I must admit, Animal Planet's TV series Whale Wars utterly fascinates me. I mean, how the hell are self admitted pirates, brash enough to televise all their antics allowed to operate unabated? I mean, if I'm the operator of a commercial fleet being harassed by pirates, I imagine I would find some way to board them, arrest and detain the crew, and sink the ship. At least that is my dream scenario for the climax of this TV series. One can dream, and one of my dreams WILL come true this season.
The whale warriors have their own objective of course. They are out to stop whaling, not because Minkie whales are endangered, because they aren't, but because they simply don't like it. Whales are cute, cuddly, lovable, majestic...or whatever other superlatives you need to label them with to justify caring about them more than any other mammal, like say a cow or pig. But what is truly at work here is you have a group of impressionable and inadequate people being led by a man who doesn't care about them. Captain Paul Watson admits with stunning regularity that he doesn't care about human life, he's there to save the whales, at any cost. He frequently asks if his crew is willing to give their lives to save whales. I'm not sure when he's going to feed them to the whales, but I'm waiting for the moment.
But if this show doesn't make you laugh so hard your pants fall off, then you are clearly viewing it from the care-bear end of the looking glass, which means that we will not get along too well, you and I. I don't see how you can't laugh at the obvious folly of throwing stink bombs onto a ship that already smells like rotting whale corpses. I also laugh when they get sea sick, because after all, they are just a bunch of land loving tree huggers. You would think all the acid trips that made them used to screwed up perceptions of reality would possibly prepare them for a few waves.
Then there's the more disturbing attempts they make to actually do harm to people or disable the large ships of the Japanese whaling fleet. One tactic was to throw slimy goo all over the decks of the ship, apparently with the goal to make all the whalers fall off the boat or injure themselves. I mean, if that's not the intent, what is? Do they expect them to softly fall over, then just stay on the ground? I doubt it, not even Paul Watson can be that stupid, I mean he can operate a huge ship. The other option is prop foulers. They use long ropes in an attempt to foul or damage the propellers of the whaling ships. Now, if you know anything about ships and oceans, you might know that a ship that cant move can be sunk by waves. You don't have the attention span for me to explain how, look it up later. So either by injuring the crew, making them fall off the ship, or disabling it so mother nature will hopefully sink the ship, the crew of the Sea Shepherd clearly has no regard for human life, and this fact doesn't escape the whalers.
This season's Whale Wars is shaping up to be a great one. For the Japanese whalers that is. So far the Steve Irwin has been harassed by a harpoon ship for all 3 episodes so far and hasn't had a chance to find the actual whaling fleet. The Bob Barker, a brand spanking new, sixty year old pile of steaming garbage with an ice rating couldn't get out of dock because it didn't run. Then there's the Ady Gil. It's just Earthrace re-badged, painted black and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. You can see the impotence written all over Captain Watson's face as everything he tries...fails. If only he knew how much he made me laugh, maybe he'd feel better.
No comments:
Post a Comment