Blog #6

The film The Cove produced by Louie Pshioyos in 2009 is a documentary about dolphins. This documentary explains how every year in Taiji, Japan 23,000 dolphins are slaughtered while only maybe ten are captured and put in captivity to be trained. Most of this documentary is about how unethical and wrong it is for them to kill so many dolphins, how ever it also does a good job of showing why the Japanese feel that they need to slaughter them.

Airing the opposite side of an argument is very important when trying to get your point across. Without the counter argument it is much harder to get your point across. The counter argument is there to show the other side and help emphasize why your argument is the right side to be on. For example in this movie the whole point is to explain why killing dolphins is so bad and why it shouldn’t be done, if there wasn’t the other side aired on why the Japanese actually do it then the point of the movie wouldn’t be as valid.

Though they did air the other side of the story as to why the killing happens the argument was not convincing. The main argument that they used as to why they killed the dolphins was that they used it as a source of food. Though they felt this was a good argument and the documentary pointed this out its not a convincing argument at all in the fact that the documentary explains why this is not a valid point. They explain it isn’t a valid point by actually testing dolphin meat and showing that it is actually very toxic. When testing the meat they found that there were high levels of mercury found in it, which is very harmful to the human body when consumed. So yes they air the opposite side of the argument its not a convincing argument because they do an excellent job and disclaiming their argument.

I think airing the most unethical arguments are the most important for the sake of “fairness”. I believe this because I believe that people need to know what things are going on so that something can be done about it. Most times when something as unethical as the killing of 23,000 dolphins is kept from the knowledge of the public, and when something like this is happens the public deserves to know. The government has no right to keep this from the public. The public has the right to know, and the right to voice their opinion to. So I don’t think that there is anything that is unethical to air because the public has the right to know what’s going on.

So I think this documentary by Louie Psihoyos does an excellent job of getting his point across while voicing the other argument while at the same time informing the public on what is really happening. Now that the public knows what is going on now something can happen and this can stop because it needs to stop, and this documentary did an excellent job of showing how wrong it is.