This is your brain....

Video 1

Observations
-It's a close up video of a frying pan.
-There's butter/oil in the frying pan.
-An egg is put in the pan.
-The oil/butter symbolizes drugs.
-The egg symbolizes your brain.
-You see the egg fry in the pan, showing what happens to your brain if you use drugs.
-"Any Questions?"

Inferences
-The effect of using drugs is like frying an egg; you're brain is fried, and 'cooked' by the drugs. The video seems that it would reach a broader audience by just focusing on the frying pan and the egg. It's showing the effect that drugs can have on you if you start using them, and thinks that this will reach them. It is also assuming that this audience will understand the effect that drugs have better by using the metaphor of the egg and the oil.





Video 2

Observations
-There is a young actress.
-An egg symbolizes your brain.
-A frying pan symbolizes drugs, more specifically heroine.
-Other objects symbolize other parts of your life, and most of the objects are fragile: family, friends, job, self respect, future, etc.
-It's very violent.

Inferences
-By having the popular actress they are trying to reach a younger teen audience, and focusing on that audience. By trying to show the effect that heroine has on your brain, and everything else in your life, with a violent video they hope that you get the picture that heroine is bad. The smashing of everything tries to show how hard drugs effect someone's life, and shows that everything is ruined by doing drugs.


Compare and Contrast.
While the first video could be used to show a broader audience what the effect of drugs are, the other seems to focus mainly on youth. The first video also has a boarder focus on the types of drugs that you do. It says that any type of drug can harm your body, fry your brain, while the second just focuses on the drug heroine. The video with Rachael Lee Cook, shows the effect that drugs have on not only your brain, but also the rest of your life. It shows that everything, and everyone, is effected by using drugs. I think that both have the same message, "Don't do drugs," and both are effective in conveying that message. I think one of the things that make them effective is the violence, or harshness, that each egg endures in the commercial. This shows that drugs are a big deal, and do a lot of harm to the user. Both try and show how fragile your brain is by comparing it to an egg, and how we have to take care of things which are easily destroyed.