Want to Vomit, Turn it off, or Vegetarian? Meet Your Meat Video

I am overwhelmingly drawn to video of “Meet Your Meat” in Youtube, which is posted by PETA and simultaneously sickened by them. For years I have been eating meat on my plate in various forms of food without thinking where and how this meat came from and how the animal is killed for the sake of delicious friend chicken, yummy steak, hamburger, etc.  Awww… I am hungry now.

The video portrays the undercover investigation of animal farm, to see how human treat animal during their life in the farm and how human finally killed this animal. The brutalization of the image in “Meet Your Meat” is often bravely shown blood, the painful voice of animal, violation action to animal, etc. (Don’t vomit, and keep reading, this pain will soon be finished). 

Thus, the video is not only shown slaughtering process of animal, but also the torture that human has done in order to give painful remark in every slice of meat. The conventions of scene in the video are disconcerting for me as “meat-tarian” and pushing me to change my life style to be vegetarian, to overcome my guilty feeling as a human who involved in killing the animal by consuming them. CONFESSION: Well, eventually I am still a meat lover, xixixixi.....

 The video from PETA is one of the videos in digital media, which uses persuasive approach through emotional appeal, to create certain sensation to their audience through the visualization of animal torture. The viewers of this video reach until 14.353.689 viewers (9/17/11). Through the development of Internet, individual or organization can easily upload video to gain their objective. 

The video of PETA has illustrated the idea of power and image.  This video has created a disturbance in audience cognition (Maybe you remember CDT, Cognitive Dissonance Theory by Festinger, 1957), vivid memory, and persuasive message in the same time. PETA wants to offer emotional attach to the audience with the issue they want to advocate in the public sphere. However, the use of visual rhetoric for emotional appeal may in lead into action, but also rejection, development of other emotional appeal, and confirmation of co-exist commitment.

“HOT” IDEAS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH:

Actually many researches have been done for PETA, because PETA is pretty “interesting” for scholars, but you still can have research on:

a.  Exploring the audience’s response on PETA video through quantitative research such as survey or FGD

b.   Research on other PETA’s persuasive message, because they have tons that pretty much similar. Maybe textual analysis or rhetorical criticism can be done

c.  Find out the visual pattern of vegetarianism through YouTube content analysis, Fun!!!