Smoking

Everyone knows that smoking is a bad habit. Long term effects of smoking just does not effect the individual smoker nowadays but the people he or she surround themselves with also. Smoking statistics are staggering and tobacco use happens to be a global problem nowadays entering our culture and bringing with it life threatening causes. Today, smoking is a causing factor leading up to life threatening diseases and cancer. The addiction to nicotine is said to be comparable to heroin, therefore, it is not an easy habit to break. In this anti-smoking ad I happen to stumble upon clearly caught my attention so why not blog about it because the picture sends out a pretty powerful message. In this ad, you can clearly tell that this little boy seems to be in great pain. The bottom caption of this anti-smoking ad says, "Smoking isn't just suicide. It's murder." In this anti-smoking ad, they use a child as the subject and smoking as the object. The little boy in this ad looks to be painfully gasping for air. Children to us are viewed as innocent, naive, truthful, and carefree. The pain and misery portrayed in the child's facial expression screams pain and misery towards the audience. The child shows himself as the second-hand smoker who is slowly suffering from the poor choices that are made by people who choose to smoke. Secondly, the object here is smoking and what it can do to our love ones. From afar, it looks like the child has a plastic bag over his head. However, if you take a closer look, it is actually a lingering aura of smoke that is surrounding his head shaped like a plastic bag. The child who is painfully crying, along with a lingering aura of smoke shaped like a plastic bag over his head gives the audience the illusion of a child suffocating. This illusion directs us to how the anti-smoking ad creators places their subject position; smoking is bad whether it is the smoker or the second-hand smoker. Smoking just does not effect the smoker but the younger innocent ones who have to endure the dangers of what smoking can do are harmed by it too. The anti-smoking ad basically wants to say to its viewers: Think twice before you pick up a cigarette because although you know you are putting your life at risk, you are also doing it to someone else who isn't even aware of it.