even camels die
Today in one of my tenth-grade classes, the students were presenting some "anti-ad" posters they'd made after studying the same sort of thing by groups like Adbusters. I wished again that I'd had a camera along, in order to capture some of their artwork. Probably the best was a spoof on The Axe Effect: in the commercials, a guy sprays on Axe and is immediately swarmed by beautiful women who can't keep their hands off him. So one group of students took this photograph of two guys sitting on a bench in a subway station. One, who appears to be flamboyantly gay, is leaning in eagerly towards the other, who is assumedly wearing the spray and looking horrified at the prospect of his Axe Effect gone all wrong.
The beauty of most of the anti-ads was in the slogans, though. One group's contribution showed before and after sketches of a stylish young man smoking a cigarette; the "after" picture was identical to the "before" except that one of the man's legs was missing below the knee. In the middle of the poster the students had glued a package of Marlboros, the usual Surgeon General's warning replaced with, "If you want to lose your legs, go to the pack of cigarettes." An interesting and effective take on the anti-smoking campaign: don't smoke or your legs will fall off.
Five or six other anti-ads were meant to make McDonald's out to be the evilest corporation on the planet. (Fat kids stealing skinny kids' hamburgers; a thin and beautiful woman going into a McDonald's franchise and coming out fat and ugly.)
My favorite, though, was another anti-smoking ad, a spoof on this Camel image:
In the students' anti-ad, Joe Camel's eyes are x's and his tongue is hanging out. Instead of a cigarette package, his head is popping out of a gravestone with R.I.P. in place of CAMEL FILTERS, and the grass below it is littered with stubbed-out cigarette butts. The best part, though, was the slogan emblazoned across the top of the poster:
The beauty of most of the anti-ads was in the slogans, though. One group's contribution showed before and after sketches of a stylish young man smoking a cigarette; the "after" picture was identical to the "before" except that one of the man's legs was missing below the knee. In the middle of the poster the students had glued a package of Marlboros, the usual Surgeon General's warning replaced with, "If you want to lose your legs, go to the pack of cigarettes." An interesting and effective take on the anti-smoking campaign: don't smoke or your legs will fall off.
Five or six other anti-ads were meant to make McDonald's out to be the evilest corporation on the planet. (Fat kids stealing skinny kids' hamburgers; a thin and beautiful woman going into a McDonald's franchise and coming out fat and ugly.)
My favorite, though, was another anti-smoking ad, a spoof on this Camel image:
In the students' anti-ad, Joe Camel's eyes are x's and his tongue is hanging out. Instead of a cigarette package, his head is popping out of a gravestone with R.I.P. in place of CAMEL FILTERS, and the grass below it is littered with stubbed-out cigarette butts. The best part, though, was the slogan emblazoned across the top of the poster:SMOKING: Even Camels Die.
Not bad, really, especially for tenth graders. I don't know if I could do any better if asked to come up with a catchy slogan in German. It just struck me funny, and cute. One of the other students in the class remarked that it sort of sounds like camels are otherwise impossible to kill, but, you know, give 'em a package of cigarettes and they'll smoke themselves right into the ground.
