In tragic news, Dawn Brancheau, a trainer at Seaworld, in Orlando, Florida, has been killed by one of her orca charges. Minutes before the tragedy they were romping, as best is our human description, when suddenly the whale took her, some say playfully, in his mouth and tossed her like a rag doll. Apparently this magnificent creature, not designed by God, or nature, to be a performing act in a circus, had done this before.
The inadequate response from Seaworld has been to step up security around the orca’s shows. The appropriate response would have been to return the mammal to the deep seas, and forgo our misguided need for such circus-style gratification.
Returning the animal to captivity, and subsequent enslavement, is in the worst interests of the animal.
In lighter news, Peter Garrett has been thrown out of the big pond, and is now Minister for looking after cute and furry animals, and any rock’n'roll issues that may be of use to the Labor Party.
While he’s no longer saving the whales, I’d suggest that he’s a whole lot happier in this cultural portfolio. Horses for courses. While not being an old politico, he’s certainly an old dog in the public relations sphere. What else is rock singing to a generation or two, but public relations?
This 50-something man has skills that are sorely needed in this Gen X,Y and Boomer society we are part of.
Having even less whale of a time, 80s pop diva, Whitney Houston, being derided by both critics and punters for lacklustre performances in Brisbane and Sydney, is on the eve of her Newcastle Winerys’ shows. Way back in the 80s, on her first tour to Oz, she found herself insufficiently prepared to perform live, and also overpowered by her support artist, John Farnham.
Farnham saved the show. But what could you expect from a teenage girl who had never performed live on the big stage. Back in LA she was royalty, albeit young royalty, niece of Thelma Houston, doyen of record producers for her stratospheric hitting of the high notes, to this day, embossed on vinyl and digitally embalmed on CD. The young Whitney was solid gold in the parlance of the day. That no-one had thought to send her on a band gig or two, a rough’n'ready tour, a get to know the ins-and-outs of performing, sadly impacted on her ability to sell her talents live across the world.
To suggest that her subsequent drug abuse is related to this prima donna treatment of a young diva is not for me to say, yet I’d say she would now be glad to be free of the circus that has imprisoned her. A great voice, once unchained, a life that could have been extraordinary, while singing to the heavens, instead, is destroyed in pursuit of the dollar. Whitney was a product way before she was a person. As a result we have possibly lost one of the greatest voices of the late 20th Century.
Given Whitney’s talent, there is much left in her voice, in her vocal ability to tell her story. Let’s hope she decides to. In the long term, a blues singer can tell a greater story than a soulless diva.
In the longer term, a mammal such as the aforementioned ‘Tillikum’, the giant orca, continues to live in captivity and slavery, performing tricks for food. Wanting only to return to the sea, it is a little cruel for officials to continue to enslave the orca, the great whale that has no reason to be contained by mere men other than for the almighty dollar.
Everyone loves a circus, except those trapped in the cages.
