As soon as I found out we had a blog post due, this
clip popped into my head. It screams "pathos!” I first saw this in a
documentary, Miss Representation, a film I'm sure I'll come
back to talking about later in the year. But for now, I want to specifically
address the Dove Evolution clip.
The video starts with an average looking woman, without makeup, walking into a studio. Quickly, the film speed increases, and we see makeup being applied, hair being styled, lights being adjusted, and pictures being snapped. Already, the woman looks like a different person. The audience starts to see what a huge difference the application of makeup can make in altering someone’s appearance. This is the first element of pathos: alarming people when they see how much of a difference professional makeup can make.
Then, we watch the picture being edited: the model’s neck is lengthened
and thinned, her eyes are enlarged, and her face is slimmed out. And then
suddenly, that picture is on a billboard. Here’s another element of pathos:
shock. "Can this ideal-looking woman really be that average looking girl from the beginning of the clip? No way!" But it is the same girl.
This video plays on people’s emotions by showing the process of
transforming an average looking woman into a model for a foundation ad, which is quite the production! The idea is to first off shock people, by informing
them of all that goes into creating the seemingly perfect and effortless image
we see in media advertisements. The video is meant to alarm people so much that
whenever they look at a billboard or ad in a glamor magazine, they realize just
how much work went into making that person look the way they do. And after that
effect takes hold, as people think back on the clip, I think the idea is to
make people a little angry that they’ve been tricked into feeling they should
look like these models, which really are just a product of makeup and
Photoshop.
Another thing that I think is interesting is how many beauty ads in
general utilize pathos and are aimed at making people feel insecure about how
they look, especially compared to the model in the ad, so they go out and buy such
and such product. This Dove Evolution clip exposes this, hopefully making the
pathos rhetoric seen in ads more visible to people in the future.
Finally, a look into the realistic world of advertisement. Its sad because people actually believe them. The media sets standards of beauty and perfection; but there is no such thing as perfection. People can finally realize that most of the pictures we see on billboards, magazine and television have being digitally enhanced. The USA government can play its part. In Britain, digitally touched pictures and unrealistic advertisement are in the process of being banned; there is so much fuss about it now
ReplyDeleteWow! What a powerful video, even though it's very brief. I love the message it sends to girls and everyone else: our vision of beauty is distorted and you are beautiful just the way you are. I wish I had heard that when I was a teenager.
ReplyDelete