Tourist Productions 2007

Dori Lubliner
Tourist Productions Blog Entry #8
March 31, 2007

Having grown up visiting places just like Sea World in California such as Marine World in the Bay Area, it is interesting to think about how the commodification of marine life laid out for our visual pleasure is so much a part of childhood for many American children. Like Susan Davis points out, the spectacle of the whale and dolphin shows was always entrancing and seemingly educational; however, I can remember that even as a young child, I didn’t understand how and why these creatures could be in a place like Marine World. The whole educational system these places have revolves around very superficial explanations (mainly geared toward young people) which is why training becomes so dominant in the narrations, as Davis describes. It makes sense that instead of giving the audience more profound information about the animals and more importantly about the preservation of the oceans, places like Sea World put together a sort of “marine life for dummies” program. All the employees have to know is a basic understanding of the different species in residence and for the sake of the children at the shows; how the trainers make the wild marine animals obey their commands. The animals cannot perform their own “marine identities” but rather must become rather like circus shows, performing stunts that drive the crowds wild precisely because the tricks are alien to their nature and therefore somehow impressive. In a way, the whales and dolphins (etc.) are performing twice behaved behavior (to quote Richard Schechner) because they are in and of themselves performing the being of an orca (for example) while also performing the antithesis of their own “natural” behaviors by performing “topography of behavior, a very precise, consistent, and measurable use of the body” (172) in other words, completely unnatural standardized animal behaviors

When I was about ten years old, Marine World (I’m not sure of the corporate owners at that time, it has changed a great deal since) decided to build a plethora of enormous roller coasters much to the expense of the animals living within the park. There was a huge controversy over the changes; animals rights activists picketed at the gates and dozens of articles where published in the papers regarding the construction of the rides that were supposed to make the park competitive with other amusement parks. I can remember thinking that it was so sad that the corporation had decided to make these changes that would seriously affect the lives of the animals because people weren’t finding the animals interesting enough to keep up admissions. I took one trip to the park post-roller coasters and was so devastated, I never went back. I personally hate seeing animals in captivity, even at the most well-kept, affluent zoo or exhibit; however, I can understand the appeal of the spectacle, particularly to the young. Davis’s techniques involving the shadowing of school classes and different types of visitors to the park, makes her analysis of the spectacle much more intriguing and diverse in its approach than I had originally thought would be possible. Her analysis is so extremely detailed that it is hard to critique; however, having been that entranced child watching the trainers lovingly care for and play with their marine companions, I cannot agree completely that the Sea World corporate entity is completely sinister. Watching animals in captivity is not an innocent activity like it seemed to be in childhood, but there is still a kind of magic (that is of course what the corporate powers are banking on) that nonetheless brings to life what exists only on television or in the imagination for very young people.

Davis talks about Shamu (and Sea World as a whole) representing the taming of the wild, in other words the domination of the people by the corporate powers that be. It is the human penetration of the wilderness that signifies our unquenchable power trip on the planet. Davis says, “Sea World is a machine that profits by selling people’s dreams back to them- dreams of a happy family, congenial public spaces free of fear, a peaceful community, meaningful social action, un-alienated labor and true leisure, a just and clean and provident physical world” (244). True, that the spectacle that is Sea World provides this kind of service for profit, which makes the entity contradictory and problematic on a multitude of levels; however, the suspension of disbelief she discusses as totally impossible, is actually quite possible for an audience of children. How are they to know that these dreams are total fabrications unless somebody tells them that this is so? Kids believe in Santa Claus until someone older and wiser in the cruel realities of the world informs the child that this is all a deception. I think that Sea World, while definitely a place of un-kept promises and surface-level, profiteering, educational ploys, can be and definitely is in large part a magical world of possibility and access to the young and blissfully ignorant. I don’t think that this is positive or negative, but I also do not see how a profiting theme park can function in any other way. I mean, America has been and continues to be about suspension of disbelief in more ways than one.