This was an ad that was run in china by the World Wildlife Foundation. It was run in response to the vast amount of accepted forms of animal cruelty. At first glance it seems to be a very simple and explicit ad, but there are many different implicit messages. The ad starts with the evolution of the tiger which abruptly stops when it is turned into a fur coat, leaving half of the ad blank. The message that the ad is trying to portray is that man has interfered with the tiger's natural course of evolution causing it to go extinct merely because of man's neglect for rational substitutes.
The ad forces me to take a position by its message that humans, and I of course being a human, have willingly caused the extinction of other species. It also does it by questioning my morality simply by the subject at hand. It makes me question whether or not I value the fur coat more than the life of the animal.
The location in which this ad was run is also important and interesting to note. It was run in China because china doesn't have strict rules regarding animal cruelty or preservation. It was trying to convince people to take a different stance than what was socially accepted in their culture. For instance, if the ad was run in the United States it would be almost pointless. It is socially accepted that animal cruelty is not tolerated in our culture. This is evident by all of the laws and punishments we have surrounding animal cruelty.
I agree with what you are saying, but on the other hand I do not believe it is the vast majority of people causing the problem and harming the animals. I watched a documentary on dolphin poaching in a small village in Japan. It was a really gruesome and awful thing to do, but it is not all Japanese culture to kill or sell dolphins. Most people, who lived outside of the village, did not even know what was going on in the village. I agree that humans are harming animals, but it's hard to be completely affected by the ad when I personally know that I'm not a cause of it.
ReplyDeleteWhile I think it's easy to sympathize with the positions (of the original post), I agree with the first comment that it's hard to truly empathize with what it's talking about. What I do think it does however, is make you ask, "What can I do to change this?" Many people think of the question and pass on it while others form groups and coalitions that actually help preserve and sustain animal life. While it may not turn everyone into an animal activist, I think the image does its job in spreading awareness.
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