Abstract

THE CROWD GASPS IN ORCHESTRATED AMAZEMENT. THE MASSIVE MAMMAL leaps out of the water-filled tank to expose its breadth. Throughout the performance, Shamu demonstrates the cetacean's immense power, but also something more. Suddenly, the orca bursts from the water again, yet this time not upward but outward-out of the water and on to land. The flukes of the whale seem to grasp the edge of the stage, holding Shamu, back arched and tail pointing to the sky, outside of the tank and within the audience. Something is revealed: Shamu lay prone like the extended hand of the marine world, inviting us land-lubbers to know more of the area composing 90 percent of Earth's surface environment. Susan G. Davis writes, As the tidal zone is a margin between life on land and in the sea, whales and their kin, as mammals, occupy similar liminal space between humans and the living ocean (9). Davis's Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience mixes cultural theory, material cultural analysis, and cultural anthropology to analyze Sea World's effort to create a spectacular story about nature in general and oceans in particular (9). This is a story of connections with nature, some contrived, some genuine, but each inveterate. The analysis is based in theories of Raymond Williams, particularly his declaration that humans are hopelessly intertwined with their environment. There can be no distinguishing what is natural and human, he writes, we have mixed our labour with the earth, our forces with its forces, too

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