There was a SeaWorld commercial on TV today and after having recently watched Blackfish I couldn't help but to feel a wave of emotions as the screen flashed with images of the different exhibits. Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the director of the film, felt motivated to make this documentary after hearing about the unclear death of one of the trainers that involved the killer whale Tilikum. The documentary compiles the life story of Tilikum beginning with his abduction from the wild and all the way through his attack of the trainer and his life that followed. The presentation of Tilikum including strongly suggested material that points towards his involvement in other trainer deaths is directed towards making the audience aware that SeaWorld is providing an environment that is unfit for these animals to live, and suggest that the captivity leads to mental illness. The team behind this documentary had people who feel compassion towards animals as a general audience in mind, for if someone doesn't care enough about the animals than there would be no way to make the impact that Tilikum's story has on those who are willing to listen to the story of this Orca whale.
The common expression "you have to see it to believe it" applies perfectly with a strategy that was applied throughout the film. The whole issue id that whenever an incident happens that results in trainer injury SeaWorld shifts the blame to human error, rather than a whale attacking its own trainer. The documentary combated the accusations that the only attacks that happen are because of human error with footage from actual attacks. The documentary team could have had people on to interview talking about the attacks for hours, but it would never be as effective as showing the real life footage. In the one piece of footage that stood out to me, a male trainer was in the water preforming a rehearsed routine when one of the whales sprang out of the water and collapsed onto him. watching the video myself there was no question that the whale had jumped on that angle on purpose, which meant that the whale intentionally tried to hurt the trainer. It is hard to even describe why I'm so certain that it was an intentional jump for the actual video feed just provides the viewer to be able to use their own analysis skill to understand what is happening in the situation. The video footage allowed for the documentary crew to have evidence that SeaWorld could not deny, it left it up to the viewer to interpret what was going on in the video.
The sources that a documentary chooses to rely on are essential towards making their points valid. In Blackfish the main people who were being interviewed were previous trainers are SeaWorld. Instead of having a man in a white lab coat spewing out statistics about Seaworld the use of actual relatable people made the whole documentary more emotionally appealing. Everyone that was interviewed was so personally connected to the situations, there were even interviews with the trainer who specifically was Tilikum's trainer, which resulted in the audience feeling like they really had an inside view of how SeaWorld was being run. Some of the trainers that were interviewed actually knew the trainer who was killed by Tilikum, Dawn Branchea. All of those interviewed told the same story that she was the most professional one there who always cares about safety and protocols and the very notion that she made such a silly, fatal mistake is disrespectful to her memory. Hearing the accounts from people with first hand knowledge added to the emotional impact of the documentary as well as raise the credibility of the film.
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