One of the
advertisements that we saw during class this week was PETA's, an American
animal rights organization’s, “Go Vegan" ad. It shows a picture of a young
girl, who is in a sense overweight, eating a hamburger. The girl looks like she
is in extreme pain and at first glance even looks like she's crying. The quote
on the advertisement reads "Feeding Kids Meat is Child Abuse" and on
the bottom it says "Fight the Fat: Go Vegan". The ad portrays the
message that making your child eat meat is the equivalent to child abuse and it
should not be allowed. The little girl looks as if she is being forced to eat
something she doesn’t like or want and is suffering because of it further
proving PETA’s point that feeding the child meat is abusive.
I feel that the
ad was aimed at parents because by using a child who looks emotionally and physically
sick a parent would feel bad and do anything so that the kid doesn’t look like
she’s in pain. The creator of the ad successfully used pathos, or emotions,
when generating it and relied on the fact that people would feel sad for the
child, persuading them to stop eating meat.
Since PETA is an
animal rights organization their purpose and mindset was to get people to stop
killing animals and eating them. From other ads made by PETA the general theme
that repeats is that “animals are not ours to eat”. But that is never going to
happen. Meat has been part of our lifestyle from the beginning so I think the
ad was effective in the sense that it opened peoples eyes to how much meat they
are eating but I don’t think it would convince people to go vegan all together.
Meat has nutritional value; it has protein and we need it for our strength and
muscles. Cutting meat out of our lives will not make us skinnier. I have a
cousin who is vegan and she is constantly eating; she’s never full because she
doesn’t eat full meals. If it’s not meat we will find something else because we
need to substitute that big portion of our meals and the substitute could be
very unhealthy to us. So the ad didn’t have a huge impact on me and I don’t think
it had as big an impact on the world population either.
Hey Valerie,
ReplyDeleteI really like your analysis about the Go Vegan Ad. I actually wrote about the same ad on my blog too. I agree with your response, that the ad heavily uses pathos to appeal to the emotions of the viewers. I would predict that any person viewing the ad would feel anger and distress towards the parents of the young girl portrayed in the advertisement. Anyone who has a heart would want to help a crying child or one that looks as if they were in pain.
Because you have written in the last paragraph that the ad was not effective in preventing people from eating meat, what do you think should be added or changed in the ad to make it more effective? Do you think adding statistics that show that eating meat makes people happier and healthier would suffice? I would love to know what you think.