ABSTRACT
The links between adventure and masculinity are approached in this chapter through an analysis of, on the one hand, the figure of the American astronaut and, on the other, the figure of the lone lover of nature. The former is the subject of British filmmaker David Sington, the director of In the Shadow of the Moon (2016), a documentary in which the ageing men who once walked on our satellite reminiscence about the loss of the space exploration dream. In the latter, renowned German director Werner Herzog presents in Grizzly Man (2016) a critical portrait of a very different American man, Timothy Treadwell, a recovering alcoholic and amateur naturalist who died attacked by one of the Alaskan bears he loved. Whereas Sington celebrates the Moon landings as a romantic adventure, despite the sexism that excluded women astronauts from it, Herzog attacks Treadwell's misguided romanticism, blaming the victim for his foolish approach to dangerous nature and for indirectly causing the death of the girlfriend who died with him. She becomes, in fact, the hero that Herzog vindicates as he destroys Tredwell's reputation as an adventurer.
