Blackfish is an amazing documentary about SeaWorld’s mistreatment of Orcas. (It made #12 on my best of the year list.) It hasn’t been very widely seen; box office returns were fairly low. Even still, it seems SeaWorld – giant corporation that it is – is doing everything it can to try to mitigate the damages. That’s not surprising: the film is incredibly damning. And since it release, they’ve battling backlash on all fronts. Several high profile musicians, including Willie Nelson and Trisha Yearwood and a bunch of others, pulled out of their big concert series in response.
Not unexpectedly, many of SeaWorld’s efforts to contain the shitstorm have not reflected well on them. Just one example from the Orlando Business Journal…
On Dec. 31, Orlando Business Journal posted a poll asking readers: “Has CNN’s ‘Blackfish’ documentary changed your perception of SeaWorld?” As of midday Jan. 2, the results were staggeringly in favor of those saying the film hasn’t had any impact on their perception of the parks — roughly 99 percent siding in SeaWorld’s favor.
Sounds a little fishy, no? OBJ checked the numbers, and guess what they found.
…imagine our surprise when we noticed that one single Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) accounted for more than 54 percent of the votes, or about 180 of the total 328 votes. IP Addresses are typically unique Internet identifiers given to a computer or series of devices — say a multi-computer network in your office.
And who’s the owner of the domain name and company that address belong to? SeaWorld.com and SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment.
Read the full article here.
Blackfish is available for streaming from Netflix. You owe it to yourself to watch it.
EDIT: Here’s SeaWorld’s response. That makes sense, and it sure sounds legit and legal. But it still looks really bad. It looks like they’re willing to do anything they can to save face. It looks like they’re scared. Good.
The Screen Life 