Revisiting “The Revenant” Through The Lens of “Man or Bear?”

Image Credit: Zdeněk Macháček

Content Note: Sexual Assault, Intimate Partner Violence.

Nearly ten years after watching the film, I can only remember two scenes from The Revenant. One of the scenes shows a white man raping an indigenous woman in the woods, and the other scene — also in the woods — shows a female grizzly with cubs carrying out a defensive attack against the film’s protagonist.

Premiering almost a decade before the internet’s “Man or Bear?” trend, I can’t help feeling like The Revenant presents both the question “Man or Bear?” and the answer: neither, ideally.

If you’re unfamiliar, “Man or Bear?” was a 2024 TikTok trend in which women answered the question: “Would you rather find yourself alone in the woods with a random man or a bear?” Many women chose bear, and many men reacted with anger, disbelief, annoyance, or all three.

The more I learn about bear attacks, the more I don’t want to find myself alone in the woods with a bear. Cats may have developed a reputation for playing with their food, but it turns out death by big cat might be quicker than death by bear. Some large cats kill with one bite — severing their prey’s spinal cord, crushing their windpipe, or ripping out their throat — before really digging into their meat. Death by bear, however, can be excruciatingly slow. Rather than killing large prey before consuming them, bears tend to incapacitate their prey before casually eating them alive.

Brown bears are beautiful, magnificent animals who, statistically speaking, don’t often prey on humans. Black bears also rarely prey on humans, and they can be so easily frightened that house cats have scared them out of yards. Even when bears mount a defensive attack on humans or charge at us, it often takes very little to deter them. Bear spray, lots of noise, and hiking in groups is usually enough to convince a well-nourished, non-habituated bear who hasn’t been food-conditioned to ramble on.

Men, on the other hand, are known to prey on women with a statistical frequency that neither brown nor black bears come close to matching. Globally, when women are murdered, approximately 38 percent of those murders are committed by intimate partners. Research suggests nearly one in three women worldwide have experienced sexual and/or physical intimate partner violence, and the majority of intimate partner violence is perpetrated by men against women. When almost one-third of women have experienced violence at the hands of men they presumably loved and trusted, why would any woman take her chances with a random man in the woods?

Further, men aren’t as easily deterred as bears. Men who prey — or want to prey — on women know they live in a society that blames, gaslights, and punishes victims while predators often face little or no consequences, especially if they’re wealthy and well-connected. In most cases, being educated about bear safety should be enough to protect women from bears; but I can attest that all the education in the world won’t necessarily protect women from men. When you’re a woman, perhaps especially a woman who has been preyed on by men before, it makes total sense that men can be just as frightening as bears, if not more so. Many women will go their whole lives without interacting with bears, much less aggressive bears; but when it comes to men, most women know it’s unwise to underestimate what they’re capable of — and we learn this early in life, either through education or personal experience. Sometimes both.

Recently, I rewatched The Revenant scenes I mentioned earlier. As a survivor of sexual violence, I was unsurprised when the rape was harder for me to watch than the bear attack; but as someone who’s thankfully never experienced a bear attack, I didn’t expect to see myself in both scenarios: I’ve been the quietly weeping woman, tearfully waiting for the man behind her to stop; I’ve also been the smaller animal violently subdued by the bigger animal, holding my breath, too terrified to move. I suppose that’s why I instinctively hold my breath when I pass a random man on the trail; I suppose that’s why I always carry a knife in the woods, whether I’m hiking in bear country or not.

The IMDB Parent’s Guide to The Revenant categorizes the rape of the indigenous woman as “Mild” and slots the scene under the guide’s “Sex and Nudity” section. The scene is described as: “ … easy to look away for.” Conversely, the computer generated bear attack on Hugh Glass is described as: “ … extremely intense, graphic, and painful to watch.” I find the juxtaposition an interesting, upsetting microcosm of the culture we find ourselves living in almost a decade after the movie’s release: a culture in which so many men can’t fathom why so many women would choose bear.

I’ve hiked alone in the woods more times than I can count, often crossing paths with men who smile, nod, and keep walking without bothering me at all. I’ve hiked alone in bear country, on trails with bear warnings posted, and I’ve always been okay. Still, when it comes to the “Man or Bear?” dilemma, my answer will probably always be: neither, ideally.