The Cove Response

I can see why the documentary The Cove got a lot of attention when it was released, and was considered controversial. The film is made by people who really care about a cause and will go to the extreme lengths we see in the film to expose the horrors of dolphin slaughter. To accomplish this, an elite team is put together to capture footage of what happens in the small cove in Taiji, Japan.

    I do agree with the message the film has. Even though I was prepared for the rhetoric, I still felt captivated and moved by this film. The filmmakers make a very strong case, building up their argument with pathos, ethos and logos. It was expertly put together, making you feel sympathy for the dolphins and giving you an adrenaline rush not unlike watching an action movie when the team does their reconnaissance in the middle of the night. The film packs a powerful emotional punch. People feel for the cute dolphins that are like humans on so many levels. Its aim was to point out the secret slaughter and to motivate the world to speak out about this issue. In this respect, it had great success.

    Though dolphin abuse and slaughter is a main topic in this film, an other central theme is the government agenda and the amount of transparency governments have with the public. I think these themes are important because they tie in with corruption, propaganda and government transparency that we have been talking about in class. The thing that disgusted me most about this issue was, after the way in which the dolphins were being killed, how the Japanese government tried to cover it up. 

     I can understand that they don’t want outsiders meddling in what they do in their country, and that they get angry when westerners lecture them. But how many Japanese would approve of  this massacre, and of their children eating toxic meat in their school lunches? Also, these dolphins do not belong exclusively to Japan, but to the whole world, and at the moment the Taiji fishermen and Japanese government are doing a great job of killing as many as possible. The fact that this is all taking place in a park is appalling. On the National parks of Japan website states that their “National Parks are places where superb natural wonders are protected and bequeathed to future generations”. Um, really? The hypocrisy in this statement is evident after seeing what is happening in Taiji.
    It is sad that the Japanese media doesn’t cover this more, and that not many Japanese people seem to know about this slaughter, yet the rest of the world condemns them and not their government or the small number of fisherman and trainers. Most of all, I think that it is just sad that the Japanese government either cannot see (though it seems so blatantly obvious) or simply doesn’t care that it is depriving its next generations of dolphins.