The Cove

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad...We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: 

 "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

 - Network

So today we watched The Cove in Critical Studies. This is the documentary that won the Oscar for Best Documentary (amongst a whole load of other awards). It is honestly one of the most harrowing films I have ever seen. It takes a lot to keep my class interested, and every single person was absolutely absorbed. If you haven't seen it, go to Cinema Nouveau NOW. Honestly, its so worth it.

The Cove is a 2009 American documentary film that describes the annual killing of dolphins in a National Park at Taiji, Wakayama, in Japan from an anti–dolphin-hunting campaigner's point of view. The film highlights that the number of dolphins killed in the Taiji dolphin hunting drive is several times greater than the number of whales killed in the Antarctic, and claims that 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan every year in the country's whaling industry. The migrating dolphins are herded into a hidden cove where they are netted and killed by means of spears and knives over the side of small fishing boats. The slaughtered dolphins are then sold disguised as whale meat. This is because dolphin meat is ridiculously high in mercury, and should not be eaten by humans. 

The film follows a group of activists as they work to uncover the truth of what's really going on. It shows them diving into the harbour in the middle of the night to hide cameras disguised as rocks. This gave them the first documentation of the dolphins being killed by Japanese fishermen. Watch the documentary to hear the rest, it will honestly stick with you for a while. Watch the trailer now, then go to http://www.takepart.com/thecove/ to sign the petition.