In Dolphin Tale 2, Winter’s long-term partner Panama dies, and it is a race to find another female dolphin who, similar to Winter, cannot be released in the wild.
Throughout the film, Winter is in a different type of danger. This time it is less about Winter and more about what keeps the aquarium afloat. Losing
Winter is like losing a best friend to all the characters.
“De Waal suggests that animals undergo a process of what is called learned adjustment:
‘Healthy members do not necessarily know what is wrong,
but gradually become familiar with the limitations of their less fortunate mates.’” (Taylor, 16)
The time it takes to “warm up” to disabled persons or animals seems universal in that sense. People with disabilities are “misfits.“
“Garland-Thomson develops the notion of misfits to describe the differential levels of disability in relation to the ease of fitting into the built environment” (Oliver, 114)
This references the social model of disability. The academic way of writing and thinking about disability is addressing disability as an accessibility problem.
Cognitive empathy is different than learned adjustment. Cognitive empathy can be closed off to the possibility of adaptation and resilience.
I can imagine how hard it is to live without a limb, but to understand the person further, I must adjust to seeing an amputee adapt to life just as I have.
De Waal’s term cognitive empathy is more for animals than humans. He assumes animal behavior and thoughts are less complex than humans.
In Dolphin Tale, it takes Winter, and her new companion, Hope, two meetings to accept each other. For humans, it would take more.
What Hope needed to accept Winter was to see Winter could swim “normally” like her.
Hope is a juvenile Dolphin who hasn’t experienced the world. Basic empathy, curiosity, and fear of the unfamiliar are shared between humans and nonhumans.
“We should be wary of this human tendency toward ableism, which assumes that it is the non-disabled population’s response to disability that is most worthy of critical examination.
Disabled animals are repeatedly presented as offering nothing back to their communities,but is this true, or are scientists neglecting to watch for more nuanced behavior because of their preconceived views on disability?” (Taylor, 18)
Even the divide between disabilities and animal studies demonstrates some degree of ableism evidenced by the different ways they treat living beings.
Openness is essential; as a child, it is important to have role models and to be inspired.
The media on disabled animals has to be aware of the two central human interest angles of disabled animals.
There is room to have inspirational stories like Dolphin Tale.
Just be wary of humanizing and over-projecting what the word disabled means to a “poor” animal next time.
Winter’s story is inspirational and educational.
Sources
Taylor, C. (2020). Animal crips. In S. Jenkins & K. S. Montford (Eds.), Disability and animality:rip perspective in critical animal studies (pp. 13-34). Academia. https://www.academia.edu/45026461/Disability_and_Animality_Crip_Perspectives_in_Critical_Animal_Studies?auto=citations&from=cover_page
Oliver, K. (2020). Service dogs: Between animal studies and disability studies. In S. Jenkins & K. S. Montford (Eds.), Disability and animality:rip perspective in critical animal studies (pp. 111-127). Academia. https://www.academia.edu/45026461/Disability_and_Animality_Crip_Perspectives_in_Critical_Animal_Studies?auto=citations&from=cover_pa