Blackfish Film Analysis

I chose to watch the documentary Blackfish (2013) directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. I watched this documentary because I heard it was very powerful and moving, and documentaries are not something I would usually watch. This documentary met my expectations very well, giving me a powerful and strong opinion on this topic. It persuaded me into wanting to spread the word and wanting to bring about change. I was very surprised by the large amount of pathos used by Cowperthwaite in this documentary. She used the passion and emotion to encourage viewers to connect with the attack and feel sympathy for both the whales and the whale trainers. Cowperthwaite included a scene where the mother whale was crying and calling for her baby when it was being taken away from her. The amount of

But for what it is, it is a film that helps raise awareness of what goes on behind the scenes. SeaWorld is not as fascinating as it seems. Blackfish is a film that strips away the image of fun from these parks, and shows the bitter reality of what goes on behind the fun commercials. Blackfish is a film that sheds light not only on the brutal mental and physical abuse that some of these whales go through when put into a compact area with other whales they are not familiar with, but also the horrendously deceptive, irresponsible, and dehumanizing way in which SeaWorld treats its trainers, the people who the public are supposed to trust to know exactly how to handle themselves in the event of an incident. The fact that the film conveys this to the viewer shows success. Something that led to a lack of success was only showing one side (their side) of the argument. The film's tagline is, "Never capture what you can't control." In essence, the film puts on notice a major corporation who makes its money by turning animals into performers and questions the validity of such practice with little regard to these