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The "52 Hertz Whale" "sings" at a different frequency than other whales, causing a sensation on social media. But the film shows that the phenomenon is more of a reflection of the human psyche than a whale.
From the film documentary The Loneliest Whale: In Search of 52 (2021).
You may be learning the story for the first time from a prominent headline, social media, or email. Somewhere in the Pacific, there is a whale singing that their kind can't hear. Their call frequency is 52 Hz, which is significantly higher than that of other whales of the same kind (e.g. blue whales have a call of 10-39 Hz). On the Internet, the species, known as the "loneliest whale in the world" or "52-hertz whale," has become a vehicle for people to share their emotions widely, symbolizing melancholy and alienation.
The new documentary, The lonely Whale: The Search for 52 (2021), shows thousands of results that appear when searching for whales on social media, many of which become variations of people's "self-spiritual resonance." In the depths of the vast ocean, a lonely whale shouts out in the face of an unresponsive world, which is heart-wrenching and immediately sympathetic. Given that "52 Hertz Whale" already exists in popular culture, it is inevitable that some film projects will eventually begin to look for this elusive image theme. But is this an achievable goal, and can we humans really understand the whale's situation?
To its credit is director Joshua Zeman (USA), the film is not as easily anthropomorphized as people on social media. Rather than tell a simple story about finding a sad whale, Zeman questions our imagination of a "52 hertz whale." While cetaceans may have some form of intrinsicity, what the emotional life of a whale actually looks like is not only a thorny philosophical question, but also an untestable, unverifiable, insurmountable worldwide problem under different experiences. How do we know how whales will perceive loneliness, or how they will feel sad, or even what their intentions are when they call? We often refer to these calls as "songs" because they do sound like music to us, but to whales they may be purely mundane behaviors, as commonplace as text messages when sending lunch plans with friends.
For things that have established many mysteries in the mass consciousness, it is difficult to ask such questions without disappointing people. At a better time, The Loneliest Whale solves this problem in some way, and since anthropomorphism is a projection of humans, it can turn these issues toward ourselves. Instead of delving into "Is this whale lonely?" Rather, ask the question, as in the documentary, "Why is it that in this day and age, the story of a lonely whale resonates with so many people?"
In the field of animal protection, there is a concept of "charm", that is, the traits that make a species attractive to humans, thus becoming the ideal mascot to curb hunting, habitat destruction and other activities that endanger them. Sometimes the charm of animals is easy to explain, for example: penguins are cute, tigers are cool, pandas are funny, and there are a series of animated voiceovers like Jack Black (1969, American comedian), etc. In her brilliant book Fathoms: The World in the Whale (2020), Rebecca Giggs muses how strange it is that whales occupy their place in the common imagination.
"They lack many classic and glamorous features... Whales live in places where humans don't live, in the most remote areas of the sea. Whales are hairless, legless, handsless, and most of the time move horizontally. Their faces are elongated sideways, uncontrolled by expressions... The extreme enormity of the whales is not only astonishing, but also a little eerie; thinking about the vitality and sensitivity of life on such a large scale. ”
The Cover of The Deep Quest: The World in the Whales (2020) and a short review of the book.
Nature magazine photographer Tim Watters, who has touted the charm of whales in his work, believes that the mystery of whales may be part of the important reason for its appeal, "Aren't gems and gold like this?" The more scarce they are, the more aura they will surround them; the more we will care about it, talk about it, write about it. "In Leviathan, or the Whale (2008), the British writer Philip Hoare (1958) throws out the incredible fact that we see complete images of freely swimming whales in the ocean later than humans going into space to capture pictures of the full picture of the Earth." Before we know what whales look like, we already know what the world looks like. "For thousands of years before that, it was almost impossible for the human mind to catch an entire whale. The odds of seeing a full whale are low, and the chances of seeing one from a distance allows you to understand its shape without being overwhelmed by its power. Sketch renderings drawn by naturalists or sailors simply cannot convey this effect. It is no wonder that for a long time, the appearance of whales fueled myths and legends about sea monsters, so much so that many cultures throughout history revered them, or this reverence turned into contempt, and during the golden age of whaling, people saw them more as huge resource veins than as creatures. One might argue that modern photography, video and audio capture techniques have saved many whales, saved them from extinction, charmed them, and enabled humans to empathize with them.
But as The Loneliest Whale shows, these technical conventions inevitably take us away from their subjects, and projection fills the void in our conceptualization of whales because we lack a real understanding. Norwegian anthropologist Arne Kalland (1945-2012) argues that because people do not understand the difference between different species, the mention of whales usually classifies them as a "super whale", that is, a trait that also has a certain inherent impression. For example, only a few species, mainly humpback whales, make what we think of as "whale sounds." And most of them actually communicate through noise. But we tend to give songs to all whales, and the role that songs play in whale charm is immeasurable. Released in 1970, the album Songs of the Humpback Whale ( an album by bioacoustician Roger Payne ) , debuted a public display of humpback whales ' exquisite whale songs and became the best-selling environmental album in history , selling more than 100,000 copies. By raising awareness of the wisdom and culture of whales, the album helped launch the worldwide "Save the Whales" campaign, which led to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment(s) which attracted widespread public attention for the first time in a global moratorium on commercial whaling, the biggest turning point in public perception of whales. Centuries before we captured these sounds with hydrophones, the only humans who could hear whale songs were sailors, who sat on boats with wooden hulls acting as amplifiers. Not knowing what they were hearing, they made up stories about the Kraken. We are now able to learn more about the truth, but this mysterious and fascinating trait endures. This is also the reason why the song of "52 Hertz Whale" is famous.
Humpback Whale Song (1970) album cover.
Zeman and his crew didn't find the 52-hertz whale, which isn't really a spoiler. Because it's almost impossible to track an animal with audio equipment alone in the vast Pacific Ocean. They did come up with some interesting answers to the question of how lonely whales are, although through some studies they found that they didn't make any suggestions that scientists haven't yet made. But it wasn't a futile effort; the point of finding the "loneliest whale" was that we learned about ourselves in the process. This is also the meaning conveyed by Moby Dick (Herman Melville's 1851 novel, considered one of The Greatest Novels in The United States).
It's a movie in search of a "52-hertz whale," which scientists believe has spent its entire life in solitude, calling at a frequency unlike any other whale. As the film begins this fascinating journey, viewers will explore what this whale's lonely plight can teach us — not just our relationship with the ocean, but also our ever-changing relationship with each other.
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This article is originally created by the public account [ABAGo] manager Happy Big Fat
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