Movie 58: The Cove

I dreaded watching this because I knew what it was about and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to. Thankfully, if there’s a thankfully here, the part I dreaded was only about 5 minutes long. I did tear up a lot though at the end. Yeah, this review probably won’t have any funny in it.

Richard O’Barry is the guy who brought us Flipper, which subsequently made the popularity of bottle nosed and other dolphins great enough that you can’t go to an aquatic centre that doesn’t have or at least want one. And he regrets that as it comes at a great cost. Rick now does everything he can to free dolphins and is trying to put a stop to the slaughter of 23000 every year in Taiji, Japan.

First off, I’m never setting foot in a dolphin centre again. I’ve seen them in the wild anyway, you can do that here as we have some swimming about locally. Secondly, the people of Japan aren’t to blame as they don’t, or didn’t, really know this was happening for the most part. FIX IT NOW though. And a big fuck you to the government and the “fishermen” (should be “mammalmen”)

I’ll probably sound like a bit of a hippy, but dolphins and other whales are intelligent. And self aware. Recently we’ve discovered they have names. Not the names we give them, they name each other. A species that doesn’t have a sense of self wouldn’t do that because there’d be no point. Yes they can tell each other apart by scent and markings, but I don’t think we’ve learned that anything bar us or some other primates uses nouns. So if your killing a whale, or definetly a dolphin, your killing a someone with a fucking name.

I don’t really know what to write about this without saying how horrible and ridiculous it is over and over. I think you get the message. But I’ll metaphor the bad scene.

There’s a small town, it has 500 people in it of all ages. An army of 12 tanks comes up to the outskirts and starts blasting a noise at something like 300 decibels at the town. It’s unbearable for the people so they try and move away. The tanks follow them in to a valley then bar it so the people are trapped. Then a group comes up and sees who can juggle, dance and generally entertain. Those people (generally teenage girls) are taken away to be kept in jail. Everyone else is herded in to a smaller valley next door, men, women, children, babies, whatever. They are left over night. The next day the guys from the tanks turn up in helicopters and stab them repeatedly, over and over and at random, until the people bleed to death in agony. The valley is literally swimming in blood.

The next day, they move on to the next town and do it again. For 6 months.

THAT is what is happening in Taiji. Not sure if its happening right now, but it starts again in September. I for one think there’s been enough Septembers. I don’t think I’ll be doing this again any time soon but here’s a URL

http://www.takepart.com/thecove/

And people get all excited about fake blue cats getting killed….

Next up: Bright Star