It’s almost too easy to make the Japanese fishermen, who don’t speak much English, look like brutes. But they’re probably not much different than the Canadian farmer down the road who kills cows for a living.

The film pointedly questions this type of rationalization, claiming that the dolphin hunt stems not just out of economic necessity, or accepted cultural practice, but is also the result of stubborn human perversity and national pride. The filmmakers maintain that they offered to pay off the fishermen, but were refused on the grounds that the dolphin hunt is also about “pest control.” Dolphins, like people, eat fish, and as the fishing stocks continue to dwindle, Japanese fishermen blame the only other large sentient mammals around. The film portrays their attitude as “eat or be eaten,” but it’s more complicated than that.

In an interview with Frontline on PBS, O’Barry talked specifically about the idea of dolphins in captivity. “So any intelligent person who sees a trained dolphin show whether it's Shamu or Flipper or Keiko or whatever, would have to conclude if they were honest, that what they just witnessed was a spectacle of dominance. That's what's wrong with it. It teaches us that dominance is good. Dominance is right, dominance works, and that's the problem.”

A fatal loss of empathy

This is the most pivotal idea in The Cove, but it gets a bit lost in amongst the screaming, bleeding animals. It’s a deeply embedded idea that everything in the world is there simply for the taking -- and, more often than not -- the eating. It is the loss of empathy, not just for other human beings, but for everything. The Cove makes that attitude seem so total that we despair of changing it.

After watching The Cove, I came home and listened to a message from my sister about killing a giant spider she found in her basement. It struck me suddenly that if it's difficult to have much sympathy for other humans, what hope do dolphins and spiders have?

The Cove argues that if we can’t save a creature that is at least as intelligent as ourselves, we have no hope of saving the world. I don’t want to take the pessimistic view, but after watching film after film after film about the loss of regard for the planet and its citizens (everything from wasps to whales), hope is easily killed. One day it may become completely extinct.