Sometimes, I like to picture the battle of meat-no meat as a giant Tug-O-War battle. The videos I watched were all on the extreme spectrum of the meat-no meat dilemma. “The Meatrix” was the more controversial of the two videos on the meat side, holding the rope somewhere near the middle. It was produced in November 2003 by Free Range Studios for the Sustainable Table group. Sustainable Table is a group supporting the sustainable food movement. While they condone factory farming and giving antibiotics to animals to keep them alive, they are not telling you not to eat meat. They believe that there is a healthy way to eat, such as knowing where your food comes from, eating sustainable meat and dairy, and eating rBGH-free dairy products. The purpose of “The Meatrix” is to show the evil side of factory farming. It does this by showing “agri-corp” as a robot monster that pens animals as close together as possible in a cartoon style. It is done as a spoof on “The Matrix”, which is quite effective since most people have seen or at least heard of “The Matrix”. This video pointed out all the negatives to factory farming, such as animal cruelty, antibiotic resistant germs, massive pollution, and the destruction of communities. Being a cartoon made it kid-friendly, as kids will think it’s cool that the talking pig is wearing dark shades. I believe that is video gets its message out about factory farming very well. The message isn’t to not eat meat, just not meat from a factory farm.
The next video I watched was PETA’s “Chew on This”, which held the rope for Team No Meat at the end. As most people know, PETA is people for the ethical treatment of animals. Knowing this, it’s safe to say that this video is on the extreme no-meat side. The intended audience is carnivores. This video was a little harder to stomach. The tone was somber; the images were dark, shades of cold colors, and constantly changing. To get the message across, PETA used various images of animals being slaughtered in inhumanely ways. The purpose was to show reasons why someone should become a vegetarian. One of the reasons used was that in every bag of chicken, there is poop. I love chicken and that grossed me out quite a bit. The part that got me was the reiteration of the word poop in bold and the person in the background giggling; it was a little creepy. Another reason that stuck out to me was “never eat: batteries, ear wax, and your dog”. The first two are common sense, so shouldn’t the third be too? PETA definitely used an appeal on emotions as well as the tone to get their message across. Even meat-lovers like me have a hard time watching animals be slaughtered by a brick being thrown on their heads, or a duck having its beak sawed off. I think this video was definitely effective; if not to make someone a vegetarian, but at least to raise questions about where the meat on the plate is coming from.
The third set of videos I watched were the Hillshire Farms “Go Meat!” commercials. No doubt, these videos were Team Meat and came with their own personal cheerleaders. Created for various meat products, these videos get their message across without talking about which animals the products came from or how they were produced. The intended audience is the American population. Each video played on sports fanatics. Yelling “Go Meat” is just like cheering for your favorite sports team. Here, everyone is cheering for their favorite sausage or bratwurst. Clicking on the tv only, you hear a cheer being said. Each commercial is a different type of cheer: the rhyming cheer (“Hearty Slices”), the chant (“Sausage TV Spot #2” aka my personal favorite), and the repeat (“when I say Hillshire, you say farm”). These commercials are designed to get you pumped up for eating meat. By eating meat, you are essentially the man. The design of the website makes you feel good: there is a nice house, kids playing, a picnic table set up with all the different meat products, and a woman cheering. These commercials are effective as the people in them seem like average joes and super excited about meat.
I guess the theme was that these are all video forms of media from two different sides of the debate. On one hand you have PETA making videos that are meant to try and convince people to stop eating meat, or at least to make them think about the choice they're making. Some of the statements they make are pretty inflammatory, like relating meat eating to killing babies and things like that, but that's exactly what they're meant to be. PETA is pretty well known for statements like these and always has been. Like recently how they started pushing to name fish "Sea Kittens" as shown by this link, http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/ I suppose they are considered one of the extremists of this debate. On the other hand you have Hillshire Farms advertising campaign titled "Go Meat". These are much more humorous and meant to appeal to a different group of people and tend to be less inflammatory when put in a joking sense. I really liked the commercial where the man is eating the lunch meat at night and then spikes the empty container. If someone were to tell me to decide whether to be an omnivore or a vegetarian based on these videos, I would definitely choose that of being an omnivore.
Way to be pro-active, Andy. I was just about to do that!
ReplyDeleteSometimes, I like to picture the battle of meat-no meat as a giant Tug-O-War battle. The videos I watched were all on the extreme spectrum of the meat-no meat dilemma. “The Meatrix” was the more controversial of the two videos on the meat side, holding the rope somewhere near the middle. It was produced in November 2003 by Free Range Studios for the Sustainable Table group. Sustainable Table is a group supporting the sustainable food movement. While they condone factory farming and giving antibiotics to animals to keep them alive, they are not telling you not to eat meat. They believe that there is a healthy way to eat, such as knowing where your food comes from, eating sustainable meat and dairy, and eating rBGH-free dairy products. The purpose of “The Meatrix” is to show the evil side of factory farming. It does this by showing “agri-corp” as a robot monster that pens animals as close together as possible in a cartoon style. It is done as a spoof on “The Matrix”, which is quite effective since most people have seen or at least heard of “The Matrix”. This video pointed out all the negatives to factory farming, such as animal cruelty, antibiotic resistant germs, massive pollution, and the destruction of communities. Being a cartoon made it kid-friendly, as kids will think it’s cool that the talking pig is wearing dark shades. I believe that is video gets its message out about factory farming very well. The message isn’t to not eat meat, just not meat from a factory farm.
ReplyDeleteThe next video I watched was PETA’s “Chew on This”, which held the rope for Team No Meat at the end. As most people know, PETA is people for the ethical treatment of animals. Knowing this, it’s safe to say that this video is on the extreme no-meat side. The intended audience is carnivores. This video was a little harder to stomach. The tone was somber; the images were dark, shades of cold colors, and constantly changing. To get the message across, PETA used various images of animals being slaughtered in inhumanely ways. The purpose was to show reasons why someone should become a vegetarian. One of the reasons used was that in every bag of chicken, there is poop. I love chicken and that grossed me out quite a bit. The part that got me was the reiteration of the word poop in bold and the person in the background giggling; it was a little creepy. Another reason that stuck out to me was “never eat: batteries, ear wax, and your dog”. The first two are common sense, so shouldn’t the third be too? PETA definitely used an appeal on emotions as well as the tone to get their message across. Even meat-lovers like me have a hard time watching animals be slaughtered by a brick being thrown on their heads, or a duck having its beak sawed off. I think this video was definitely effective; if not to make someone a vegetarian, but at least to raise questions about where the meat on the plate is coming from.
The third set of videos I watched were the Hillshire Farms “Go Meat!” commercials. No doubt, these videos were Team Meat and came with their own personal cheerleaders. Created for various meat products, these videos get their message across without talking about which animals the products came from or how they were produced. The intended audience is the American population. Each video played on sports fanatics. Yelling “Go Meat” is just like cheering for your favorite sports team. Here, everyone is cheering for their favorite sausage or bratwurst. Clicking on the tv only, you hear a cheer being said. Each commercial is a different type of cheer: the rhyming cheer (“Hearty Slices”), the chant (“Sausage TV Spot #2” aka my personal favorite), and the repeat (“when I say Hillshire, you say farm”). These commercials are designed to get you pumped up for eating meat. By eating meat, you are essentially the man. The design of the website makes you feel good: there is a nice house, kids playing, a picnic table set up with all the different meat products, and a woman cheering. These commercials are effective as the people in them seem like average joes and super excited about meat.
I guess the theme was that these are all video forms of media from two different sides of the debate. On one hand you have PETA making videos that are meant to try and convince people to stop eating meat, or at least to make them think about the choice they're making. Some of the statements they make are pretty inflammatory, like relating meat eating to killing babies and things like that, but that's exactly what they're meant to be. PETA is pretty well known for statements like these and always has been. Like recently how they started pushing to name fish "Sea Kittens" as shown by this link, http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/
ReplyDeleteI suppose they are considered one of the extremists of this debate. On the other hand you have Hillshire Farms advertising campaign titled "Go Meat". These are much more humorous and meant to appeal to a different group of people and tend to be less inflammatory when put in a joking sense. I really liked the commercial where the man is eating the lunch meat at night and then spikes the empty container. If someone were to tell me to decide whether to be an omnivore or a vegetarian based on these videos, I would definitely choose that of being an omnivore.