. Predictably, though still disappointingly, a “knock” was literally just a bump in the night. As you can imagine, any quick rap on some bark with the “knocker” which produced a nearly-inaudible “knock” in response from the surrounding wood resulted in some excited, susurrant cheering from Moneymaker and the Boys. Picture for a moment, if you will, the sight of three grown men dressed in obnoxiously elaborate rigging standing monastically in the nighttime woods, all stoically composed until one of them hits a tree with a bat, and then silence once more until a branch falls to the Earth a hundred yards away, and then they all immediately begin leaping excitedly and speculating wildly and nodding to each-other, as sure as little kids on Christmas morning, that “there’s a ‘squatch in these woods.”
At one point, Bobo commented to Seeber about the domestication of coyotes by the sasquatch. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t, like, raise them up as a pets,” he said (sic), with just a hint of that dissonant California-surfer tone. It’s moments such as these, while they did not convince me to believe in Bigfoot, absolutely convinced me to believe in Bobo.
After the team was scared away by the appearance of a military helicopter** overhead, they attempted to run down another lead; Amy, the exceedingly emotional woman who kept up a bout of horrified weeping while giving her testimony during the town hall meeting. This particular vignette only served my purposes because it confirmed the existence of a pattern. Prior to meeting with Amy, the team conducted a rather superfluous interview with David & Matt, the father and son duo who had had their car struck by a sasquatch-projectile. At the end of it, Cliff stated plainly, “I think it had to be Bigfoot you saw that day.” And the father and son nodded, “yes.” Similarly, after Amy’s emotional return to the scene of her sighting, Moneymaker and Cliff asked, “What is it you think you saw that day?” and Amy replied, “Bigfoot. It had to be.” I’m paraphrasing here, of course, but that’s the gist.
Again, the Finding Bigfoot team knows Bigfoot is out there. They’re not interested in dismissing any supposed accounts, and they certainly don’t have a judiciary mentality about their whole operation. They’re out there to confirm (or affirm) the suspicions of supposed eyewitnesses, and use these ‘squatch-sightings to build a case in their own defense. In other words, it doesn’t even matter if these people were coached via reality-TV falsification to explicate or even completely fabricate sightings. Because the goal here isn’t to convince viewers Bigfoot is real; viewers, like the team, must suspend their disbelief pro hac in order to operate on the same platitude as Moneymaker and his cohorts. You must believe in Bigfoot in order to find Bigfoot. A steadfast atheist cannot find God. Nor would they really have any reason to go to Church. Similarly, in the court of the ‘squatch, all monsters are extant until proven otherwise.
Even the distributors backing Finding Bigfoot acknowledge how preposterous it all is, albeit in an indirect, innocuous sort of way. Animal Planet calls the team “eccentric but passionate”, which in my book reads as “flipping bonkers, but in a really noble, entertaining, we-sure-can-package-this-and-sell-it-for-a-hefty-penny-to-paunched-daytime-TV-addicts” sort of way. Finding Bigfoot is the second-most popular show on the network***, and has drawn in enough fans to warrant six seasons. At this point, I’m convinced a significant percentage of that audience might be motivated by vices not dissimilar from my own: fascination, condescension, and judgmental pleasure. Admittedly, the show seems structured to cater to just such quasi-voyeuristic predilection. Finding Bigfoot revels in its own absurdity. It capitalizes on its ability to entice your average channel-flipper with a wholly ridiculous concoction, one just as irresistible to modish viewers as it is to those aforesaid daytime TV watchers who actually anticipate the eventuality of a Bigfoot sighting. It’s a win-win formula — reality television so beyond the pale, it reels in both the pretentious assholes (i.e. yours truly) who watch the damn show for sport, and the less punctilious among us who simply enjoy vegging out to a quality Ghost Hunters rip-off.
On the subject of trees falling in the woods, Cliff Barackman had this to say: “Once might be a coincidence, but twice? That’s no coincidence at all. That’s a sasquatch.” In weirdly call-and-response fashion, Bobo added, “Yeah, once, twice, three times, that’s a ‘squatch”, which, if you would notice, does not really square with what Cliff said at all. Nonetheless, the team seemed more than eager to attribute ‘squatchian significance to any and all deciduous detail. Hastily dug ditches, battered deer skulls, wildlife trails…it’s all admissible evidence, and all game-trails lead to Bigfoot. In the episode’s thrilling climax, the team sends out a request via hometown radio for volunteers to help them conduct a grid-search of Frozen Head woods. And the people turn out en masse to assist; this is the second incontrovertible bit of evidence pointing toward some psychosocial phenomenon happening here. Call it mob-rule, call it human curiosity, call it a natural affinity for the spotlight cultivated by sixty+ years of television and hyper-marketable programming, but the point is, Finding Bigfoot draws a crowd, both on-screen and on-couch. And the show seems strangely self-reflexive about its allure. Remember, Moneymaker founded the BFRO with the goal of recruitment — becoming a Bigfoot enthusiast does not require vaulting some exclusionary barrier. ‘Squatch culture, with Finding Bigfoot functioning as a de facto ambassador, operates just like a well-managed cult. It would rather welcome newcomers than deter them; unlike Ghost Hunters, who demand some level of commitment and expertise, Bigfoot connoisseurs need only accomplish one feat to become part of the club: believe in Bigfoot. Once you believe, you’re in. And here the show becomes a surely inadvertent, but nonetheless effective proof-of-concept for fictionalized reality.
“Atomic Bigfoot” concluded with the team conducting one last nighttime search. Shockingly, they found no visual evidence of any sasquatch in those woods. There were some quote-unquote close-calls, the merits of which I cannot really comment on, but I can attest to the unfettered fervor with which the team considered every rustling bush, falling branch, howling coyote and chilling breeze.
The quartet was certainly convinced that Bigfoot roamed those trees in eastern Tennessee: “They were here tonight, Frozen Head definitely has some ‘squatch” (Cliff). The language here struck me; more evidence of Finding Bigfoot’s commitment to dredging up evidence of a monster in which they all already believe, so much so that they’d rather discuss the feasibility of this monster living in certain areas, rather than living at all. Moneymaker wraps up the episode with a refreshingly accessible remark, saying, “We didn’t get the holy grail, which is some footage of those creatures”.
The profitability of this whole venture begs the question: Is Matt Moneymaker truly just a naive idealist with a very unfortunate last-name, or is the moniker more than coincidental? Could it be, possibly, that Moneymaker placed in viewers’ sights an overt clue to the truth behind Finding Bigfoot: “Yes, it’s obviously just one big gag/cash-grab, but you’re still ponying up the cash and I’m still raking it in.” And as much as I hate the vernacular here, there is a semi-meta mystery surrounding Finding Bigfoot. The answer lies in Moneymaker’s name, in the obtuse ridiculousness of the show’s premise, in the laughable special effects and the hilariously cartoonish eyewitnesses and in the tactfully buffoonish way Bobo pronounces “ ‘squatch”. Are Moneymaker and Co, Ping Pong Productions, and even Animal Planet all laughing at their viewership, comfortably replete with fortune and deceit? The sasquatch, this legendary monster, compares to a seaworthy vessel on Gilligan’s Island — not elusive, but reliably nonexistent, baited out in front of viewers during episode after episode across six long seasons. Not Bigfoot, but the search for Bigfoot, might just be the maguffin for scores of diurnal tube-boobs all still tuning in to watch what they believe to be some hilariously backwater entertainment perpetuated by some ostensible simpletons who, in fact, have been working the con this whole time.
Remember, it’s called Finding Bigfoot, as in, the Bigfoot exists, and it is up to us, the viewer, to sympathize with these eccentrics, all near-mythical oddities unto themselves, as they attempt to prove to the disbelieving world the impossible truth. Unless, of course (and I’m heading into some hecka’ pop-philosophical territory right here, so bear with me), the ever-coveted Bigfoot in question is not some mytho-sapien oddity, but instead the manipulative principle behind all absurd reality television, from the Kardashians to Ghost Hunters. The players jest and jive for attention, adopt bizarre personas, speak in strange tongues, and believe, with conviction, these ludicrous truths. And we call these patterns false, and we damn them to the annals of titivated low-art, not realizing the culprits behind nocturnal monster hunts and televised shore-excursions attune to the very antagonistic frequency which propels their content into the limelight. Finding Bigfoot and all its commensurate competition subsist as a Fool’s Errand, but a Foolproof one. Whether you buy into the spectacle, or simply dish out some unmitigated condescension, you’re still privy to that most distastefully hidden of pop-media secrets: once you’ve arrived at the circus, there is no moral high-ground. There is no critical perspective. Objective Analysis not allowed beyond this point; please check your temperament at the door. It doesn’t matter if you’re laughing at them, not with them. You’re still watching.
Maybe Matt Moneymaker really was just saddled with an unfortunate last name, and maybe the BFRO’s are truly passionate about their quest, and definitely Animal Planet and the Discovery execs didn’t put all this concentric meta-thought into show-running Finding Bigfoot. Indelibly, however, some ineffable human errancy lurks behind the inexplicable popularity of this show. I just can’t seem to sluice it out, and even more problematically, I can’t bring myself to care.
Even for the bewildered thesis-pundit furiously smashing keys under the influence of just-a-bit-too-much Tamaflu and against the infinite din of way-too-much-culture, the eccentric and the absurd proved interesting for long enough to spawn this bombastic treatise-thing. No, I didn’t buy it. But I did watch. At Episode’s End, any captive audience will still, unfailingly, pay the price of attention in exchange for the surreal, the odd, and the monstrous.
FN 1
*involving phallic deep-sea invertebrates and concupiscent psychedelic colors, the type you’d be more likely to see in a movie attempting to depict a fever-dream rather than in an actual fever-dream, but then again, maybe I just fever-dream in Technicolor. None of it was really raunchy though, before you get any disingenuous thoughts about my having a predilection for tentacles.
**We have one of those unabashedly suburban television providers that offers the semblance of agency by pre-packaging certain shows/films in this interdimensional “On Demand” section, so viewers can pretend they have more options beyond the antiquated “channel-surfing”, but it’s only through frequent updating of content and persistent removal of outdated programs that the company is able to keep up the appearance of variety, while still actually doing something economic and selfish and corporate.
***The plot thickens, as IMDB has listed only Seasons 1–2 and 5–7 of Finding Bigfoot. Those middle two seasons must have vanished into the cyber-ether. Even more suspiciously, TVGuide claims only six seasons of Finding Bigfoot currently exist, and according to their website, the latter two episodes of the final season have not even aired yet. And don’t even get me started on the Wikipedia entry for Finding Bigfoot; it’s slathered in inconsistency. And the About section of the Finding Bigfoot page on Animal Planet’s site offers little in the way of statistical data, instead opting for an embellished, pro se abstract detailing how and why an episode of Finding Bigfoot serves as a worthwhile way to spend forty-five minutes. And while mentioning something about “this season on Finding Bigfoot”, the content team at Animal Planet seems uninterested in specifying which season “this” season might be, and seems even more blase about quantifying any aspect of the show’s longevity. My preliminary research indicates that any substantive information on Finding Bigfoot seems just as elusive and mythic as the creature itself [herself? himself? Bigfoot never bothered to verbalize his/her/their preferred pronoun(s)].
****However, I do have a bit more journalistic integrity than that. Finding Bigfoot is produced, primarily, by Ping Pong Productions. I figured I’d relegate this particular nugget to an annotation because at this point I’m assuming nobody is going through the trouble of counting all the little asterisks and tracing them down to their co-conspirator, but don’t blame me, blame WordPress for not including a user-friendly superscript system.
*****You can’t make this stuff up.
******Fuck it, I’m just linking to the character bio page on Animal Planet’s site. If you’re in the mood to read the actual biographies of the men behind this madness instead of my tangential, sardonic paraphrasing, pop on over. I assure you, if you think you can guess as to how long, or with how much gusto, or under exactly what kind of hyperactive pretenses these men and this woman (yes, singular) have been conducting Bigfoot research, you’re likely underestimating. The operative term here, and rarely have I ever used it more worthily, is mind-boggling.
*****Just for PoR, this means Moneymaker has been hunting sasquatch (a term I’m convinced came about simply because no one could agree on the plural of “Bigfoot”), since my mother was a teenager, and has believed, without a doubt, that he has seen one of these creatures for the last twenty years. In other words, Matt Moneymaker has been deathly serious about Bigfoot-hunting since before I was born.
FN 2
*The episode is called “Atomic Bigfoot” because this restricted government site supposedly housed an atom-bomb construction facility during the 50’s. And while no one directly states this as being the case, you can’t help but wonder if the team believes that Bigfoot was created by an atomic experiment gone wrong, a la the Incredible Hulk.
**Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Animal Planet shelled out the budget for a helicopter to buzz the search-site, if only in an attempt to inject some narrative tension into these proceedings.
***It would be utterly disastrous if the BFRO team actually did obtain irrefutable evidence of a sasquatch, a la getting off Gilligan’s island. Except even worse, because not only would Animal Planet lose a show, but Finding Bigfoot^ would earn a hitherto unattainable reputability that would likely propel such content beyond the feasible reach of small-time networks like Animal Planet. And considering Animal Planet airs little else besides monster-hunting shows and Too Cute, the pivotal discovery of a yeti-thing would utterly tank the network. Moreover, Animal Planet is owned by Discovery, and provides a substantial revenue stream to that withering conglomerate. The loss of Animal Planet could severely damage Discovery, perhaps even forcing them to, heaven forbid, publish factually accurate content. And considering no self-respecting company would punt total destruction on the stilts of one program, you have to assume Animal Planet and Discovery looked carefully at the risk vs. reward spectrum for Finding Bigfoot. And maybe it’s no coincidence the proposed end-result of the show seems so utterly improbable. It’s a gravy-train with an infinite fuel supply — the perpetual motion machine of low-budget reality TV. Heck, if they find ghosts on Ghost Hunters, it doesn’t mean the show’s over, it just means they need to start looking somewhere else to keep it interesting. But actually finding Bigfoot? That’s a much bigger can of worms.
