The Ethical Dilemna of Rescue

    Our latest documentary was called The Summit and documents the tragedy that occurred on August 1 & 2, 2008, on the K2 mountain of Pakistan and China. K2 is the second highest mountain on earth and with a 25% death rate, is deadlier than Everest.
    This documentary was very hard to follow. This was partially due to the way they told the story (starting in the middle) and partially due to the fact that to this day, what happened on K2 is largely a mystery. All in all this is a very interesting and saddening documentary. It seemed like it was trying very hard to be Touching the Void (A similar mountaineering documentary. This one is MUST SEE!) though it was not nearly as good. The film explores the mystery behind accidental deaths and some unexplained deaths and attempts to fill in the blanks. It is shot through a combination of actual footage of the event and what I presume were reenactments (?) though which is which is never made entirely clear.
    The film also underlines the debate amongst climbers of whether there is a responsibility to rescue fellow climbers if there is a high risk of personal injury or death. When several Korean climbers were stranded on the mountain due to injury the vast majority of climbers at the next lowest camp refused (with apparently legitimate excuses) to make the climb to rescue them. Of the five that did attempt the rescue, three of whom were unequipped hired sherpas, three died, including both sherpas.

    A previous generation might have suggested that the only "right" thing to do would have been to risk it all to rescue the other climbers, regardless of whether or not they were part of your group or nationality. I believe that many of today's generation, which apparently includes the climbers on the mountain that day, would say that they knew the risks when they made the climb and it would be stupid to attempt an ill-fated rescue. I am not sure what I would do if put in their position, and I never have to know.  If you were put in a similar situation, would you be able to live or die with the consequences?
 

     

Bronies: The Most Random Fandom in the World

     This week Hannah and I were tired of the sad, heavy documentaries and decided to find something a little lighter. We ended up watching Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. All I can say is it was easily the most unusual documentary that we have seen and also the most entertaining. Check out this trailer before I discuss this any further so you will have an idea of what I'm talking about.

     

    As you can see, this documentary is about the fans of a TV show called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, whose intended audience is little girls, ages 2 to 11. Unexpectedly, a huge contingent of males aged 12 to 35 are also obsessed with the show.
      One of the most interesting things about this documentary is how it was made. It started as a Kickstarer campaign with a goal of $60,000. It reached it's goal in about 3 days and when the campaign was over it had raised over $322,000. The film is the brainchild of John da Lancie, a voice actor, that plays one of the characters in the show.  (He also plays Jane's father, the air traffic controller, in Breaking Bad.) da Lancie had the idea when he saw the amazing outpouring of support from these adult fans when he joined the show.
     I am not going to spoil anything in this film which is very heartfelt. You should all see it as it is a fascinating look at the emotions of many young people today, not to mention a very entertaining documentary. I would like to talk about how these people are perceived in the media and popular culture.

    When I first heard of these people I was somewhat creeped out as I'm sure some of you were. It seems unnatural that adult males with jobs and families and mortgages should be obsessed with this show. As expected, people have been extremely derogatory online and in the media. Despite this, there is nothing that is fundamentally wrong adults enjoying this show. No doubt the creators were thrilled to find out that they had inspired a cult following. There is really no difference between adults enjoying this and adults enjoying Harry Potter. In fact I believe the same ideas that make Harry Potter popular also make My Little Pony popular. Specifically, the ideas of loyalty, friendship, respect and a solid idea of what is right and what is wrong are, in my opinion what make both of these examples so popular. These are the things that just about everyone desires in their own lives. They want friends who won't abandon them when things get hard. They want to be respected for their own abilities. They want to know that the moral decision that they make is for the right. In today's day and age, so many people have learned that right and wrong are relative that they find relief in a place where right and wrong are so attainable.

     As I have previously alluded, I think that fandoms such as the ones created by My Little Pony, comic books and geekery in general are attractive to Generation Y and Mellennials in particular because they create a sense of belonging that they cannot find anywhere else. They are often alone and shunned by others in our culture because they have interests beyond what is trivial and trite. They may come from broken homes, or have a disability or just not be "cool" and they have found a place that they are not only accepted, but embraced. They are respected for the things they can do and the things they can create and they make very lasting friendships. While others are joining gangs and cults, these "nerds" are finding a sense of belonging in something harmless if not downright positive.

     All this to say, this documentary is excellent and is a fun film. I highly recommend it. Next week there will be no documentary post as Hannah and I will be travelling to New Mexico. I will post pictures as we visit different locations featured in AMC's Breaking Bad.

Blackfish - The Power of Film

    Hannah chose Blackfish for us this week and I was unenthusiastic. I was expecting a smear campaign against SeaWorld with a complete lack of fact and more heuristic stylings. Then I sat down and watched it. 

    It was an extremely compelling film with interviews from former SeaWorld trainers and Orca Whale Experts. There were expert witnesses from OSHA talking about how unsafe it was for both whales and trainers. Neurologists talking about how male whales in captivity have bent over fins while this never happens in the wild. At the end of the film I was convinced. I was ready to never go to SeaWorld again because they didn't care about the well being of their trainers or their whales and only about their bottom line. For me, this is a big deal as I am very skeptical and cynical about these documentaries in general.

    Blackfish is a documentary about Orca whales in captivity and their interactions with humans. Specifically, those in which a whale trainer was injured or killed. One whale in particular, Tillikum, is a repeat offender with at least three deaths to his name. The film shows, with overwhelming evidence and trainer testimony the danger that the trainers encounter while working with these mammals. They also go so far as to imply that the animals do these things because they have become psychotic from being separated from family members and enclosed in spaces much smaller than they are used to. The documentary ended with a call to free the whales and release them into the wild. 

     I was completely convinced, and I sat down to write a blog with a very different thesis... then I started to do some research. The first thing I did was look for SeaWorld's reaction to the film and needless to say it was not positive. I expected a terse press release about how changes and being implimented etc. etc. However, I was surprised to find  a point by point rebuttal of most of the tenets of the film, each point backed up with hard evidence. Now, lest you believe I just take SeaWorld's word for it, I did my own research and it turns out that quite a bit of the interviews were misleading. Here is just some evidence that casts some serious doubt as to the integrity of this film. 

1. Using Orcas in SeaWorld Shows Constitutes Slavery. 

      Most of the main interviewees were involved in a lawsuit filed against SeaWorld claiming that using the Orca whales in shows was a violation of the 13th Ammendment and that it constituted involuntary servitude. Naturally this lawsuit was thrown out by the judge. I do love however that it was filed in Southern California (As opposed to Florida, where the 'plaintiffs' reside) where such a suit might have a small chance of getting through. 

2. Interviewees were Mislead About the Purpose of the Film. 

      Some people who were interviewed for the film have, after it's release, come forward angry that their thoughts were intentionally edited to show them saying things they did not intend. You can see their thoughts here and here. 

3. "Scientists" give their "Scientific" testimony. 

     This is my personal favorite. I did some research on the scientists giving their thoughts in this film and turns out that they literally do not have the expertise that is claimed by the film. One gentleman in particular, Dave Duffus, is given considerable screen time and gives some of the most heart wrenching information/performance. In the film he is subtitled as "OSHA Expert Witness - Whale Researcher" In reality, he is the associate professor of geography (GEOGRAPHY!!!!) at the University of Victoria. I double checked this because I didn't believe it at first. You can see his faculty listing here and read some rather hilarious Rate My Professor reviews here.

    As I said before these are only some of the evidence that can show how fallacious this film is. Perhaps the strongest evidence is given by Dawn Brancheau's family (The woman who was killed most recently by Tillikum) and can be read here. 

    Now, I do think that SeaWorld has some serious questions to answer. The most blatant of which is why was Tillikum, or any orca that threatens the life of a trainer, not put down? This would put pressure on Sea World to protect both their trainers and their animals that are worth millions of dollars. This would occur with any other animal that kills a human, so why not with Orcas? 

   The story of Blackfish is not yet over. Of course the supporters of Blackfish have denied any sort of journalistic dishonesty.  Just this week a law was proposed in California to ban Orca shows and captive breeding. For me, all I learned was that I am kind of gullible. 

You can find out more about the science behind Blackfish at this link.

The Act of Killing

     This was both the most boring and most fascinating documentary that Hannah and I have yet watched. The Act of Killing is again nominated for today's Academy Awards, though in my opinion it should not win.
     This is the first documentary that we have watched where I had absolutely zero knowledge of its subject. It tells the story of Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry, among others who in 1965 and 1966 were responsible for leading death squads who killed over 500,000 people (The documentary claims up to 2 million though I was unable to confirm this).  The people they killed were supposedly former communists, although even the killers admit that many of them were not. This film is not the history of this genocide however, it is a documentation of an attempt by these murderers to re-enact their killings for posterity and especially international audiences. 

 

      These killers, Anwar and Adi are now leaders in a paramilitary organization in Indonesia called Pemuda Pancasila and hold tremendous power even over the government. Interestingly, Indonesians do not see them as genocidal killers or war criminals, rather they are esteemed by the general public as founding fathers. To this day, through the power of their organization they continue to extort "protection" and "insurance" from the businesses of Chinese immigrants to Indonesia. They are also known to rig elections and so forth.

        The leaders of this organization are proud to brag about the number of people that they have personally killed and describe in great detail how they would perform the killings. They even continue to do so when the American director of the documentary Joshua Oppenheimer openly calls them war criminals and compares them to Hitler in Nazi Germany. They go so far as to say they were greater than Hitler because they were more depraved in the ways that they would kill people.
      As I said before this 90% of this documentary was incredibly sad and difficult to watch. There were extremely long and drawn out sections of this film that showed discussions among these "gangsters"(They continually explain that this term is "an american word that means 'free men'" of how they wanted to dress and act out their killings for the film. This was both very boring, and also very frightening that someone could discuss these actions with such banality. 
      The 10% that redeems this film comes at the end, when Anwar, who has up to this point bragged about personally killing over 1000 people by strangling them with a fine copper wire, plays one of the victims as they act out these tragedies. As a blindfold is put over his face and the wire is wrapped around his neck, you see a visceral reaction as he finally understands the horrors of his actions and breaks down in tears. He again visits the places where he committed the murders, this time with a full realization of what he has done and is repentant (at least outwardly). 
    This is a brilliant documentary (although it could have been much shorter) and I recommend it mainly because so few people know about this genocide. It is also an interesting exploration of the psyche of the people who have done these horrible things.