Gentle women and wild animals are linked in myth and fable, fashion photography and pornography, pulp art and fine art; men hunt wild animals, and women cuddle them
The centerpiece of Blackfish, a new documentary film about killer whales in captivity, is the gruesome death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau. In 2010, Dawn was killed by Tilikum, a six-ton bull orca. The film does not include footage from what has been termed the “death tape,” but it does scan Dawn’s autopsy report, which dryly states that the 40-year-old female suffered numerous abrasions, dislocations, a broken back and jaw, hemorrhaging at multiple sites, and eventual death by suffocation. Her right arm was missing, and she was scalped. The time of death was some 30 minutes before Tilikum relinquished Dawn’s mutilated body.
Dawn was one of SeaWorld’s most experienced and respected trainers, and she had a reputation for strictly following safety protocols. Working with whales was a childhood dream; her family remembers the day she joined SeaWorld, at age twenty-three, as the happiest day of her life. A former student body president and homecoming queen with a gleaming smile, Dawn was also SeaWorld’s public face, appearing as a game show contestant, and on commercials, billboards, and murals. “She was beautiful, blonde, athletic, friendly,” one colleague remembers. “She captured what it means to be a SeaWorld trainer.”
