CRS Crisis Relief - Feb 17 2014 - "Liking isnt helping"- AD - (BEN style citation)
(SPOILER: MORBIDITY) (DISCLAIMER: NARRATOR IS UNRELIABLE) Upon my formal examination of the ad (denotative analysis) I notice right from the gate that the picture has a grayscale filter, indicating that its going to be warming to the heart and will most likely leave us with the fuzzys-feels (Verbal Irony, this ad is clearly going to be one of a more morose nature). The ad features a legless child lying on a hospital bed, in a hospital that seems to be rather dilapidated. There is blood all over his wound, so his leg was clearly just sliced off in some sort of medical operation. Sorrounding the hospital bed is a group of people with their thumbs up in the fashion of Facebooks "Like" icon (Likon). The childs face also plays a role into the picture. The face is not crying like what you would expect a hurt child to be doing. He is completely complacent and calm. Too calm. When a child or anybody has completely given up emotionally on a situation like this, especially a child, then you know you may have a problem.
Shifting to my deep, philosophical, IB-like examination (connotative examination) lens I instantly know that the hands are referring to Facebook "like to save this girl" type pictures. These pictures are abundant around the social media-verse. This ad points out the fact that simply liking a photo does not actually do anything for the people involved in the picture. These hands are physical representations of the deadly sin sloth. (slothiness). The sin sloth is essentially apathy, which is what this ad is trying to convey about modern "internet" society.
As I previously stated, the ad is clearly targeted towards internet using audience. Ironically, i can foresee this being shared on Facebook and other social media sites. While this is targeted towards an internet audience that is typically of a younger crowd, Using my knowledge of teenagers (of which I have a decent amount of) I don't think many teenagers would share this photo or do anything about it. They would view it probably say something along the lines of "thats messed up bruh" or "OMG Aw look at that baby!", and swiftly scroll on to a picture of a dog in a gangster outfit or something and completely forget about what they just saw (Purely my opinion on the matter). The people that would share and acknowledge this (Yet again my opinion) would be older, more experienced people.
I can just see my mother calling me into her room to have a lengthy discussion on what this picture means and having to explain the intended message as apposed to the message she got out of it. While talking about the picture is good and spreads awareness, it doesn't actually do anything for the amputated infants of the world. Proving the pictures point (and my point about Sloth)
Given that the intended audience are ones that spend a majority of their time on mobile devices and social media, i can infer that they would probably be of the first world variety. The picture and the company its from are targeting them in particular as they are the ones with the money (or their parents money) to fund the organizations future non-profit escapades.
The intended audience would probably understand that "no leg = bad for infant" and "poverty = bad for anyone" and cause them to sympathize. I think the tougher part to chew, swallow and digest would be the statement about today's society. When an ad makes a statement of this caliber, it doesn't give a way to solve it. So you are left sitting there with a grimace look on your face and no way to get rid of it. (Unless of course you go and do some charitable work instantly after and then you may feel better but then you wake up the next day and realize that there is still poverty, suffering and amputated infants in the world even though you spent 6 hours at a soup kitchen the day before)
Saying that previous paragraph, the ad really does take a cheap shot to the heart and deliberate pull at our heartstrings. Poverty exists, yeah. but again, we cant just solve it automatically. And calling people a bunch of sloths isn't exactly helping either.
Thanks for nothing, ad. (Unless you convinced someone to go out and donate to charity or provide wheelchairs for amputated infants. Then, in that case, good on you, ad).
