Exercise 1, pp 43- 44
Description
At the very top of the advertisement are the words "Restricting choices little by little can add up to a big problem." in large print. Below this sentence is a cartoon of a man being tied down by two much smaller people who are pounding stakes into the ground to secure the ropes while another is perched on the large man's foot in the foreground. This third person is dressed as a police officer, holding a baton and a bullhorn and wearing a badge that says "lifestyle police". All around the bound man are picket signs reading "no free thinking", "ban coffee", "rub out leather", and "no smoking". There is also a fourth person in the background holding a sign that reads "no red meat". Below the cartoon, in small text, is a copy that identifies the "lifestyle police" as extremists bent on pushing to control many aspects of the general public's daily lives. It specifically identifies smokers as the current primary target and later states that if 50 million smokers can lose their rights, then so can everyone else. The advertisement finishes with an offer to contact The National Smoker's Alliance.The line "Restricting choices little by little can add up to a big problem" is emphasized by the illustration below it. It states that if we lose our individual rights one at a time, we will eventually have no rights left and no decisions to choose them. The picket signs in the picture are examples of those individual rights. The ad is obviously conveying that we cannot let these "lifestyle police" tie the general down by stripping them of their rights, namely smoking. It attempts to relate to the reader by showing picket signs threatening simple rights such as the right to eat red meat or the right to wear leather. The sign that says "no free thinking" is the unifying force in the picture simply because free thinking is universal. These show that anyone's rights can be eliminated, even if they are trivial. It uses strong stereotypical words such as extremists, Big Government, and "lifestyle police", which can make them seem all the more frightening to the reader. There is no specific description of who or what these threatening forces truly are, making it vague and somewhat unclear in the end.
