Saturday, August 30, 2008

Fried, Scrambled, or perhaps smashed; how would you like your brain served?

PSA's change a lot over time, but they always have the same general message. Take these two for example, the older one focuses mainly on a logical appeal towards it's audience, "Your brain will be fried if you do drugs" which makes sense because who really wants a fried useless brain. This logos appeal is directed at and dependant upon the audiences ethos, because the creators of the ad want the world to believe that drugs are bad and expect most of the planet to already share this view and help others "see the light"
The second ad is a little more dramatic which instantly tells you that the new time period is full of a different type of teenager (which i'm assuming is the target audience). So right away you have to understand the cultural grunge movement of the nineties. Which will explain the messy hair on the actress and why the kitchen smashing is used to capture the audiences attention. It uses the ethos appeal to the audieces logos to get them to make the connection that busted kitchen is bad, so my brain and life on drugs must be bad as well.
SIDE NOTES: I noticed that the second ad specifically mentions heroin while the first one uses the general term "drugs". Which leads the audience to understand that heroin is a big problem during that time period, moreso than the other drugs.
Also if tennagers were the intended audience for the intervention why do they have to use food? Have teens always been so moved by their stomachs?

~And that's why i'm Spazz-n-out~

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