Consider the cow.
Look deep into the eyes and what do you see? A soulful being pondering existence and yearning for a mountain top and clear air? Unlikely, unless you are on drugs. At best it is ruminating about why it has to ruminate and manage a four-compartment stomach just to process grass. Most likely it is just being, and waiting to be a steak.
But imagine how Dick McDonald would have felt if he had awoken one morning and decided that such a gentle, placid creature should not be destined to be substantial component of a Big Mac (along with worms, cardboard and the general detritus swept off the floor at the abattoir). Imagine if he dedicated the rest of his life to righting his perceived wrongs.
Meet Richard O’Barry. Those of you old enough and sad enough (that excludes me of course), will have seen him in the TV series Flipper; something to do with a dolphin who did wonderful deeds, a sort of aquatic Lassie with more water and less barking. O’Barry was a dolphin trainer and worked on the show and trained dolphins for aquariums; until he suddenly decided that dolphins in captivity were a bad thing and dedicated the rest of his life to freeing his new friends.
Problem was, as a direct result of the popularity of Flipper, dolphin shows were springing up all over the globe; and increasing numbers of dolphins were having their afternoon swim interrupted by men with nets and bad intentions. In a futile attempt to close the Pandora’s box he had opened, O’Barry has spent the last thirty years in a cycle that involves him illegally freeing dolphins; followed immediately by the law locking him up for a period. And then he found the cove.
The Japanese have no qualms about killing almost anything that swims, including whales, but not apparently dolphins. But they do herd vast numbers of dolphins inshore at a place called Taijii; and then select those most likely to be good at balancing a ball on their nose for shipment to oceanariums around the world. But then the remaining dolphins are not set free, but herded into a nearby cove from which they do not reappear; but the water coming out of the cove does change to a suspicious shade of red. What’s going on? Dolphin paintballing?
The Cove documents the efforts of O’Barry and a team of various specialists to penetrate the tight security around the cove and film what transpires to be not paintballing but the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of dolphins annually. The meat then gets slipped into supermarkets marked as whale; although it is quite different from whale meat in as much as it contains dangerous levels of mercury. Not that you would know that until your hair fell out and you started to feel really heavy (my knowledge of the effects of mercury poisoning is limited).
The first half of the documentary is the set-up and we meet O’Barry’s team and the not at all welcoming Japanese fisherman whose livelihood this is. We also get the full “dolphins are wonderful” treatment, and of course they are. They surf, they are friendly, it looks like they are smiling, and you can teach them to do tricks (but that is wrong nowadays). The actual penetration of the cove, with subsurface cameras and sound equipment, and with video cameras hidden inside false rocks, is reasonably exciting; a bit like Ocean’s Eleven, but with more ocean, less barking and nobody that looks like George Clooney.
Of course the slaughter is very unpleasant to witness, although I expect no worse than what happens everyday in a shed somewhere near you to a hapless pig, cow or llama.
In its favour, The Cove is interesting, at times exciting, and laced with surprising humour given the subject matter. And the ending is a lovely example of “sticking it to the man”. But I can’t help thinking it is rather overstating the extremity of the act; given all the other shit that is happening around the world. But just to show my solidarity, I vow never to eat a dolphin burger again. Or a Big Mac.
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2010-03-08| Spike saysBest Documentary at the Oscars.