"BLACKFISH" A DAMNING DOCUMENTARY

By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com

 

We all stand a little taller, breath a little easier, knowing America’s zoos are caring for their animals in the most humanely possible fashion. But apparently this isn’t happening at aquatic parks such as Seaworld.

“Blackfish” is a damning documentary now playing at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd.

Director and co-writer Gabriela Cowperthwaite centers her research on a massive orca named Tillicum, who has killed three trainers over 30 years. Also known as killer whales (but not for killing people), these beautiful animals confined in small corrals unless they are performing in the famous Seaworld shows.

In the wild, orcas can 100 miles in a single day, we are told. But in captivity they can’t swim at all. One specialist interviewed in the film compared the orca’s life to you spending your entire life in a bathtub.

The sad life of Tilikum is recounted, while showing footage of the way young orcas are separated from their families by whale hunters, then sold to various aquarium shows around the world.

Another scientist talks about orca language and has determined that these whales have languages that are specific to certain regions. So when these young whales are captured and tossed into sea shows at random, they can’t talk with each other. This is very upsetting to the socially structured whales, as it would be to humans.

As Alan Scherstuhl wrote in the Village Voice, the documentary is revealing, wrenching and…a reminder that what feels wrong in our gut—the effort to turn free-roaming and unknowable beasts into caged vaudevillians—is always worth investigating.”

Another reviewer called the doc “as thorough a take-down of a business and its practices as you're likely to ever see.”

For those sensitive to the feelings of defenseless animals, watching “Blackfish” can be painful as well. If you remember “The Cove” and its brutal footage of the mass killing of dolphins,

“Blackfish” is equally as damning of the practice of capturing and training orcas. The aquarium shows are  even more to blame because the whales are used strictly for entertainment much like the dancing bears of centuries past.

Of course the film only shows one side of the story – assuming there is some good to be explained on the other side – but notes several times that executives of the international Seaworld corporation refused to be interviewed for Cowperthwaite’s documentary.