Smells Like ‘10s Spirit: How ‘Blackfish’ Epitomizes the Era of Hashtag Activism

“Smells Like ’10s Spirit” takes a look at the decade in movies through the lens of success stories only made possible by unique trends that emerged. This series explores ten films – one from each year of the 2010s – and a single social, economic or cultural factor that can explain why it made an impact or lingers in the collective memory. Each piece examines a single film that tells the larger story of the tectonic forces reshaping the entertainment landscape as we know it. In this edition: Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Blackfish, written by Cowperthwaite, Eli Despres, and Tim Zimmermann.

“We don’t do anything in San Diego in response to activists,” remarked SeaWorld’s CEO Joel Manby in 2015 as his company announced their plans to phase out their orca shows. “We do it because we have heard from our guests.” It’s not exaggeration to say that the 2013 documentary Blackfish orchestrated a true sea change (pun fully intended) in how SeaWorld conducted itself in the world. This feat, while possible in previous eras, came to pass largely because of tectonic shifts in the way audiences consumed and discussed and nonfictional narratives. Blackfish makes for a paradigmatic case for the era, too, showcasing both the potentials and the pitfalls of so-called hashtag activism.

The arc of cinema’s evolution is long, but it bends away from individualization and towards collective experiences. Yes, this even includes the shift from watching in cinemas to streaming’s dominance – people might not be viewing them in the same room together, but the globalization and centralization of content has had the effect of both expanding and extending the conversation. With the explosion of online communication tools – the percentage of Americans with a social media profile grew from 44% in 2010 to 63% by just 2013 – even a documentary can become an event. Especially when they hit a public nerve, the potential for them to serve as a locus for organizing and action has never been greater.

Blackfish was far from the first documentary to move the needle of public opinion and prompt true change. Errol Morris’ 1988 film The Thin Blue Line re-examined a murder case that eventually led to the subject’s exoneration. More recently, Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 doc Super Size Me, the original man vs. food, played a large part in McDonald’s removing supersize options from their menu. Similarly to SeaWorld, the company refused to acknowledge that a film played a part in their decision – “menu simplification” was the corporate PR lingo that spokesman Walt Riker chose to employ when explaining the move. With the help of a confluence of trends in societal activism, word-of-mouth social media responsivity and viewing platforms, a scrappy Sundance premiere like Blackfish managed to erode the share price of a massive corporation and force structural changes to their business model.

The film’s impact was far from a foregone conclusion at the time of release. SeaWorld never slept on the threat, pre-emptively sending out a letter to critics prior to Blackfish‘s release offering a counternarrative. While their spin doctors acknowledged that director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s documentary represented a “powerful, emotionally-moving piece of advocacy,” their message offered point-by-point refutations of what they called “the film’s most egregious and untrue allegations.” It didn’t work. Buoyed by virtually unanimous critical praise, Blackfish earned a respectable $2 million dollars in its 3-month theatrical run in the late summer of 2013 (a time before non-fiction films were regularly earning above $10 million). Those that did see the film did not remain silent – a report from market research firm MediaMiser showed that Twitter sentiment towards SeaWorld was 74% negative from July 12 to August 16, 2013, a period that coincides with high tourist volume at the parks.

The real danger for SeaWorld came later in 2013 when CNN, a network which maintained a virtually even split between political ideologies at the time, aired Blackfish live on October 24. As a producing partner on the documentary, the network had a vested interest in turning the broadcast into an event. Promoting Blackfish across and through their various news programs had the effect of nudging the film into the public conversation and elevating its importance. CNN’s senior director for social news, Lila King, also created what she called “a back channel to the broadcast” on Twitter and social media. Various members of the filmmaking team, along with subject matter experts, were live tweeting the film, which CNN actively encouraged with the #blackfish hashtag on screen. The effort worked as the airing reached seven million people on Twitter alone that night and, through multiple repeat broadcasts, played to an audience of nearly 21 million viewers on cable.

That’s not without a little help, however. Unbeknownst to CNN, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) planned their own tweetathon alongside the broadcast of Blackfish, encouraging advocates for animal welfare to speak out on Twitter with the hashtag #BlackfishOnCNN. PETA understood from early in the lifecycle of Blackfish that the film represented a significant chance to advance their anti-SeaWorld messaging that was otherwise failing to gain traction. Opportunistic, brilliant or both, the results are undeniable. Their site “SeaWorld of Hurt,” designed to highlight the malpractice of the company, drew a few dozen visitors per day prior to October 2013. By 2015, thanks to their marketing efforts piggybacking off Blackfish‘s success, their total site traffic was 1.3 million visits. The film also proved a fundraising bonanza for the organization, turning their operating deficit of $28,000 to an operating surplus of $4.5 million within the same time frame.

The campaign rippled outwards, garnering tweets in the weeks that followed from prominent celebrities like Stephen Fry and Ariana Grande that praised the film and decried SeaWorld. Film viewership – and by extension, tweet volume – swelled further when Magnolia Pictures released Blackfish on Netflix’s streaming service on December 12, 2013. According to the streaming service, the film was still one of the highest rated science/nature documentaries two years later. And as the film’s message got out to more and more people, what they heard from SeaWorld was … silence.

The company opted for a path of minimal resistance, likely assuming outrage would die down organically, and their comment would only fan the flames. In a traditional PR climate, they might have been proven correct. To boot, reporters predicted that another Sundance 2013 title, Escape from Tomorrow, might cause a crisis for Disney after the filmmakers surreptitiously shot a DIY horror film within one of the company’s parks. The Mouse House stayed mum, and the film barely registered as a blip on anyone’s radar when it was released online in October 2013. But with signal boosting from several prominent organizations that translated into consistent social media conversation, Blackfish simply would not go away.

Finally, on December 27, SeaWorld posted an open letter from the company’s “animal advocates” on their website. The “fact sheet,” if one wishes to dubiously apply an industry standard term, rebutted a number of allegations made against them in the film and in the resultant campaigns. In an earlier era, perhaps some networks or news outlets might have picked up the rebuttal and disseminated the claims to their audience. Yet, again, SeaWorld mistook the grounds on which their battle was taking place – and they were ill-equipped to stop a fast-moving fire that was unlike anything in documentary history. In an era where cameras and screens are everywhere, messaging and imagery rushes into fill the void left by corporate silence. Blackfish heralded an era where declining to comment became taken as a tacit admission of guilt by audiences who learned they had the power to demand accountability and drive the narrative.

Furthermore, action moved from posting on social media towards more direct impact campaigns. People energized by the message of Blackfish began to organize petitions to put public pressure on entertainers and businesses who partnered with SeaWorld. Change.org hosted a number of petitions garnering signatures in the thousands, including “Humanely release the Orca whale known as Tilikum to a sea pen for rehab” that boasted 172,025 signatories. While the sheer volume of bureaucratic atrophy in the Trump administration makes the early part of the decade feel like a paleolithic era, in 2013, there was a legitimate faith that institutions would respond to online organizing. The Obama administration had just rolled out a petition platform of their own, We The People, which promised an official government response to any request that met the threshold of 5,000 signatures within 30 days.

Many of the targets listened. The Beach Boys cancelled a gig at SeaWorld-owned Busch Gardens after 1,023 people signed “Please watch #blackfish and cancel Busch Gardens.” A petition demanding Southwest Airlines “stop promoting animal cruelty” and end their partnership with SeaWorld received support from over 30,000 people; the airline terminated its quarter-century long relationship with the company in 2014. Taco Bell, Alaska Airlines, Virgin Airlines and Hyundai followed later that year.

The anti-SeaWorld sentiment did not command the entirety of share of voice on the issue. Theme park boosters waged a small anti-Blackfish campaign of their own in early 2014 on social media and blogs. Former SeaWorld trainers also weighed into defend their prior employer as well, yet people heard the silence from the company itself the loudest. Not until August 2014, after losing a key promotional partner, did SeaWorld begin to respond in proportion to the magnitude of their crisis. The company unveiled a three-part plan to invest in the wellbeing of its killer whales as well as provide $10 million funding for further research in the field. But, most crucially, they also committed to an eight-figure reputation management plan.

The media blitz began with a classic crisis PR play – flashy print advertisements. SeaWorld took out ads in taste-making publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as well as in local newspapers where they had parks. They released some well-produced YouTube videos meant to highlight the company’s commitment to killer whales. But when it came to pushing their message through media in which their critics had a chance to respond, the company tragically misfired. Clearly no one in their digital media team paid any attention to the November 2014 Bill Cosby “meme generator” Twitter fiasco, an early crack in the dam that eventually burst with the #MeToo movement, where users seized upon the now-disgraced TV star’s invitation to highlight the rape accusations made against him.

The official SeaWorld Twitter handle hosted a “Q&A” on March 25, 2015, encouraging users to ask questions about the park and its safety procedures. Unsurprisingly to anyone who knows how the Internet reacts to entities using tools of transparency to proffer PR platitudes, things did not go according to plan. Twitter users lambasted the company, hijacked the hashtag and created new ones (#AnswerTheQ, #EmptyTheTanks) when SeaWorld refused to communicate forthrightly. Worst of all, they fed the trolls by pouting in a response posted two days later. “Jacking hashtags is so 2014,” read the tweet from SeaWorld.

By this point, SeaWorld had already ousted their CEO and saw their stock price decline 38% in a year where the overall S&P index gained 12%. The park’s attendance in Florida was down by a million people in 2014, which was an otherwise record-breaking year for tourism in the state. Shareholders filed a class-action lawsuit for falsely claiming the Easter holiday, not bad publicity from Blackfish, led to decreased park attendance. California Assemblyman Richard Bloom ushered the “Blackfish bill” through the state legislature to ban whale captivity, breeding and trade in the state. A film that generated such minimal box office returns might not have been cause for concern even a few years prior, but SeaWorld misjudged the power of the “hashtag activism” age. By 2016, with their stock price even more in the gutter, the company finally caved to the pressure initiated by Blackfish with the end of their orca program. The facts didn’t shift, but public perception sure did. “Society is changing,” SeaWorld said in their statement, “and we’re changing with it.”

Eras are tough to define, especially when their effects are still rippling outwards in the present. But it’s hard to shake the notion that the time of “slacktivism,” defined as raising awareness of a cause online without necessarily putting in the offline work of organizing, has moved past its peak of effectiveness. There was certainly reason to believe that direct democracy was ascendant with the Arab Spring toppling many long-standing regimes in the Middle East. Programs like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which began airing on HBO in 2014, was able to harness the powers of the Internet’s clicking masses to get off the bench and into the game with his fact-filled viral videos making heavy and hilarious appeals to logic.

Yet this was also the time of Occupy Wall Street, a mass mobilization to critique capitalism that lacked the structure and foresight to create the systemic political changes it sought. Awareness and education on important issues can make a difference, but they do not translate into policy outcomes without the hard work of organizing. Organizations like TakePart heralded “slacktivism” in early 2012, and the writing was on the wall for the tactic’s shortcomings. Their infographic on its successes focused primarily on vanity metrics like video views and petition signatures, not on the offline actions needed to make change possible. (To be clear, I am absolutely implicated in this as someone who posted not one but two Instagrams with a “Make Donald Drumpf Again” hat but donated none of my time or money to his opponent.)

Documentaries of this era do not tend to resemble Blackfish so much as they do Kony 2012 video from Invisible Children, a social media campaign that broke the internet in 2012 only to peter out into a punchline within months. Though Blackfish inspired a movement, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite did not conceive it as an “impact film.” She did not enter production with the expectation that the documentary would benefit from the bolstering of a full engagement campaign, which is perhaps why it was able to breakthrough in the first place. The action it spurred was organic, not heavily goaded by heavy-handed closing title cards suggesting a website to visit and a hashtag to tweet.

Kony 2012, which makes no efforts to disguise its propagandistic nature, closes with a series of title cards encouraging viewers to take action on how to oust the titular African warlord. The last one, which it claims as the most important? Share the video. It’s “Please RT” as a documentary, where the virtue signaling of the sharer and promotion of the creator comes before actual organizing. Now, at the end of the decade, events have transpired to expose just how deep the roots of our collective malaise and national injustices run. Hashtag activism alone feels like an insufficient response to just how much organizing, pressure and in-person action will be required to make any lasting change take hold.

Whether Blackfish and other documentaries of its ilk lulled people into a false sense of complacency that their tweets would be enough requires far more research and study. As any social scientists will tell you, correlation does not always equate to causation. But one thing we can say for certain – all those orcas out in the ocean now swimming freely are probably grateful that #blackfish and #EmptyTheTanks trended for a short while.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.