Something about the gentle Wood Ape speaks to our deepest anxieties about the society we live in.
I want to believe. A lot of people want to believe. They want to believe in magic or ghosts or God, but they don’t. Not really. I was raised, albeit half heartedly, to believe in God. I was always suspicious, though. Everybody had their own ideas about who or what God was, and what exactly God wanted, but somehow neither the promise of salvation or the threat of damnation ever made me want to believe.
Something about being told to have faith always rankled me. As if somehow, like Tinkerbell, the mere fact of my faith would make God real. Almost as if I had a choice in whether or not an omniscient and all powerful deity’s master plan would dictate the course of my life.
As I grew up I was told to have faith in other things. I read my first chapter book in first grade, a children’s biography of George Washington. I was expected to believe in the American Religion.
And until my late adolescence I did, but it still felt like more of a burden than a blessing. Like all of the other beliefs I was encouraged to hold, it felt like an obligation. An onerous one at that. Another belief that demanded my fealty, my time, my passion, but promised only that my faith might, maybe, mark me as a righteous person amongst fellow believers.
I’ve been pressured to believe in things all my life, but there aren’t many I’ve wanted to believe in.
I want to believe in Bigfoot.
In fact, I feel genuine discomfort admitting my own skepticism in Bigfoot’s existence. Not from fear of social ostracisation like so many skeptics of religion or patriotism. Those are sanctions reserved for the cranks and conspiracists who do believe in the gentle wood ape. In my and most other’s social life, not believing in Bigfoot is the expected position. Nonetheless, I wish I believed. I want Bigfoot to be real.
And I’m not the only one.
There are hundreds if not thousands of websites and forums dedicated to discussing and debating Bigfoot. There’s plenty of technical discussion about Bigfoot’s anatomy or evidence for or against his existence, and there are some common explanations for why so many keep searching.
Bigfoot Forums User
“Bigfoot is a relaxing pleasure I can secretly indulge in….”
A fascination with the unknown, and a fervent wish for mystery to exist in the world is the most cited. Which makes sense, after all, that’s one of the guiding lights of all cryptozoology and often a component of similar paranormal topics often grouped together with Bigfoot. People go searching for ghosts and the Mothman and chupacabras too don’t they?
Bigfoot forums poster
“For me, very little in the natural world represents fear or death, but rather mystery, the unknown, and even acceptance… belonging to the planet in such an intimate way that just as it gave us life, it can take life away. In this regard, I view Bigfoot much as I’d view a tiger or even a storm, rather than as a killer or a menace”
But, what is it about Bigfoot that’s elevated the big lunk from a bit of niche folklore to such a prominent place in our culture? One IMDB list (created 2 years ago, and apparently still regularly updated) has 245 Bigfoot centric movies and TV shows while the largest number of Santa Claus movies on any list I can find only stands at 95. A google search for Bigfoot returns 48,000,000 results. The Loch Ness Monster? A measly 12,000,000. I imagine you’d be hard pressed to meet an American who isn’t familiar with at least the idea of Bigfoot.
Hopefully not horny Bigfoot forums poster
“I dream about them really often. Nothing scary or really dramatic has happened. Usually we’re hanging out in the woods or fallowing trails together.”
I know why I want to believe, and browsing various Bigfoot websites and forums I think I’ve hit upon what sets him apart. We can relate to him. We can relate to him in a way we could never relate to Nessie or faeries. More than that, he represents something we wish we had.
Bigfoot is a lot like us. Bigfoot’s supposed to very intelligent. Bigfoot might even speak French. But, Bigfoot doesn’t have a job. He doesn’t pay rent. Bigfoot doesn’t care about the latest phone or streaming services, and he almost certainly doesn’t have a car. Bigfoot doesn’t drill for oil. He doesn’t pollute the water. He lives at one with nature because he is a part of nature. He is peaceful and friendly. Bigfoot has never fought a war. Bigfoot has never committed a genocide.
Binnall of America blog post, 2011
“If the Bigfoot is like us, then given time he/she will step out into the sun to reclaim what is theirs. To become the sole benefactors of a planet finally rid of the one thing that was stopping them from living in the light in the first place: Those damn dirty humans.”
Bigfoot is the answer to the question: “What if humanity hadn’t fucked it all up?”. An idealized, alternate, evolutionary past. A genetic sibling to humanity that suggests there was a better way, and we’re worse off for not taking it. Many who love the idea of Bigfoot, including myself, project our own alienation and anxiety onto his idealized fur coated form. The elusive man-ape retreating further into the woods, fleeing the ever increasing madness of the modern world.
Bigfoot has it all. He lives a life shorn of complication, and the more complex our own become the more urgent the search for a creature that is wild and free.
“After extinction, if a skeleton or fossil is found, they can simply deny any prior knowledge of it. Those that think that the government is incapable of such cold calculation, need only look at the policies of Manifest Destiny to remove NA from their lands, and more recently the Japanese internment during World War II, where US citizens were rounded up and sent to internment camps.”
Bigfoot forums user Arvedis
The great irony, of course, is that climate change and environmental catastrophe is slowly foreclosing on many people’s hope of finding Bigfoot. A mythical symbol of what humanity could have been going extinct due to man’s folly.
A metaphor that would be funny, if it weren’t so tragic.
Jean Krill is is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His writing navigates the many disparate visions of a radically better future.