{"id":12394,"date":"2014-01-19T20:53:26","date_gmt":"2014-01-19T10:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=12394"},"modified":"2014-05-03T19:07:14","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T09:07:14","slug":"blackfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=12394","title":{"rendered":"Blackfish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Killer whales are like eggs.\u00a0 Over the years I can remember experts switching back and forth in determining whether eggs are good for you.\u00a0 Yes they are.\u00a0 No they aren’t.\u00a0 Yolks are good.\u00a0 Stick to the whites.<\/p>\n

Up until the late 20th Century, killer whales have had a notorious reputation with mankind and have been feared as hostile and dangerous creatures.\u00a0 Hence the name, right?<\/p>\n

In the last forty years however, we have gradually been educated to accept killer whales, or orcas as they are more commonly now known, as friendly and intelligent creatures who can interact safely with humans.\u00a0 A driving force for the more favourable reputations of orcas in America has been Seaworld and other similar theme parks who have used orcas as special attractions.\u00a0 In Blackfish, we learn that orca attractions are so popular in the country that they are now a part of a billion dollar industry.<\/p>\n

There is a dark underbelly to the treatment of orcas in captivity according to Blackfish <\/em>director Gabriela Cowperthwaite.\u00a0 If her and her crew are to be believed, the cramped unnatural conditions in which orcas are kept and the rigorous performance schedule has a seriously adverse affect on the mental well being of these creatures.\u00a0 Tilikum, one of the star attractions at SeaWorld, was in the news three years ago for drowning experienced trainer Dawn Brancheau.\u00a0 SeaWorld officially declared the incident to be a ‘trainer accident’.\u00a0 Cowperthwaite claims that not only did Tilikum purposefully kill Brancheau, but the orca has killed two other trainers over a span of three decades.<\/p>\n

\"blackfish2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The film explores the relationship between several former SeaWorld trainers and their orcas.\u00a0 There is undeniably a love and affection for the creatures from the trainers, but Blackfish<\/em> suggests this may merely be a relationship of convenience for the orcas who of course rely on the trainers for food.\u00a0 In researching orca\/trainer incidents at amusement parks, Cowperthwaite uncovers that there are as many as seventy<\/em> records acts of aggression by orcas towards their trainers.\u00a0 She stresses that by comparison, there is not a single recorded act of aggression by orcas towards humans in the wild.\u00a0 The aggression in the theme parks, she argues, is borne out of the deep depression and mental anguish felt by the orcas in captivity.<\/p>\n

Naturally, SeaWorld aggressively denies the viewpoint put forward by Cowperthwaite and in their favour, one of the trainers interviewed in the documentary has since gone on to claim that her views were misrepresented<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What became clear to me however was that regardless of whether you accept that the orcas are depressed, emotional time bombs waiting to lash out, there seems to be a clear wish on the part of SeaWorld to obfuscate any inquiry into the safety and well being of both the orcas and trainers and that it ultimately required an interjection from an Occupational Health and Safety authority to improve the conditions at the theme parks.\u00a0 It’s hard to argue that due to the size of these animals, they are being kept in enclosures that are drastically small and inhibiting compared to their natural habitat.\u00a0 The very notion of performing animals that are used multiple times a day, every day, for years and even decades is cruel and unacceptable treatment.<\/p>\n

Did Cowperthwaite have an agenda with this film?\u00a0 Of course she did.\u00a0 Does she state her case effectively?\u00a0 That’s up to you.\u00a0 She certainly made a believer out of me.\u00a0 I left the film thinking that the idea of performing orcas was outdated and inhumane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Free Tilly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1751,1752],"class_list":["post-12394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-blackfish","tag-seaworld"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12394"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14087,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12394\/revisions\/14087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}