Tuesday, March 27, 2012

A Documentary Devoid of Legitimacy


                After watching The Cove I have decided that it's hard to find a person who makes an emotional appeal without sounding a little silly. Ric O'Barry, being the one making the appeal, tries to bring to light that dolphins are suffering all around the world for various reasons. The two main points covered in the film was first that dolphins needs to be removed from capitivity, saying these animals are unhappy in these conditions. The second part of the film is a series of repeated clips covering the fishing industry of Japan and their harvesting of Dolphins. With these two points many good points were raised, but I still feel that several things were said that bring the viability of Ric O'Barry's argument into question.
                For a long time now man has kept many animals in captivity by many different means and purposes including protecting endangered species. A lot of people agree that captivity is a bad thing for animals of a certain nature, and they should all be released to their death. But I for one feel that the selective programs that many zoos have spent many years and money on has done great work to keep several endangered animals from extinction. Ric O'Barry, former dolphin trainer now activist, made a very strong emotional appeal in this video that ended with his favorite dolphin committing suicide in his arms. This act being the one that proves his argument that dolphins are not happy in captivity. Now this is something that stuck with me. After everything that is mentioned, his dolphin "committed suicide?" I don't understand how this could possibly be known by Ric O'Barry. Since we can't really communicate with the dolphins, how can he really know the dolphin was sad? How do we know that it killed itself in his arms? Are we supposed to take his word on something that sounds so silly simply because he is Ric O'Barry? I for one don't buy this entire thing, and to be honest the video lost a lot of its weight for me when the suicide was mentioned.
                The second part of the video covers Japan's harvesting of dolphins for food and other various things. There is no way to disprove its happening, we have video of it and it's a known industry in Japan. Now it may just be a cultural thing, but I myself frown upon the idea of hunting dolphins. And I would go on a limb to say that I am not alone in this sentiment on dolphin hunting. But I also feel this was a poorly organized argument made in the video. For starters they have video from one infraction, that's it. Then they take this same, shirt bit, and repeat it many times while trying to make the argument. Then if this wasn't one sided enough we get interviews from only people who obviously are opposed to it, specifically people who don't live in the village in which this occurs. What benefit would we really have if we stopped the hunting of dolphins. Sure the population would increase with natural breeding, but there are people who would suffer. The hunting of this non-endangered animal brings a very large amount of jobs to Taiji. Taking this away would ensure a lot of hungry mouths. Are we do focused on saving this one animal that we don't care to save our fellow man? On top of everything else, once I did some further research on the topic I find that there are several lawsuits now against Ric O'Barry for inaccuracy of the film. Claims that Hideki Moronuki, the assistant chief of the whaling division at Japan's Fisheries Agency, were false. Tetsuya Endō is suing Ric O'Berry what was is said to be misleading edits of his comments in the film which has damaged his reputation. And I would like to end this reply with the statement that this is one of the most artificial videos, devoid of legitimate facts, I have ever had the displeasure of watching (besides any film made by Michael Moore). 
               

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