Muscular Dystrophy Awareness

Rhetorical Situation:

This image was created by a Muscular Dystrophy Campaign in the UK in an attempt to raise awareness for the disease and to get donations for more research. It was put up in train stations, bus stops, and shopping centers throughout the UK. The message of the image is intended to make people stop and think about this disease before continuing their routine. It relies heavily on pathos to do this. By using a child to represent the disease rather than an adult creates more sympathy from someone looking at it. The absence of color creates more of a gloomy look to enhance the sadness someone might have living with this disease. The child is looking directly at you with an intense look and no smile to grabs someone’s attention but the mood is slightly lightened by his large wheelchair wheel having a cartoon smiley face on it. Finally him being in a wheelchair combined with the text “He’d love to walk away from this poster too” adds another element of pathos to the image. Reading this text while seeing him in a wheelchair compels viewers to take a second longer to analyze the image another time rather than quickly walking past it like most do with ads.

This image is powerful due to it creating sympathy for a child living with this disease. Seeing a child usually leads to people wanting to donate to help which is the goal of this ad.