Commentary On The Film Blackfish

Blackfish is a documentary that follows a male orca named Tilikum. Tillikum was a happy whale until he was captured and separated from his family. Tillikum has taken several lives of people and it is been disputed many times that is the trainers fault and not pure aggression. Through Tillikum we are shown how orca's that are held captive really feel. Blackfish shows that Orcas that are held captive are traumatized and become unhealthy. Blackfish shows the viewers this by how physically unhealthy the orca's become, how unwilling communication becomes between orca's and the emotional instability they go through. All of these problems are caused by marine parks like SeaWorld creates. Orcas are massive mammals that need to move to stay healthy.

This is detrimental to their health because orcas are driven by emotions heavily. We aren't shown how depressed they are because, marine parks like SeaWorld show commercials that make seem like they are friendly and happy to be there. Tillikum has been emotionally unstable every since he was caught. In his first park Sealand, he was abused by the whales and wasn't fed if he did not do the trick. Tillikum was frustrated at everyone and had no outlet. During a show his trainer Kelti Burn, slipped and fell into the pool. Tillikum was full of frustration and found a way to let go of everything. He held on to Kelti burn's leg and dragged her to the bottom of the pool. She drowned and died. Tillikum was later moved to SeaWorld so they can use him for sperm. In SeaWorld they didn't treat him any different, the whales still abused him, he didn't get fed if he didn't do trick properly and they abused him for his sperm. Since the other whales abused him Tillikum was put into a separate tank. The other whales did not only abuse Tillikum, there were other whale incidents where an orca killed another orca. In the wild if there's any tension between two orca's they have thousands of square miles to exit the scene, but in captivity they don't have the privilege of that. Tillikum's trainers said that he was very happy to see people during shows, this could of been because he was lonely. His trainers also said Tillikum seemed to like work, he seemed very interested in learning new things. For 20 years Tillikum was living like this until one performance. Dawn was an experience trainer and she loved her animals. At the start of Tillikum and Dawns performance you can see they were very synced and Tillikum was very happy because he was being fed. Nearing the end of the performance, Dawn would ask Tillikum to do tricks without being rewarded at the end. This made Tillikum very frustrated with her. When Dawn stepped into the pool to