Gabriela Cowperthwaite, “Blackfish” (2013)
It’s as much advocacy journalism as documentary and makes no apologies for aiming at the heart as much as the brain: “Blackfish” is a heart-rending account of an incident at the Sea World marine park in Orlando in 2010 in which an orca named Tilikum drowned trainer Dawn Brancheau after a performance and the context of that incident. The historical context stretches as far back as the 1970s when boats used to go out to Vancouver and then Iceland to capture young orcas for Seaworld marine parks. The documentary covers Sea World’s treatment and care for its captive orcas and the hiring of the people who perform with the animals and are responsible for their training. As an advocate for the release of orcas from captivity and to return them to the wild or in marine nursing-homes where they might enjoy some semblance of a natural life, and for allowing the animals to live free from harassment in safe environments, “Blackfish” is second to none.
Through interviews with former Sea World orca trainers, whale researchers and a man who used to capture orcas for Sea World, viewers are exposed to the Sea World view of both orcas, other captive marine mammals and trainers: both animals and Sea World employees are expected to bring in audiences and revenue and to churn out profits for the company. The animals receive the minimum care, food and shelter the company deigns to give them and the employees receive training in feeding and caring for the animals, and in performing with them. Although the film is very strong on describing how the animals are abused and exploited as circus performers, it is less effective in demonstrating how the trainers themselves are also exploited for their sympathy for the creatures’ well-being. The trainers come to love the animals as extensions of their own families and Sea World capitalises on and exploits this concern.
The film dwells at length on Tilikum’s previous history of injuring and killing a Sea World trainer at Sea World Pacific in Vancouver and how this was kept secret from the trainers at Sea World in Orlando when he was transferred there. The trainers had to find out themselves about his history and his interactions with his Vancouver trainers. There is also some information about the trial held over Brancheau’s death, during which representatives of Sea World obfuscated the court on circumstances surrounding the trainer’s drowning and how information about Tilikum’s behaviour was withheld from the Orlando marine park employees.
If the film appears very one-sided, that’s mainly because Sea World itself refused requests for interviews from Cowperthwaite and her team. Viewers learn very little about Sea World’s history, how the company was founded and what its aims were originally. It will astonish most people to learn that the company was originally owned by Anheuser-Busch, a brewery company, for nearly 50 years before it was sold to the Blackstone Group LP, a financial management company specialising in investment funds and financial advisory services. If Sea World’s aims had included giving people a greater understanding of cetacean and other marine mammal behaviour and life, this understanding seems not to have made much impression on Sea World’s management and owners: the trainers themselves often have considerable knowledge about orcas but they acquire this through their own efforts and by sharing information among themselves (though not with other Sea World trainers outside their own parks – they aren’t allowed to do so) and they readily admit that they were drawn to working with orcas through having visited Sea World in the past as children. One trainer says that she thought trainers needed advanced degrees to apply to work with orcas but discovers that the only qualifications needed are personality and the ability to swim! Other trainers refer in oblique ways to the culture of conformity at the company and the way in which Sea World takes advantage of trainers’ youth, naivety, energy and eagerness to work with and care for orcas, to treat the trainers in appalling ways.
As an example of directly demonstrating the way in which corporations chew up and spit out their employees and assets – be they humans, orcas and other sea mammals – alike as money-making machines for profit, “Blackfish” has little competition: it’s a highly impassioned and very moving documentary that held me spellbound all the way through. Scenes in which mother orcas grieve for the loss of their young are highly emotional.
As to why Sea World should have invested so much in keeping and training orcas for entertainment when the company could have used dolphins, one surmises that it’s the orca’s large size and reputation as top-order predator of the seas – orcas are known also as killer whales and sea wolves – as much as its playfulness, intelligence and distinctive looks that attracted Sea World to capturing them. There might also be a sinister motive: that the capture and use of orcas to provide entertainment and the promotion of an image of orcas as cute animals mask that age-old Christian desire to control the natural world and force it into the service of human greed.