Student Comment

A student who isn't able to take the class due to a scheduling conflict sends in this very interesting commentary on "Reality Check":

I thought it was very interesting the way the relationship between the subjects of the two stories and the documenter, respectively, were portrayed.  In the first one, it was a story of youthful mishap, a desperate act on the part of a child in a situation of quite understandable need, and lastly,and most importantly, a piece of schoolhouse cannon.  It's almost like an urban legend: the kid who peed on the schoolbus, wow, she got hell for it for years after that. Look, that's her locker where they used to write "peezilla", that's her desk where they left her yellow crayons.  By relating the story, the subject confided in the documenter, putting them on the same page, so to speak - aligned.  It's a moment of shared nostalgia.

On the other hand, the story of the rancher and his pet bull evokes what is perhaps now a dying piece of nostalgia: the Lone Ranger and his horse, Dudly Doright and HIS horse (we'll forget for now that he's Canadian; the cartoon was American, after all).  A cowboy, alone in the big, wide open prairie, nothing but him and his animals standing against the enormity of nature.  One absolutely essential piece of this image is the relationship between the animal and the man.  This is a staple of the American dream, the quintessential all-American man, a man's man, and other cliches as well.  Now, this may not just be the work of the documenter.  This man may really be a picture-perfect example of this iconic figure.  That's not really the issue.  What I find interesting is how the documenter (his name is Glass, right?) interacts with this living, breathing icon.  Firstly, he questions the relationship.  I don't remember the words exactly, but he asks the wife something about how this animal could show the same affection as a cat or dog, how could it be a pet in the same way?  Then, once the couple has asserted the relationship enough, it is not an issue of whether the relationship exists, but whether it can be brought back through Chance's clone: how could it be the same, doesn't it make you miss him more, etc.

Then - and I remember this phrase clearly - after the man is attacked by the bull, Glass comments that "it seems like Second Chance was doing everything in his power to tell him, in the only way he could, that he wasn't Chance".  This, I feel, is the strongest evocation of the Lone Ranger, romanticisation of the animal in the entire story.  Now, not only is there a distinct relationship between this man and his bull, but the bull actively communicates his own feelings. He's no longer part of the icon, but his own icon in himself.

Now, I know that many studies have been done on animal communication, and I know that it is all but proven that many animals communicate very clearly needs, wants, fear, etc.  But the attribution of such a complex emotional response to an animal attacking it's owner, especially by a documenter, is pretty exceptional in my book.  Second Chance was feeling violated that his owner still thought of him as Chance, that his owner wasn't loving Second Chance for himself - this, I feel, draws upon and expands the iconic legend of the Lone Stranger, drawing it into a far more complex and developed story than it is, and in my opinion, manipulating it terribly.

So, while the documenter is constantly questioning the man about his blind faith in Second Chance, he's also strongly playing into what he's portraying as this man's near-delusion that he can bring back his beloved bull.  It's sly, but honestly, I think it's a little cheap.