The one thing that has been sitting in the back of my mind since the poster presentations on Thursday was the video from the global warming project. I feel like the advertisement was targeted at children with the rhetoric of the video being largely based on ethos with the cute animation and the catchy head-bobbing background music. There was even a nice message at the end about the moral of the story.
Although this might be appealing to kids, I feel like it evokes the opposite reaction in adults (or at least me). All of the content was largely exaggerated and lacked logos. Throughout the entire 30 or so seconds, I found myself thinking, “that’s not the way it works,” and as a result, I could not take the underlying message seriously. I was even a little miffed with the whole thing (probably since I have a super Cartesean mindset).
My reaction to the video has made me start to wonder about the trade-offs of trying to appeal to kids vs. trying to appeal to adults. Is it worth it to try to “teach” future generations about environmental stewardship through overly exaggerated and reductionist public service announcements at the risk of offending the older generations who actually have the money to put into environmental causes? I guess it isn’t really a versus questions since non-children are targeted by an Inconvenient Truth, but still, that WWF video doesn’t even give a realistic picture of why we should conserve our planet. Anyways, I really want to know what other people thought of the video, so you should comment below!
Their idea was interesting and the video carried a message to alert the people about the climate changes and the global warming whether if the design for adult or kid!!!!!!!! I think here is the principle is the most important. In my opinion, people who tend to refuse the climate change or global warming fit into two categories the first one either they are taking advantage from the system and they are part of the rich people in U.S who are greedy and their only concern is the money and they refuse the big company to be regulated. And the other group are ignorant who have no clue about science and proven result, when they think they know and the truth they are so far from the truth.
ReplyDeleteI also blogged about the video specifically...it bothered me as well! I don't really think that it was necessarily geared towards children just because it was a cartoon. I think that it very well could have been for an adult audience; for example, Family Guy is a cartoon, but definatly not for kids. I do agree though, that it was very much a reductionist look at the environment and our role in it, and it was also very unrealistic. I would also argue that it really didn't have anything to do with global warming, and more to do with bad stewardship of the environment.
ReplyDeleteI would actually argue that though the medium of a cartoon is simplistic by nature (as Julian points out) the argument isn't necessarily reductionist. The economic and political forces represented in the cartoon are global and of a magnitude that reducing them to such a cartoon might just illustrate the interconnectedness of the entire system. I don't mean system like "we gotta fight the system, man.." but there is without a doubt a system of industry that operates worldwide. Its magnitude is so great that perhaps something as simple as a cartoon could allow for a critique of the entire process in a way that addressing smaller, more specific facets might not.
ReplyDeleteI'm sort of with Chris on this one--following what the Liquidators did with 'Posters'; everything reduces and simplifies. And cartoons can get across what words can't. Good issues of 'representation' here.
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