First a shrine, now the hollywood gaze for Emory grad

Lots of themes from our last discussion struck me as I read the Sunday NY Times' review of Sean Penn's new film, Into the Wild. Based on the John Krakauer book by the same title, the movie tells the story of Christopher McCandless, the Emory graduate who set off to prove himself in the wilds of Alaska, only to wind up dead. You can click to read the article or watch the trailer, but I've pasted a couple of sections I find particularly relevant to our course.

There is some debate as to how McCandless died, but the place itself now stands as a memorial to Krakauer's version, and now that memory is set to be further "authenticated" on the big screen:

Jon Krakauer, in his best-selling book about Mr. McCandless, “Into the Wild,” argues that he had sufficient skills to survive but might have inadvertently poisoned himself by eating the seeds of the wild potato plant. Mr. Krakauer’s book also suggests that, far from being deranged, Mr. McCandless was a hero in the tradition of Jack London and Thoreau: a solitary quester, an explorer of his own interior landscape, in search of a more authentic relation to the natural world.

The Krakauer view has prevailed among a small band of pilgrims who over the years have visited the bus and made it an informal shrine, keeping everything there much as Mr. McCandless left it and adding their own written tributes. The place, 22 miles from the nearest road, is apt to become a full-fledged tourist attraction after the opening next week of “Into the Wild,” a deeply affecting movie version of the Krakauer book, with cinematography so beautiful it makes the Alaskan landscape seem seductively otherworldy.

In the piece, Penn goes to great lengths to show he's telling the true story of what happened to McCandless:

Wherever possible, to add authenticity, he included real people in his scenes. The naked hippies cavorting near the Slabs are genuine naked hippies.

Just so viewers know what to "anticipate" when they gaze at the film itself, the reviewer situates this story in the tradition of Kerouac, Steinbeck, London, and Thoreau. I wonder how these literary "images" shape what we see of McCandless, and just as much how films like this shape what we (and our students) see in Kerouac, Steinbeck, London, and Thoreau. Penn first wanted to cast Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead. Who better to portray the manly quest for an "authentic relation to the natural world," right?