Rhetorical Analysis of Two Photographs

When I was a boy, my mother was obsessed with buying certain laundry soap; advertisers asked her if she wanted her family's clothes to look dingy. She thought that only one type of detergent would make her a good mother. The world is smaller now, and the GAP advertisement (406) understands the need to target a broader audience, whereas the PETA advertisement (478) seem to only be targeted to animal lovers and vegetarians; a tiny piece of the world pie.
The GAP advertisement has a dingy, brown, depressing, background color, and a
beautiful, black woman with a sad, pained, expression on her face; almost no words are needed to make the reader want to know why she looks so heart-broken. This is the first appeal to pathos. The woman is wearing a red tank and hat, cool to the younger crowd. She has a striking peace symbol among many chains that hang around her neck; this visual makes one think about suffrage or slavery, and makes the reader believe GAP wishes to end it through peaceful means. The words "EMPOWE(RED)" are written in huge, bold, white, type across the center of the page, and, in smaller type, the brand "(GAP) red" is written ("red" is even written like an exponent to appeal to the geeks among us). The font gets smaller when it asks the question, "Can an individual change the world?" It answers its own question with a simple but powerful statement, "yes you can." Finally, the type gets even smaller when declaring the
motto, "Do the RED Thing." No pressure, no anger, just logic, emotion, and ethics; logos, pathos, and ethos.
The PETA advertisement, on the other hand, is a flaming red background with an angry,
protective-looking, and very pale, model dressed in red, with red velvet gloves, and holding a white bunny close to her chest. This just screams at you to be very careful before you even read a word. When you read the words, they are mainly in large, skinny type saying, "Try Telling HIM it's just a bit of fur trim." "HIM" is in bold. One would...