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Unless you follow the bigfoot research community and its attendant blogosphere satellites, you may have missed the brouhaha over a new theory (I use the term very lightly here) concerning the famous Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot video (the bigfoot video). The theory, to put it bluntly, suggests that a bigfoot massacre took place in Bluff Creek during the trip in which the famous footage was shot (pun!).
What evidence for this theory is there? Exactly none. But it hasn't stopped the in-fighting that has, to lend the tussle some dramatic flare, shaken the community to its core. Well, if not that, then at least ripped at certain factions within the bigfoot community (the people not the cryptids... in case you weren't sure).
As someone who has purely participated passively in the community- I read the literature and theories though I am not, strictly speaking, a believer- I have found the hunt for the hairy humanoid to be a fascinating subject. However, this time, things have gotten too far. It's time for the community to do the difficult thing. Difficult, but the right thing: retire the Patterson-Gimlin film.
The relationship has turned sour, incestuous, Oedipal even. The film has done what it can. It's time to send it out to pasture. It's subject, called "Patty" to give it Care-Bear sweetness, cannot be proven beyond doubt to be genuine. Given that, there is no point to continually poring over every grainy shot, looking for some magic detail that will somehow force bigfoot acceptance into existence. No bulge, no suggestive shadow, no distinctive walk will ever, ever do it. To spend time now, after forty years, is to waste it. The battle is out there, in the deep woods, in the mist-laden mountains, in the field. Not at a computer station playing with virtual knobs and dials to squeeze things that may be or create things that never were from something that has nothing more to tell. The film is spent, let it go.
No film is ever going to convince science. Deep inside, everyone knows that. They must know that. Science demands remains: a body or, at the very least, bits of a body enough to verify identity beyond doubt. This is what makes the massacre idea so loony. If Patterson, Gimlin, or the shooter on the grassy knoll, had multiple bodies to bring home, they would have done it in a heartbeat. We may be squeemish now but, back then, that was an acceptable result. But instead we are to believe that they buried the bodies and hitched their wagons to the star of a grainy, inconclusive video when irrefutable proof was underneath their feet? C'mon now.
The underlying problem is that the bigfoot community has no self-government. There is no procedure of peer-review, controlled theoretical publications, or codes of conduct. For every scientist or genuine enthusiast, there's a business man, a huckster, and a conman. As long as the community is riven into competing motley gangs, as long as there is no control, no organization, there will be more massacres. Only it's not the beast being driven into the ground, it's the search, it's the community, it's the reputation of the cause. If this is the fruit of the Patterson-Gimlin film, it's time to say goodbye, and walk away.
