The Cove Commentary

            This documentary The Cove was definitely made to bring awareness to the dolphin slaughters in Taiji. It proves its argument, that it is inhumane and cruel, through various shots of the actual slaughter. It focuses on the techniques used to kill the dolphins as well as the town’s resistance to let the knowledge of it get public. There are many instances of the fishermen provoking the camera men and such as well.

            The “protagonists” of the movie are trying to stop this injustice, and they make it clear on why. Some of the reasons are that dolphins are intelligent creatures that are dying every year by the thousands, that it’s unhealthy for people to eat dolphin meat since it’s laced with so much mercury, and that dolphins shouldn’t be held in captivity since they will die from so much sound surrounding them. Experts and activists are filmed explaining why they die, why there’s so much mercury, and why they were hunted so fervently. They are talking mostly when idyllic images of jumping and swimming dolphins in shining blue seas are filling the screen, trying to show something worth saving.

            The movie was meant to make the audience watch intently as the secret operations took the screen and gasp and cringe in horror when they see the waters turn red. They chose the shots they did specifically to make an impact. They wanted to show how dangerous it was in Japan to try to gather the evidence that they did, how they were watched every moment so they couldn’t do much, how it really was possible for a sea of blood to exist, how heartbreaking it was to hear the dolphins cry. They explored the effects of it, the foreshadowing of bad outcomes like a plague of Minamata disease that had happened before in the past. They showed grotesque images of deformed and sick and dying people. They showed dolphins floating with their bellies up in aquariums because they metaphorically bled through their ears and to their death.

            It tries to show the fishermen and town officials’ points of views, but they show them as people who make up excuses to continue the dolphin slaughter practice because it makes good money. It probably doesn’t show that the fishermen are poor or not doing well and they need jobs like this to survive. There are other points of views that should have been explored more, like the people in Tokyo and the other big cities in Japan who knew nothing about the dolphin slaughter. Did so few really know about it? They should have interviewed more people and found statistics.

            However, the film certainly educates about how dolphins act and react to humans naturally, and it reveals the practice in Taiji that most of its audience probably didn’t know about before. It brings light to a dark matter that most would rather remain ignorant to, but it certainly got a lot of limelight and now it seldom can be ignored. What people have changed their lifestyles because of this, or become active?