The Cove Essay

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Rhetorical Analysis of The Cove by Louie Psihoyos The documentary The Cove is a hybrid of history, propaganda, and facts that demonstrates the ugly truth about the dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Japan. Directed by former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, The Cove is told from an ocean environmentalist's point of view that highlights the brutal dolphin killing rituals and the thoughtless fishing practices in Japan. With the help and cooperation from the Oceanic Preservation Society and O’Barry, Psihoyos forms a crew, “an orchestra,” and utilizes special strategies and equipment to stealthily film what is taking place in the cove. The documentary portrays different levels of effective planning and presentation that attracts the audience with its sensible appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos in a form of muckraking. Muckraking is the act of publicizing indecent information in hopes to raise awareness, and as a muckraker himself, Psihoyos demonstrates a successful argument and position against the dolphin killing in Taiji. The document, itself, is a definition of muckraking, as it is heavily “depended on facts” (Bausum). One of the many reasons Psihoyos’ documentary is considered a successful argument and a voice that projects is because he has “thought a great deal about who [he] was writing for” (Faigley and Selzer). He is well aware that his audience is not as conversant about the dolphin slaughter at the cove in Taiji; therefore, evidence and statistics are provided for the viewers and consumers in Japan. As a muckraker who intends to bring the brutal killing of dolphins to an end, he presents his ethos with the knowledge and research he embraces in order to educate his audience about the negative and forbidding truth about the slaughter. The evidence that Psihoyos provides for his readers reveals that what the Japanese fishermen claim to

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