Blackfish Documentary Analysis

Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the documentary Blackfish explores the corporate greed behind orca attractions, and how this greed leads to inhumane treatment of orcas and safety hazards for their trainers. The film opens with a 911 call to report the death of Dawn Brancheau, a senior orca trainer at SeaWorld Orlando, by Tillikum, a male whale. After a set of interviews from former SeaWorld employees, the audience learns about the history of Tillikum the whale. He is inhumanely captured off the coast of Iceland in the early 1980s, and brought to a park called Sealand in Victoria, Canada to entertain guests. He is kept in a small metal box, barely big enough to fit him inside, for majority of his life. Former employees of Sealand described

how Tillikum and the other whales are starved so they will go into this box. According to experts interviewed in this film, this treatment would have caused a psychosis in the orcas, which would lead them to be dangerous to humans.
The audience then learns about Tillikum’s first kill, Keltie Byrne, a young competitive swimmer who trained orcas on the side.

Two eye witnesses to the 1991 incident describe her begging for her life as Tillikum pulled her under the water. She was not able to grab onto the life preserves being thrown out to her and she eventually drowned. Though Sealand closes after the incident, it is covered up and Tillikum is sold to SeaWorld Orlando. SeaWorld has a history of blurring facts about the orca’s lives at the facility. The employees will frequently tell visitors that the orcas live longer in captivity and that they live amazing lives, neither of which are true. In reality, they torture and bully each other, by biting and dragging their flesh, due to living in such close proximity to each other. In the wild they have thousands of miles to escape, but at SeaWorld they just have a small pool. This leaves scars all over their bodies, and also puts them in constant distress. Tillikum is bullied more than the others, so despite the fact that orcas are social animals, he was constantly kept in isolation, which furthered his

psychosis.
Tillikum killed again in 1999. A man had entered SeaWorld and evaded security so he was left alone with the whales after hours. The next morning, he was found on Tillikum’s back, with many abrasions caused by orca bites. The audience learns of several other instances of orcas harming their trainers. One senior trainer was pulled down multiple times, though he survived. SeaWorld used this incident as proof that their training works, since he remained calm the entire time, but footage shows him desperately trying to walk on his broken feet to safety after the whale stalks him when he leaves the water. He appears to be terrified. Another young trainer was pulled under by a whale and saved only when a more dominant whale was released. A witness describes the desperation in her voice, she sounded like she knew she was going to die. A trainer in the Canary Islands perished from an incident with an orca at Sealodge. SeaWorld trained the trainers at Sealodge, but would not accept responsibility for the death.
Tillikum’s final kill happened in 2010 to Dawn Brancheau. Brancheau was the most senior of the orca trainers at SeaWorld Orlando, and on the day of her death the previous show did not go as planned. This put extra pressure on her to make her show great. She practiced with Tillikum and gave him an order, which he followed, but he did not hear her whistle indicating that he should stop the activity. Brancheau was also running out of food. This combination left Tillikum incredibly frustrated. He pulled her under when she started rubbing him as part of a relationship session. She quickly drowned and was mutilated in the process. Tillikum continued to do shows after her death.
The logos method of persuasion is very prominent in Blackfish. The audience learns a great deal about orcas that make the argument against SeaWorld clear. Orcas are incredibly social creatures with an emotional intelligence that is not even found in humans. They bond with their young to such an extreme level that they are never separated from them. Wild orcas swim on average, 100 miles per day, but in SeaWorld they are limited to a tiny pool they are forced to share with orcas they are not familiar with, causing fights to break out between them. Orcas from different parts of the world are from different “nations,” as described by an expert in the film. SeaWorld does not maintain separation for these whales and it continues to cause problems. SeaWorld makes no effort to learn how to make their habitat feel more natural for them, though the facts have been there for decades.
Ethos is present in the film through the experience of the former SeaWorld employees. Samantha Berg can be seen in archive footage doing shows at SeaWorld with a smile on her face, but in Blackfish she realizes her involvement with the organization actually harmed the animals. Several other former SeaWorld trainers felt the same way and agreed to participate in the film. One former trainer had specifically worked with Tillikum and Brancheau, and could provide context about their relationship. Cowperthwaite also included orca behavioral experts in the film to explain how they behave in the wild. One of the best aspects of the film is the director’s efforts in finding credible people to participate.
Cowperthwaite used pathos several times throughout the film, but the most primal example is the heartbreak of the mother orcas when they lose their young.

This phenomenon is such an emotional trigger that it is featured twice in the documentary. In the beginning, the former orca hunter describes capturing the baby orcas in the wild; the orcas were smart enough to try to hide their babies, but the fishermen had superior technology and found them. After capturing the baby orcas, he describes the mothers still staying, desperately trying to get their babies back and screaming in grief. The fisherman said this was the worst thing he had ever done. SeaWorld is also guilty of separating mothers from their young. Several former trainers described the intense depression of a mother orca after her daughter was cruelly stolen from her and brought to another park. Cowperthwaite knew this would be a trigger because losing a child is also a human parent’s worst

nightmare.
Blackfish did an outstanding job of convincing me of the evils of SeaWorld. They covered up the cause of Bracheau’s death twice in order to convince the public that training orca’s is safe. SeaWorld needed Tillikum for breeding, as each whale is worth millions of dollars so they had incentive to shift the blame of the deaths from him. The way orca’s live in captivity is obviously inhumane as there is a strong correlation to the psychosis whales in captive experience versus whales in the wild. SeaWorld does everything in their power to cover that up as well, considering they consistently provide false facts to their visitors. Blackfish explores every aspect of an orca’s life and dives down into why it is wrong for corporations to exploit them for money. The tragic and preventable deaths of trainers seems like the most compelling reason to stop this practice, but the inhumane treatment of these intelligent animals while taking away their freedom and autonomy provides more than enough compelling commentary to change the minds of most viewers.