TOW #5- Anti-Abuse Advertisement

The ANAR foundation (Aid to Adolescents and Children at Risk) is a Spanish organization focused on helping children or teens that are facing abusive situations. This particular advertisement, as you can see, shows two advertisements at one. On the left, there is an image of a young boy with the quote at the top (translated from Spanish) "Sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering from it." On the right, however, we see a picture of the same boy now bruised and bloodied. Faintly in white, the words say "If somebody hurts you, phone us and we'll help you," along with an emergency number. The most interesting part about this particular advertisement is depending on the perspective that you are looking at it from, you see different images. Typically, adults who are taller than about five feet would see the image on the left, the sentence being shown being used as a warning. Those under five feet, who are primarily children, see the image on the right. They get a hidden message so that even with a guardian they can see the image secretly without alerting their parent. That way, if they really are being abused, their parent would never know how they would have gotten the given information and the child would not be held responsible. On both ends, Pathos is being used very strongly, however, it is being used more so on the image on the right. Though the graphic content may be too much for children to see at that age, they would probably be at an old enough age that, since they can read, they would understand. The image on the left primarily focuses on the image of the child, sticking with a monotone color scheme in order to make adults understand the message without having to look so much deeper into it. However, it is letting the adults know that they may not see how they are hurting their child, but the child knows how much it is hurting themselves. It is simply giving the parents a yellow light, warning them to stop what they might be doing before it is too late. Personally, I believe that this is a very powerful piece that really does portray abuse and does its best to help children in need. However, I find that the image on the right may be a bit too much of the audience it is aimed for. According to the article explaining the image, the audience is meant to be children ages 10 and under. I'd find that, in that age, it would be a bit much to see a child that could be me beaten and bloodied. To a further extent, it may also be traumatizing. Typically children don't understand when they are being abused, as well, as there is some type of manipulation or conditioning that is put forth behind it that makes children think that they deserve it as 'punishment'. However, I believe that his image does its purpose. It both raises awareness and gives children a way out in a unique and powerful way that uses interesting strategies to appeal to different audiences.