Blackfish Documentary Analysis

The understanding of persuasion analyzed in Cicero’s oration can be seen across many contemporary artifacts, but Blackfish is an artifact where persuasion is working at its best. Blackfish is a documentary that was released in 2013 by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. This documentary tells the story of killer whales in captivity, with a large portion of the story surrounding Tilikum. Tilikum is an orca that has severely hurt or killed several trainers while in captivity. The documentary’s website states that the film aims to, “challenge us to consider our relationship to nature and reveals how little we humans have learned from these highly intelligent and enormously sentient fellow animals”(Synopsis, n.p.). Blackfish works to expose the multi billion-dollar
Pathos is another rhetorical appeal coined by Aristotle, but this appeal focuses on using emotions to persuade. Each time a different trainer or expert is sharing their experiences or opinions, it is accompanied by video footage of the whales. Video footage is shown of orcas being caught in the wild to be brought to the sea parks. You are watching these animals struggle for their freedom, but they are essentially helpless. There are also videos shown of mother whales producing high range vocals that were never heard before when crying for their babies that were separated from them. To top it all off, there are graphic videos of trainers being attacked by the whales, sometimes resulting in fatal injuries. All of these eye-opening examples appeal to people’s emotions because they are actually being shown what happens as a result of these sea animals being held in captivity. Seeing these events occur as the trainers speak about them makes people pity the animals and reinforces that the cruelty is real and that whales are suffering in captivity. Not only is it the accompanying pictures and videos that appeal to people’s emotions in an attempt to persuade, but also what the credible speakers are saying. A former director of Sealand spoke of how the orcas were punished when they didn’t train well and that they would deprive them of meals because of their behavior. His account clearly exhibits that the
The concept of understanding persuasion was then applied to the documentary, Blackfish, and explored the filmmakers understanding of how the rhetorical appeals work in favor of a persuasive message. These analyses demonstrate how persuasion can be applied under a multitude of circumstances and how its elements are altered to apply to different situations and events. Although the motives of both of these artifacts was to persuade, it is the way in which the persuasion tactics were carried out that show how different messages require different tactics in order to successfully persuade. Persuasion can be used to exercise power over others thoughts and can even extend to altering their actions. Both works used their understanding of persuasion in efforts to expose, control, and instigate societal changes. These analyses have revealed that persuasion is not a simple matter of changing someone’s thoughts, but rather an extension to action in order to have a larger effect on the greater good of