ipl-logo

Rhetorical Analysis: PETA Making A Social Noise

479 Words2 Pages

Many animals are abused everyday. Chickens and other farm animals are constantly being killed for food. In this article, “PETA Making a Social Noise: A Perspective on Shock Advertising,” Jonathan Matusitz and Maya Forrester focus on the fact that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) often goes too far with their advertisements. Animal rights groups such as PETA use shock advertising as a means of getting the message that abusing animals, eating animals, or using animals in entertainment is wrong (Matusitz and Forrester). Matusitz and Forrester look to expose PETA’s indecent advertisements, but the argument relies too heavily on pathos than any other rhetorical appeal. Even though this article relies too heavily on pathos, its …show more content…

The intended audience for this article is people who either work for PETA or follow them. Matusitz and Forrester are trying to prove that while PETA’s advertisements are effective, they are often close to crossing the line. PETA was founded in 1980, and is one of the foremost organizations born out of the animal rights movement (Matusitz and Forrester). PETA is an animal rights organization who often uses risque advertisements to get their point across. They also use shock advertising. Shock advertising is essentially “a method of advertising designed to capture attention and attract the general public to a certain cause” (Matusitz and Forrester). Shock advertising is mostly used in animal rights campaigns and advertisements. PETA is most known for using this method in their advertisements. For example, in one of PETA’s campaign in 2003, they used an allusion to the Holocaust. “In 2003, the Holocaust on Your Plate campaign aimed at comparing the butchering of chickens to the killing of Jews in WWII” (Matusitz and Forrester). While Matusitz acknowledges that PETA does an exceptional job of showcasing the imagery, he also sees that the Holocaust is a very sensitive topic, and in comparing the two PETA is very close to going too far. Matusitz and Forrester showcases this by using actors/models, imagery, and

Show More
Related
406 Words | 2 Pages

The sentence becomes rushed and with that, there’s lots of emotional thoughts. That’s where ‘Pathos’ comes into play. The words

Read More
1742 Words | 7 Pages

I seem to absorb advertisements quicker than I can process them; they breeze past any cognitive thought or qualifications and set up shop as doctrines for my life. Moreover, some advertisements are denied with twisted logic, like using brand loyalty to make decisions. In an effort to gain better understanding of advertising’s art of persuasion, I have been studying the rhetorical appeals and attempting to identify them in my daily ad intake. They are: pathos, an appeal to emotions; logos, an appeal to logic and reasoning; ethos, an appeal to credibility; and Kairos, the timeliness of the appeal. Recently, while walking through Overton Park, I came across a sign that advertises three park features: a zoo, art college, and art museum; rather

Read More
1077 Words | 5 Pages

Pathos is an emotional appeal that is meant to persuade the audience through appealing to their emotions. Tim Felliss make use of pathos to beseech and solicit sympathy from the audience thereby making them feel what he wants them to feel. “I was sitting in the back of my used minivan…when I decided I was going to commit suicide.” At this point, the audience is silent and very sorry for why the author would kill himself. However, they feel relieved when he said that he had found a reason to take his finger off the trigger.

Read More
659 Words | 3 Pages

These emotions are only one sided, so you may feel something and another person may feel another. I don’t think this was a good way to use pathos in the article. I did not really feel any emotions in it, so that is why I think that they depend on what one person feels against another. Since there is no real pathos in the article, one may hope to find to ethos in it. I do not think that Brooks used much ethos at all.

Read More
732 Words | 3 Pages

Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals is a book about persuasion. Foer seeks to convince his readers to take any step in reducing what he believes is the injustice of harming animals. To achieve this, Foer employs many persuasion techniques and often changes his approach when he targets specific groups. His strategies include establishing himself as an ethical authority and appealing to his readers’ emotions, morals, and reason.

Read More
399 Words | 2 Pages

In the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, the use of animal figures contributes to the books meaning. Spiegelman refers to Jews and Nazis through a cat-and-mouse dynamic, in order to demonstrate the dehumanization Vladek experienced during the Holocaust and ultimately humanize his father and other Jewish people. Spiegelman also chose to use animal figures to show the hierarchy of how races were perceived by Nazis. Throughout the book Spiegelman explains the Holocaust through his father's stories, however, Jews are pictured as mice while Nazis are drawn as cats.

Read More
676 Words | 3 Pages

Additionally, each of these elements builds on one another helping support the ad’s argument and delivering a clear and compelling message to the audience. In conclusion, based on my analysis of the design, this public service announcement ad is very effective in conveying the sponsor’s message to stop animal cruelty and the plea for financial support to the

Read More
1144 Words | 5 Pages

In a life under Joseph Stalin, a dictator who ruled by terror, those of power are able to control all else. Immeasurably represented in Animal Farm, the pigs who are above all else especially Napoleon uses his position of jurisdiction to dominate the farm. In the realistic fiction, many forms of propaganda are brought to play; transfer, bandwagon, fear, name-calling, but the most effective of all is testimonial.—Testimonial is used to persuade an individual to believe anything, true or false, by using a celebrity or important figure that they admire. In the novel, Animal Farm, by George Orwell, testimonial is displayed greatly amongst the characters for the names of powerful characters is used to manipulate the characters, which are animals, to presume the wrong is right. By the same token, testimonial is also most effective when a celebrity or an individual that someone idolizes supports a certain item or idea, therefore causing a wide-range of people to think that the product or idea they’re trying to sell is “the best.”

Read More
549 Words | 3 Pages

There is more to this as well, like this one "a replica chicken transport truck covered with images of real chickens crammed into crates on the way to the slaughterhouse" (Blaskovich, p. 1). They use the truck to make people feel awful about eating chicken with their grim imagery to win them over and try to make them vegans. This shows that PETA is terrible because of how they guilt-trip people into becoming

Read More
869 Words | 4 Pages

Thousands of animals across the United States are being beaten, starved, abandoned, and left to defend for themselves. Animal cruelty has become a nationwide problem in today's society. In the Public Service Announcement (PSA), "Sarah McLachlan Animal Cruelty", produced by the ASPCA, this commercial persuades the audience through pathos appeals, but the PSA's representation of the appeals of ethos and logos are showing animals in America suffering from cruelty and neglect every day. The ASPCA and spokesperson, Sarah McLachlan are trying to convey a message to the public that there is an urgent need to donate money to save the lives of animals being abused and neglected. This appeal to the ethical(ethos), emotional(pathos), and logical(logos) senses of the audience to expose the evils of animal cruelty and convey to the audience that animals are in need of help.

Read More
308 Words | 2 Pages

Has one ever heard of the Holocaust? Maybe even read a book about it or learned about it in school? Well, in Maus by Art Spiegelman, Artie follows his father, Vladek's, story through his time before, during, and after Auschwitz. Vladek tells the story of him, his wife, his now passed child, friends, and foes he made along the way. One will notice the use of different animals to represent different nationalities or races.

Read More
945 Words | 4 Pages

In Animal Farm, George Orwell warns how power will often lead to corruption. Napoleon was placed in a position of power after Major died, and he slowly starts to lavish in his power and become addicted to the lush life of a dictator. When Napoleon first becomes a leader, he expresses how everyone will work equally, but as his reign goes on, he shortens the work hours. At the very end of the novel, the observing animals even start to see that pig and man had become the same. The irony present in the above example, illuminates how regardless of how much a ruler promises to maintain equality and fairness, the position of power that they hold, will corrupt them.

Read More
128 Words | 1 Pages

PETA’s hyper-sexualization of women in their ethical ad campaigns , their discourse around obesity, and their homogenous approach to couple’s advertisements perpetuates dangerous messages to viewers that can lead to unintended consequences. The emphasis of sex in these images takes away from the important issue of animal rights, which should be the companies main focus. There have been other more effective ad campaigns for animals rights than PETA’s controversial ones. Sarah McLachlan in her “In the Arms of an Angel” commercials leave an lasting impact on viewers, while not using sex and controversy to do so.

Read More
700 Words | 3 Pages

However, it is effective in Gladwell’s short stories. Pathos evokes strong feelings that we can relate to as the reader, thus making the short stories more effective and the physiological hypothesis discussed easier to understand. In the excerpt is an example, “Boss ran up the street toward Westchester Avenue because he had lost track in the shouting and the shooting of where they were. Later, when the ambulances arrived, he was so distraught, he could not speak… next to Diallo’s bullet-ridden body, and started to cry.” (Gladwell 194)

Read More
1055 Words | 5 Pages

A picture of this flier was then spread through social media and was eventually posted onto the Facebook pages of several animal welfare groups, most notably, on the Singapore Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ (SPCA) Facebook page. The post was then met with angry comments from the public stating that the artists “deserve to die” and “should be imprisoned” due to the content of the flier. The comments also stated that the flier was “not art”, despite their lack of knowledge on the actual context of the flier, and several other fliers displayed within the performance artwork. This is an irrational argument as the artwork was not “promoting” animal abuse, but also included many other satirical and questionable messages other than to “kill stray cats”.

Read More

More about Rhetorical Analysis: PETA Making A Social Noise

Related Topics

Open Document