Blackfish Film Analysis

The documentary Blackfish (Cowperthwaite, 2013) focuses on the captivity of Tilikum, an orca involved in the deaths of four people, and the consequences of keeping large mammals, such as orcas in captivity. The director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite has written and produced a variety of documentary films with blackfish being one of the highest grossing documentaries of all time. She has directed, written and produced for ESPN, National Geographic, Animal Planet, Discovery, and History Channel. Cowperthwaite’s documentary Blackfish is made to view SeaWorld in a negative light regarding their views and actions regarding captive orcas, the film creates a consistent shock across the viewer’s eyes and shows them that organizations such as SeaWorld should …show more content…
The first and most important goal is to expose the wrong doings of SeaWorld, and the second part is to make you fall in love with the orca and the wild. Through the interviews of several people involved in the captures, training, and selling processes of the orcas gives us as the viewers a connection with the animals, and a reason to fight for their freedom. The trainers’ interviewed express their deep love and connection for the ocras, and how their bonds developed with the whales over the course of their time together. Tilikum was known to have an attitude and the deaths he caused were all brushed off as a “trainer error” and the people interviewed strongly disagreed with this statement. Dawn, one of the higher skilled trainers at SeaWorld lost her life when Tilikum pulled her under. SeaWorld put out into the press that it was her fault and that the whale did nothing wrong. The trainers interviewed for the movie were very shocked and upset by this. The relationships developed between trainer and orca is based on food. The orcas are starved and fed during shows so doing and learning the tricks is based on their need for food not their love or connection. However, there does have to be some sort of connection, knowledge and consistency between the animal and trainer but it is a very small part of the big …show more content…
However, among captive whales the average life expectancy matches the mean life expectancy of wild orcas which is thirty to fourty years of age. To date the oldest male to live in captivity was only thirty-five years old. Only a handful of both sexes have reached thirty, and many of the orcas in captivity only live a short fifteen to twenty years. There have been two-hundred orcas in captivity around the world, given their life expectancies a third of them should still be alive today, however only 20% of them are.

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