Ethical Dilemmas In The Movie Blackfish

The movie Blackfish is different from many other movies because of the use of interviews, camerawork, and videos. The movie documents the life and journey of a notorious and infamous killer whale named Tilikum. Blackfish shows the problems of keeping a killer whale in captivity throughout its whole life compared to allowing the whales to live in their natural habitat. Throughout the movie Tilikum attacks three different people, and the SeaWorld owners choose to do nothing about it because Tilikum’s sperm is worth a lot of money. Blackfish goes into detail about the ethical and emotional concerns of keeping a large whale in captivity for extended amounts of time. The movie uses ethos by interviewing many former workers for SeaWorld along with …show more content…
This scene directly follows the animation scene of the attempted escape from the killer whales. This is a great introduction to the movie because it shows the early life of Tilikum, and the psychological effects caused by this event that most likely lead to his attacks on humans. The setting of this scene is in the actual harbor where Tilikum was captured, and the video shown was an actual video shot when he was captured. This scene from the movie shows Tillikum and other whales showing signs of fear when being captured. Also, the whaler that captured Tillikum is interviewed, and he says that the male whales stayed by the nets to try and help their families escape. This scene shows just how intelligent and aware the killer whales are. The interview of the whaler that captured Tillikum is an important ethos found in this movie because he was there on the day that Tillikum was captured, and he saw the emotions and actions of all of the whales in person. This influences the viewer to better understand just how smart the killer whales are and the problems of keeping the killer whales in small environments away from their