The days of Free Willy and Sea World will never be the same. Blackfish represents a strong indictment against the use of whales for human entertainment, particularly focusing on Sea World’s many questionable ethics in their whale business dealings. This movie is so damaging to Sea World that they refused to even comment at all in this film, which some see as evidence that they are complicit in the animal wrongdoings.
Blackfish’s narrative essentially covers the capture and confinement of Tilikum, a male killer whale. The footage ranges from his capture, to his various stops at different theme parks as well as his use as a breeder. During the story, various former trainers of whales/seals speak about the day-to-day operations and the goings on behind the scenes when working with the animals and with Sea World. It is amazing to see how many people who interacted with these animals close up agreed to work on this film. The range is wide: from the man who actually captured whales to former trainers. Everyone seemed bought into the narrative given to them by SeaWorld. The setup by Blackfish establishes how enthusiastic these people were in their professions (including the whaler); this setup is crucial to show how deliberate their choice is in refuting their life’s work. Whether it is via body language/noises from the whale, or death of a co-worker, the interaction and vicinity of the people to the animals clearly changed their worldview. Some of the most powerful sequences in Blackfish involve the study into whale noises after the loss of a baby or watching footage of the severe harm done to a colleague. This footage serves as an audience guide to how these people’s opinions could change.
Sea World is doing everything it can to fight the clear negative publicity it is receiving from this documentary. Blackfish makes it clear that Sea World at least publicly avoided many ill effects of its unethical whale treatment. The film discredits the corporation in many ways: most of which are captured on camera. We see “facts” developed by the company about the whales aging that are disproven by data in the wild, but repeated ad nauseam in parks so as to seem true. Deaths of several trainers are told, with links between the deaths (Tilikum) not stated to the new trainers by Sea World. The hardest scenes to watch are when they try to claim that very careful trainers made too many errors which caused their death when footage suggests otherwise. Even if there are arguments against these specific deaths, there is enough of a pattern now to see something strange is occurring.
Blackfish served its purpose at least to me. I will not be going to Sea World again. The nice thing about this simple documentary is that the problem has a simple solution: put these animals back into their natural habitat. We can even revive the Michael Jackson “Save The Whales” soundtrack from Free Willy to aid in the cause.