I’ve been asking students to respond to this Run Wrake animation for close to 6 years now. I look forward to it each semester because it seems to genuinely affect people who watch it. It’s disturbing, bizarre, absurd and loaded with rhetoric. Below are a few select quotes from this week’s assignment I thought were particularly insightful.

Definitely not your archetypal Mother Goose, this contemporary film is well illustrated and edited. It’s success in achieving an ethical appeal (ethos) and an emotional response (pathos) is achieved by utilizing a serene, naive stage / setting to present a somber, moral parable with a mischievous, childlike style. (redmolly250)

In this video, a story is told about greed through the use of images from a typical children’s book which appeals to ethos because it is a famous style of story-telling that everyone has seen. These are very common images and it is shocking when they are not used in the typical children’s story, but rather a gruesome disturbing tale. (smartell)

Had the sharp contrast between the medium and message not existed the message would not have been delivered as successfully. The emotions that are evoked by the clip is most likely the most powerful agent in making this message clear and the delivery successful. In the end of the video I felt a little sick to my stomach because the imagery was disturbing and the message was powerful. (yashizzle723)