The Cove as Rhetorical Documentary: Part I

 

The Cove establishes the worth of dolphins but also assumes, because they have historically been viewed as sentient creatures, that viewers will immediately call for action, once the slaughter at Taiji Cove is revealed. “We tried to do the story legally,” we’re told at the opening of this documentary revealing this dolphin slaughter in a cove in Taiji, Japan, “A little town with a really big secret.” 

Ric O’Barry’s attempts to film the slaughter are continually hampered by local authorities until he partners with the film’s director Louie Psihoyos. O’Barry never planned to be an activist, he explains, but after one of the dolphins he had trained killed herself in his arms by cutting off her own oxygen supply, he became a dolphin advocate, freeing as many as possible and preventing their slaughter. But dolphins are such great performers they have become a huge commodity worth $150,000.00 apiece for Sea World shows. Because thousands of dolphins come to Taiji each year, dolphin trainers collect dolphins there, bringing 2.3 million dollars a year to the area. The remaining dolphins herded into the cove are slaughtered for food, O’Barry explains, but he needs filmic proof to present to the world, so he can stop the catastrophe. 

Filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and Netscape CEO Jim Clark join forces with O’Barry to accomplish this mission, helping him build a team of experts to plant cameras and microphones, even hiring George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic to construct artificial rocks in which they can hide cameras in the cove. They bring in world-class divers, a military expert, and a rock concert organizer to facilitate the mission, and the film documents the process these experts follow to plan and execute their goal to film the slaughter in two stages: they first plant audio equipment, and then, in Mission 2: The Full Orchestra, the team hides cameras around the cove.