Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite. 83 min. Rated PG-13. Documentary.
Former Sea World trainers describe how the institution has captured, trained and treated killer whales, in a manner that has gradually forced them into psychosis, and lead to several horrible trainer injuries and deaths throughout its 40-year history, while the institution keeps the fatalities in shadows and runs the business unscathed. This is not some kind of propaganda against Sea World; rather, it makes you think why humans continue to manipulate forces which consequences they cannot even fathom. This documentary will make you re-think your next trip to the zoo. It's one those rare films you owe yourself to watch.
Mo says:
MoMagic!
I found this film to be extremely depressing but I am glad I watched it. I have long felt that keeping these incredible animals in captivity was wrong, surely this documentary will spell the end for Sea World. I hope so but the pursuit of $$$ will mean it's owners will fight to keep it going. I don't believe I will ever visit another zoo as long as I live. There is a massive but misplaced pride in Scotland's Edinburgh Zoo and it's main attraction, two pandas. People talk about how cute and adorable they are but I feel it is still wrong to keep them in a cage to be gawped at by hordes of mindless tourists.
ReplyDeleteBlackfish will be shown on UK TV later this week, I hope enough people watch it to make some kind of difference but I doubt it.
Toast,
DeleteA few weeks ago for the first time I took our 2 year old to the zoo, being a milestone event of a kid's life and all. We were watching a chimpanzee who was quietly gazing at us from behind the cage window. We first thought this was amazing, but then it suddenly hit me: with those depressed eyes of his, the chimp was saying: "You bastards. You're keeping me in here forever, just for your own entertainment. You bastards." After that moment, and watching "Blackfish", I'm seriously thinking, maybe we should stop going to such places - zoos, circuses, Sea World. It's just wrong.
I totally agree with you, I went to a wildlife reserve in South Africa in 2002 and it was wonderful although a little scary when our car was surrounded by elephants. A few days later we visited a lion park and it was very depressing, a few moth eaten lions just lying there waiting to be fed. I loved many things about SA but the racism and lion park left me cold.
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