Throughout the documentary Blackfish, which debuted in 2013, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite argues that SeaWorld keeping killer whales in captivity is not only inhumane and dangerous for the whales themselves, but also dangerous to humans that train them and interact with them on a daily basis.
The documentary starts off with a very famous phone call to the Orange County sheriff saying that the Senior trainer for SeaWorld, Dawn Brancheau, had been eaten by a Killer Whale; her arm was completely ripped off her body and swallowed by the whale. A few moments later groups and families of killer whales are shown in the ocean as peaceful and majestic animals. This indirectly gives the impression that killer whales are peaceful animals when not confined to captivity. This turns out to be a much stronger appeal for pathos throughout the film as the accounts of the trainers who worked with the deceased trainer all state that she was the most careful and that if it could happen to her it could happen to anyone.
The appeal to pathos in the film is directed at sympathy for the killer whales. The argument is that they are normally peaceful in the wild and they only attack …show more content…
One of the first examples the directors present is when a neurologist put an orca brain inside a CAT scan and found that whales have a part of the brain that humans don’t have and that Whales can process emotions very highly and much more heavily then human beings do. This drives people to a talking point about how whales communicate often and have their own language to accomplish tasks as a group like providing food for their whale families. This affirmation that whales can feel through scientific research (logos) also helps strengthen the pathos approach to build a more formidable argument. A huge data point they point out is that their most violent whale Tilikum is also reproducing 58% of whale population in
The documentary starts off with a very famous phone call to the Orange County sheriff saying that the Senior trainer for SeaWorld, Dawn Brancheau, had been eaten by a Killer Whale; her arm was completely ripped off her body and swallowed by the whale. A few moments later groups and families of killer whales are shown in the ocean as peaceful and majestic animals. This indirectly gives the impression that killer whales are peaceful animals when not confined to captivity. This turns out to be a much stronger appeal for pathos throughout the film as the accounts of the trainers who worked with the deceased trainer all state that she was the most careful and that if it could happen to her it could happen to anyone.
The appeal to pathos in the film is directed at sympathy for the killer whales. The argument is that they are normally peaceful in the wild and they only attack …show more content…
One of the first examples the directors present is when a neurologist put an orca brain inside a CAT scan and found that whales have a part of the brain that humans don’t have and that Whales can process emotions very highly and much more heavily then human beings do. This drives people to a talking point about how whales communicate often and have their own language to accomplish tasks as a group like providing food for their whale families. This affirmation that whales can feel through scientific research (logos) also helps strengthen the pathos approach to build a more formidable argument. A huge data point they point out is that their most violent whale Tilikum is also reproducing 58% of whale population in