Animal suicide: new global warming ad
Picked up this from a US-based social media and PR class blog.
This was unsettling to watch, for a few reasons. One, it is well made, put together by a Portuguese environmental organization named Quercus. The PSA was created by McCann Erickson Portugal.
The tag line at the end of the video reads “Global Warming - If you give up, they give up.”
However, the anthropomorphism is unsettling and perhaps a problem. The manipulation of images of polar bears has already given denialists plenty of ammunition against effective action on climate change (not least Sarah Palin, of course, who sued the Federal Government in the US on its decision to list Polar Bears as under threat).
I’m not wholly comfortable with the attribution of such human decision-making to animals. Not least because animals are smarter than we’ve been - they look after their own habitats much better than we do.
The question is, what gathering of meaning does this message contribute to? If this is one singular event of a particular form of message, what message pool does it contribute to at the semiotic level? What ‘regime of truth’ does it help supplement? That if animals are sentient enough to ‘give up’, does that justify their own extinction? Did the Javan Tiger (extinct) really ‘give up’ because we gave up on its habitat or right to life?
As appreciative as I am of the efforts of this Portuguese group, the fact that an ad agency (ultimate goal and mindset is one of capital and money making; I worked in advertising, and I know that people in that industry are not in general aware of the need to be semiotically and psychologically aware of the content of their messages) came up with this advert says a lot of the type of ad that it is. Think for example of the Coca-Cola Polar Bear, and you see the same anthropomorphic intent.
In no way should any message cloud the understanding, at a conscious, semiotic or unconscious level, that animals are without choice in a world so comprehensively dominated by one species. Yes, if we give up on tackling global warming, they are doomed, but not because of any choice on their part. I’d prefer an ad that apportioned all responsibility for extinction of animals, where linked to global warming, to those actually responsible: us.
