As a child, I remember pressing my face against the TV being in absolute awe when I saw a SeaWorld commercial with the infamous Shamu jumping out of the crystal clear water. Years later I look back at my foolish innocence and open my eyes to what really happens behind the closed gates of SeaWorld. Shamu and other orcas alike are put on a spectacle with lights, music, and talented trainers for the smiles and laughter of the audience and used as a ticket selling mechanism for the multibillion-dollar company. In 2013 a documentary film directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite was released on national television on CNN; this film is known as Blackfish. Using the rhetorical components ethos, pathos, and logos Blackfish opens the gates to what really happens
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This is where pathos comes in as Blackfish’s main rhetorical component. When interviewing John Crowe, a man who formerly caught orcas for SeaWorld, he addresses the brutalizing accounts of stealing baby orcas from their families in the wild. Crowe describes that the parents of the baby orcas still stayed and kept calling out to their children. He states that, “It’s like kidnapping a kid away from its mother.” Not only in the wild did SeaWorld separate mother and calf, but also in captivity. In one of SeaWorld’s amusement parks lived baby orca Kalina and her mother Katina. Then soon after Katina gave birth to Kalina they were separated when Kalina got relocated to a different park. Former SeaWorld trainer John Hargrove describes what he saw and heard after witnessing the separation of mother and daughter. Katina stayed in the corner of the pool motionless, shrieking and crying for her daughter, this causing emotional trauma for the mother orca. Hargrove asks, “How can anyone look at that and think its morally acceptable?” The tear-jerking shrieks of the mother orcas screaming out for their children to come back pulls the heartstrings of the viewers and opens their eyes to what they were supporting without knowing …show more content…
Also with the help of CNN, a news station that many people trust, airing the documentary helps make it more plausible with the information being shown. In one of the many interviews being bared throughout the documentary to show credible information how the whales are treated, they interviewed former Director of Sealand, Steve Huxter. Huxter admitted to the terrible abuse the whales in his park faced. While training their new orca Tilikum, they would pair him with a trained orca and if Tilikum did not do what he was told then both whales would be punished. Deprived of food to keep them hungry, the trained orca became frustrated with Tilikum and would rake him with his teeth as payback. This inhumane treatment of orcas in captivity is what leads these animals to become unstable and irate, which is why they attack the trainers, themselves, and other whales near
This is where pathos comes in as Blackfish’s main rhetorical component. When interviewing John Crowe, a man who formerly caught orcas for SeaWorld, he addresses the brutalizing accounts of stealing baby orcas from their families in the wild. Crowe describes that the parents of the baby orcas still stayed and kept calling out to their children. He states that, “It’s like kidnapping a kid away from its mother.” Not only in the wild did SeaWorld separate mother and calf, but also in captivity. In one of SeaWorld’s amusement parks lived baby orca Kalina and her mother Katina. Then soon after Katina gave birth to Kalina they were separated when Kalina got relocated to a different park. Former SeaWorld trainer John Hargrove describes what he saw and heard after witnessing the separation of mother and daughter. Katina stayed in the corner of the pool motionless, shrieking and crying for her daughter, this causing emotional trauma for the mother orca. Hargrove asks, “How can anyone look at that and think its morally acceptable?” The tear-jerking shrieks of the mother orcas screaming out for their children to come back pulls the heartstrings of the viewers and opens their eyes to what they were supporting without knowing …show more content…
Also with the help of CNN, a news station that many people trust, airing the documentary helps make it more plausible with the information being shown. In one of the many interviews being bared throughout the documentary to show credible information how the whales are treated, they interviewed former Director of Sealand, Steve Huxter. Huxter admitted to the terrible abuse the whales in his park faced. While training their new orca Tilikum, they would pair him with a trained orca and if Tilikum did not do what he was told then both whales would be punished. Deprived of food to keep them hungry, the trained orca became frustrated with Tilikum and would rake him with his teeth as payback. This inhumane treatment of orcas in captivity is what leads these animals to become unstable and irate, which is why they attack the trainers, themselves, and other whales near