The Cove Psihoyos

The Cove is a documentary released in 2009, and was directed by Louie Psihoyos and stars various activists, primarily Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer turned activist, and the director himself. The Cove criticizes the annual dolphin hunting practice in the seaside town of Taiji, Japan. The town relies on dolphin hunting as a means of sustaining their economy, as well as being a part of the specific town’s culture and traditions. The captured dolphins are either sold to marine parks or are killed for their meat. Their practices occur at the town’s coast, in an enclosed and heavily guarded area of the beach dubbed the Cove, where any filming and photography is banned by the fisherman. Throughout the documentary, O’Barry and various other …show more content…
Psihoyos’ main persuasive technique is by emotionally appealing to the audience. He makes the audience sympathize with the activist’s and their cause, yet more importantly, with the dolphins themselves. In multiple instances throughout the documentary, he plays footage of dolphins in the ocean, their natural habitat, as soft instrumental music plays in the background. Orchestrating such a scene, several times, highlights the beauty and grace of dolphins as they swim in the wild, cultivating a feeling of sympathy towards dolphins. The emotionally manipulative scenes fosters an emotional connection between the viewers and dolphins, a feeling of compassion that carries throughout the whole film. By creating this feeling of sympathy near the beginning of the video, the viewer is more inclined to lean towards the side of the activists. On another note, one particular scene that definitely manipulates the viewer's feelings is when O’Barry describes the suicide of Kathy, one of the dolphins in the show Flipper. His description of her choosing to not take another breathe and essentially die via self-asphyxiation is very emotionally disturbing, especially when he says that she “died in [O’Barry’s] arms”. By describing the deep bond O’Barry formed with Kathy, and the emotional effects of her subsequent death, the audience feels emotionally inclined to support the termination of dolphin hunting. Moreover, Psihoyos uses confirmation bias, stemmed from the knowledge that dolphins are wild animals. Him, and other people speaking in the film, describe how dolphins and other marine animals deserve to be free in the while, and how beautiful and elegant they are as they swim. Thus, he uses the pre existing knowledge that dolphins originate from the wild, and influences the viewers into believing that hunting dolphins, and