An Entirely Too Long Criticism of Blackfish

An Entirely Too Long Criticism of Blackfish 

Presented by: Shane

In general, posts on Side Pieces won't be this long. However, I started this project awhile ago and didn't have anywhere else to put it. It's long. Like 3500 words long. So for those who won't read it, here's the TL;DR for you: Blackfish is not a documentary. It takes assumptions and makes them facts. It doesn't supply actual facts. It uses testimony from people presented as unbiased experts who are anything but. It also changes opinions of orcas and trainers based on convenience for a narrative.

Blackfish has been presented as a documentary wishing to expose the underbelly of SeaWorld’s treatment of killer whales. I think the makers of the movie would admit that it was one-sided, which is somewhat defensible considering SeaWorld declined to make any statements. However, the movie makers would also likely say that taking sides is irrelevant and that they presented the facts only. Full disclosure: I viewed this movie entirely with a skeptical lens. However, I am not biased against animal rights groups. I am very much for reasonable animal rights. What I am entirely against is making dishonest arguments for animal rights (or any movement). I believe that the cause of animal rights is strong enough that exaggeration, dishonesty and manipulation are not needed. Further, these tactics do nothing but drive opposition away. Also, some question or criticisms that I might pose could have simple explanations. I expect that. This is not a flaw in my analysis, but a flaw in the film for not addressing these issues.

Of course, SeaWorld’s non-comments to the film-makers should be not be construed as denial, non-denial or an inability to deny any assertions made in the film. There are definite legal matters involved and SeaWorld is protecting itself from 2 things: (1) Providing information to fuel a lawsuit (remember, anybody can be sued for anything at any time and (2) Losing the rights to private work product that is not discoverable in a court case.( Lawyer’d!) Also, I have not yet read SeaWorld’s reply to the film in order to keep a clean slate in my response.

So let’s start with who is giving us much of this information: Former SeaWorld killer whale trainers. If they were being used as merely anecdotal supplements, I’d probably not be nearly as concerned about them and their qualifications. However, they are largely portrayed as being experts throughout the movie, making a lot of persuasive and emotionally packed statements throughout the film. This is funny because in the first minutes of the film, in what seems to be an effort to discredit SeaWorld’s training process of killer whale trainers, the trainers all note how little experience they had when they started at SeaWorld. The viewer is intentionally left with the feeling that SeaWorld was playing fast and loose with proper training standards. Not once in the entire film do the filmmakers ever actually discuss what the training standards are. Regardless, insinuating that the trainers were allowed into the water with the whales too soon is largely irrelevant as injuries to new trainers are never a point of the film. This is purely a character evidence move. They’re poisoning the well and are making no attempt to actually research what SeaWorld’s training process was like.

Also, with the trainers, we are missing much of their history outside of their lack of experience before being hired. We don’t know how long they trained, whether that training was proper, or how they left SeaWorld. It is entirely relevant if a person was fired, laid-off or left voluntarily. So in the first 6 minutes of the film, we’ve introduced a bunch of former trainers who we know nothing about and will learn nothing about throughout the film. In the end, we have no idea how to judge the credibility of the trainers. The film uses the trainers as ignorant or as experts when convenient.

Dave Duffus is OSHA expert witness, but has never worked with whales. It’s never addressed that he is the prosecution’s witness and what this means. (It doesn't mean that he is unbiased, an absolute authority or that his agenda is scientific or remotely provable. Expert witnesses can range from DNA experts [highly reliable] to hair witnesses [less reliable, but worthless] to lie detector administrators [unreliable and unhelpful].)

And perhaps my favorite part of the first 15 minutes is the introduction of the news clips. Not a single clip showed anyone supporting SeaWorld or being objective. They were entirely negative in their treatment of SeaWorld. There is no context. Ignoring the fact that TV faces use salacious language to gain viewers and shouldn’t be trusted to give a trust-worthy POV, the viewer is subtly lead to believe that there no news or TV programs siding with SeaWorld. That may be the case, but that could be addressed in narration or by an anecdotal opinion of someone being interviewed.

We’re next introduced to John Crowe, who is given the professional title of a “Diver” who captures whales. While we are shown video of Mr. Crowe with other divers, he is the only one interviewed. Again, the insinuation isn’t that this man is an anecdotal witness, but an expert with something important to say. From his story we find out a couple of negative things about SeaWorld. First, Mr. Crowe seems to regret capturing whales, suggesting that it is a morally repugnant. In particular he is upset about baby whales, tugging at your heart strings. Second, we learn that SeaWorld was ejected from the area and no longer allowed to capture whales. The problem with all of this? Who was Mr. Crowe’s employer? I don’t know. It’s not mentioned. Perhaps SeaWorld was, but it would have been appropriate and helpful if that was announced. If he hasn’t worked for SeaWorld, that too should be noted. How do we know that all whale captures are performed in the same manner? We don’t. Further, we find out that SeaWorld was ejected from the area, but we don’t know why. It’s never mentioned. We don’t know if it was only SeaWorld or if other companies were ejected as well. There is nothing here but an out of context fact that is prejudicial.

Within Mr. Crowe’s story, we are also introduced Howard Garrett who is an “Orca Researcher.” I don’t know what that even means. His resume isn’t given. We have no idea what his qualifications are. A quick Google search finds that Mr. Garrett holds a degree in sociology. Of course this doesn’t mean that he can’t be a legitimate whale researcher, but it certainly isn’t a promising start. His first job after gaining his degree was with the Center for Whale Research, whose Facebook states that their goal is to research killer whales in the wild. However, a quick browsing of their FaceBook page shows that they are more than a research organization. This organization is an activist organization. There are multiple posts that are of the anti-SeaWorld nature. This is an un-biased organization. They have an objective. Mr. Garrett is involved with the Orca Network, which is also an activist group. These are all facts that should have been disclosed. I’m not certain that anything Mr. Garrett says from this point on can be considered objective and unbiased. The fake whale biologist from Futurama is more trustworthy.

Since I found Mr. Garrett to be the most full-of-shit interviewee in the entire film, let’s break-down some of the bullshit he’s trying to sell you:

He claims that Orcas knew that the whale hunters were there to capture or kidnap their babies. That’s ridiculous. Orcas don’t have the capacity to understand such a complex concept that another being would attempt to take their offspring and raise them separately. This is an attempt to humanize an animal. Orcas probably understand danger and were attempting to preserve their offspring, which makes sense. There is no reason to doctor this.

He also claims that the orcas created an elaborate plan of escape in order to confuse their pursuers. Again, orcas lack the ability of such complex thinking. I don’t doubt that the males separated themselves in an attempt to fight while the babies and females fled, but that makes sense evolutionarily. No need to doctor this up unless you are further attempting to humanize orcas.

Later in the film, Mr. Garrett repeatedly claims that whales have lifespans equivalent to humans, noting that some whales can live up to 90 years old. Whoa. Whales in captivity don’t live near that long. Double whoa. Whales have human like lifespans. To me, that means they must usually live to the age of 70-80. What does the research say? According to all hard research that I could find (including the research noted on the Orca Network Website), males orcas live on average about 30 years. Female orcas live on average about 50 years. It is indefensible to leave this information out. The film could have presented this information and in turn reasonably criticized the studies instead of conveniently ignoring it. That is how you present information objectively. This is the biggest lie in the entire film.

Around the 14 minute mark, we’re introduced to Tilikum and Sealand. Right away, we’re fed some more garbage from the Center of Whale Research, this time by Ken Balcolmb. We’re not given Mr. Balcomb’s credentials either, but a quick search shows that he does have an educational background in zoology. He introduces the term “whale psychosis” around this time. What is whale psychosis? I don’t know. They never define it. I did a search of it and, surprise, there is no definition or classification for what whale psychosis is. Nice work.

We’re introduced to Sealand and it’s insinuated that is a subpar setup that is nothing more than a net hanging in a marina. A simple demonstration of this would be some pictures or videos showing this, but I’m glad I didn’t hold my breath waiting for something like that because I would be dead from having not breathed in weeks since I watched this film. So the viewer is forced to take the word of the speakers. This isn’t a fatal flaw, but it’s annoying and setting off my exaggeration alarm. Also, eye-witness testimony is notoriously inaccurate. In particular, over time, a person’s memory is even worse and more unreliable. There are a lot of great studies on this in the legal world, which the excellent book Actual Innocence discusses.

We are introduced to Steve Huxter, a former Sealand Director. Again, we know nothing of his background. Did he quit, was he fired? I have no idea. Discussing the training methods, Mr. Huxter states that the animals were punished for Tilikum not performing correctly. Some corroboration would be nice, but I guess we can take this claim at face value and it seems pretty rational. Mr. Huxter then makes a leap by claiming that the other animals became frustrated with Tilikum for not performing and would attack him. Is this a motivation whales are even capable of? I’m not certain here. My gut says this sort of complex thinking is something that we do as people to humanize animals so we can understand why they do the things they do.

Further, Mr. Huxter discusses whales attacking whales and raking. It sounds pretty alarming and sad. This raking activity does happen, we see evidence. However, what isn’t discussed is whether or not this happens in the wild. Is this a natural whale reaction? Is this learned from captive whales? Does it happen outside of a vacuum? This film fails to give us any information on whales attacking other whales. My initial guess would be that it does happen in the wild for a variety of reasons.

I do find the concept of food deprivation deplorable. Hopefully these sorts of crude training methods are being replaced by something more humane and effective.

WHALE PSYCHOSIS! I love that this is brought up again. Just to cement a theme. Nice work.

Also, we get a pretty throwaway part from Sam Berg here. She notes that moving Tilikum to Seaworld after his awful experience at Sealand wasn’t a good idea. Captain Hindsight, ftw!

OK, so now we’ve hit the… 23 minute mark? Yikes.

Here is Mr. Garnett claiming whales have lifespans comparable to humans. Again, this is disingenuous.

So how smart are whales? The film makes a solid decision and brings in a neuroscientist in Lori Marino. Qualifications: neuroscientist. Well, that’s a bit of a let-down, but consistent with the film maker’s loathing of providing pertinent information. So, looking up Ms. Marino, you find quickly that she has some skin in the game, running the Nonhuman Rights Project. This is a new project with the goal of granting actual legal rights to nonhuman animals (this is an interesting area of law with some reasonable questions, though reading the website, I’m not sure I’m not personally buying their angle or the extent of their goals). She’s certainly not unbiased, though this doesn’t actually make her testimony flawed.

Ms. Marino makes a claim that orcas have a part of the brain that humans don’t. The viewer is then to infer that this is something special. All animals are unique and I would think that brain-systems vary among them are unique as well. This would be nice for Ms. Marino to be asked about. The biggest issue here is the assumption that the “safest” inference is that animals have highly emotional lives. Why is it the safest? Is the safest inference necessarily the best inference? Or most accurate inference? All claims need to have evidence, especially bold ones. This is not a scientific conclusion.

Next is the claim that it’s becoming clear that orcas have a sense of self, “even more so than humans.” Is there any data on this? No. Of course, this sort of thing is hard to test. Reading an interview with Ms. Marino, she explains this and then discusses whale behavior studies. We’ve left the realm of neuroscience and have entered behavioral science. This would be excellent and interesting information to have in the film. (Regardless, I have a hard time believing that any animal has a larger sense of self than humans in part due to the utter lack of whale philosophers.) Again, Ms. Marino is here as a scientist, but this is not science.

Dave Duffus is now at his worst in this film claiming that orcas have, “great spiritual power”. I wrote down that quote and immediately added a “/wanking” note. Duffus does follow up that gem by stating that they never mess with the whales or get in the water to interact with them. This is where the film conveniently switches from the earlier claims that violence against humans in orcas is unnatural and likely learned in captivity to orcas are dangerous to humans in the wild. You can’t have this both ways. The idea that whales are inherently dangerous to humans is probably the right one. They are massive and eat meat. This is logical.

Yay! Court! Discussing the excerpt of the transcript that was stricken, there seems to be a semantics argument. Unfortunately, semantics are pretty important in the legal world. The transcript stricken involved the quote “he lunges at trainers,” which means something incredibly different in the legal world from “sometimes lunges towards trainers.” Negligence cases often hinge on tiny details like this. There is nothing insidious or unreasonable about this decision.

Here we have a trainer stating that relationships aren’t more than just giving fish. This seems to go against claims that orcas are incredibly self-aware and relationship oriented. Not sure why this was added unless the film is trying to set-up something later about whale on human violence.

Now, around the 36 minute mark, we get some pretty non-specific details about a supervisor mocking orcas and whatnot. Also, former trainer Dean Gomersull says that “they” don’t tell them stuff. Whoever they is. We also get a nice fact stated that dorsalfins drooping happens in less than 1% of whales in the wild. No data or source, just a fact stated, which puts its status as a fact in question.

Next we have a subtle attempt that humanizing the orcas. The film states that different whales have different genes. Well, no shit. Then the film states that orcas have “different languages” across the world. This is a subtle humanization in confusing human language with whale language. Humans have complex languages with the ability to hold uncountable words and inflections to mean different things. Whale languages just are not near as complex and would never qualify as an actual language. It’s a simple way of communicating, it’s not an actual language any more than dogs sniffing butts is a language. That form of communicating is incredibly interesting, but allowing it to be considered an unqualified language is humanizing in a prejudicial manner.

In the 46 minute part of the film, we begin to understand a bit more about orca and trainer interaction. It’s pointed out that accidents are judged to be either trainer error or that the whales went to the wrong spot. Aggression in these incidents doesn’t seem to be an issue. That a whale slams into a trainer isn’t necessarily a mark of aggression. It is proposed that there were over 70 documented whale accidents. Good information if we had more context. What is the time period? What counts as a whale accident? Can we tell anything about the severity of an accident because it was reported?

The Ken Peters video where he is nearly drowned by a whale is emotionally and visually compelling. Mr. Peters is lauded as an expert and experienced trainer. His ordeal is considered damn near heroic and his survival impressive. Why in the world wasn’t Mr. Peters interviewed? We have a bunch of trainers speculating as to what Mr. Peters was thinking, but we don’t have Mr. Peters himself. This is incredibly disappointing.

55 minutes into the film and now we’re getting into conspiracy theories. In general, I don’t buy conspiracy theories, so perhaps my doubt is my own bias showing through here. Oftentimes, there are too many people involved to keep a conspiracy under wraps. The film-makers discuss injuries, but never bother to show any actual medical or autopsy reports outside of the attack on Dawn.

Now we are introduced to Suzanne Allee, a video supervisor at Loro Parque. Ms. Allee gives us a ton of opinions, but little substance. She seems to make a lot of speculative claims in which one would assume she lacked personal knowledge to make such judgments. She claims that the venues weren’t ready that the owner did this because he didn’t want to lose money. She claims that the animals had teeth and stomach issues due to the captivity, but I find it hard to buy into these diagnoses considering her job is as a video supervisor and she never mentions any experience in treating animals or being around the animals being treated. She also claims that the trainers didn’t train much, which again, she’s a video supervisor and does not claim to have an animal training background. Then she provides us two unsubstantiated opinions on the park. First she claims that Loro Parque doesn’t have a good reputation. That might be true, but the film makers didn’t bother to provide corroboration. “Everyone knows it was a tragedy waiting to happen.” This line does nothing but point the viewer to an anti-Seaworld path. We don’t know if that’s remotely true or not. It has no real value taken on its face.

There is a lot going on in regards to the tragic attack on Dawn Brancheau. The attack alone is incredibly sad and scary, it doesn’t need to be exaggerated. Yet, the film-makers take some artistic license. First is the assertion that the initial grab was not aggressive. There is not only any proof here, but the idea that whale grabbing a trainer with his teeth not being aggressive is a questionable one. Is the viewer to believe that Tilikum grabbed Dawn Brancheau in a random manner and then halfway through decided he wanted to kill her? I don’t know and neither do the commenters.

The film also uses the court ruling in a disingenuous manner. Many times, lawyers from both sides will come out and say that the verdict was a victory for their client. I would imagine that this is fairly confusing to the lay-man, and it should be because it’s usually just bravado or face-saving on the part of one lawyer. Because legal rulings are incredibly more complicated than most people understand, it is easy for propagandists to interpret them in a manner convenient to them. In this case, from what I heard, the court ruling was not impressive or in any way meaningful. Guilt, negligence, etc, really aren’t being judged here. There is simply nothing conclusive.

In the end, there are too many questions of credibility, authority and instances of misleading testimony for this film to be considered a documentary. At best it is a low-level op-ed piece. At worst it is an intellectually dishonest and manipulative piece of propaganda. We’re left with no information on if orcas are aggressive in nature or if it’s a learned behavior (as the film interchanges this per their convenience). Also, we don’t know if trainers are knowledgeable or unknowledgeable. We do know that every expert witness giving testimony in the movie had a prior bias or skin in the game. And really, I could have gone on further about the legal issues, but if you made it this far, you didn’t deserve to be put to sleep. I am open to questions and criticisms on any arguments that I have made here.