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Rebecca Rubio

Professor More

English 1301

6 November 2017

Pigs vs. Bad Wolf Takes A Plot Twist

For very person that smokes cigarettes, there is a person who campaigns about how

negative smoking is. There are different commercials that use a variety of tactics to catch a

viewer's attention. The Straw City commercial took the well-know story of a wolf blowing down

straw houses of pigs and used it to demonstrate how smoking cigarettes can affect someone's

lungs. The full commercial starts off with a wolf looking into his refrigerator and finding it

completely empty. Next, he is seen looking for food in a town of pigs. Needless to say that the

pigs are terrified because there is a wolf present. The wolf attempts multiple times to blow one of

the straw houses down and continuously failed. After the pigs see how the wolf has failed, they

lose all their fear of the wolf and look at him with pity. The wolf accepts the fact that smoking

cigarettes has compromised the use of his lungs and proceeds to smoke another cigarette.

Although this commercial was made with intentions to spread awareness to teen smokers about

the negative effects of smoking, the use of The Three Little Pigs caught the attention of a

younger audience. The popularity of the story, including smoke facts, and portraying a real life

situation in the straw commercial attempts to convince the audience that smoking cigarettes

causes weakness.

Using a popular children's story to bring awareness of the effects caused by smoking

cigarettes was a good use of ethos. The story of the three little pigs and a bad wolf is a story that

is well known by the average child in the United States. In the original story of the Three Little
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Pigs, the brick house was the only house the wolf could not blow down. However, the producers

created a plot twist to capture the attention of the younger audience, by showing that because of

the wolf's damaged lungs he could not blow down a straw house. Often, kids do not know or are

too young to understand the effects that come along with smoking. With this commercial they do

not need to understand because what they are seeing is that cigarettes are taking away the wolf's

strength. After a seeing this commercial, the next time they see a relative, familiar face, or

someone close to them smoking, they are likely to tell them something about how only bad

wolves smoke. Although the message of the commercial is for teenagers to stop smoking

cigarettes, it is hard for one to stop smoking once they have already started. However, it is not

too late to prevent the younger audience from starting a smoking habit.

The commercial tied smoking cigarettes to the wolf not being able to blow the straw

houses down. The producers made sure to include a statement at the end of the commercial that

said, "Smoking as a teen can permanently stunt your lungs. Taking the air out of even the biggest

and baddest"(Straw City). In the Three Little Pigs story, the wolf would blow once and the house

would fall to the ground leaving the pigs nowhere to run. However, in the Straw City commercial

the wolf tried with all his power to blow down the house and he could not bring the house down.

After a few puffs he struggled to catch his breath, and continued to grow weaker. The point of

his struggling to blow down the house was to show how the lungs can be compromised after

smoking cigarettes. "Smoking can cause fatal diseases such as pneumonia, emphysema and lung

cancer. Smoking causes 84% of deaths from lung cancer and 83% of deaths from chronic

obstructive pulmonary disease"(How Smoking Affects Your Body). Smoking cigarettes takes an

effect on the lungs and that was shown when the wolf only managed to blow away one piece of
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straw. The lungs are not the only organs that are compromised by smoking, and the

consequences can begin with an illness and lead to death.

The used of pathos was illustrated when the pig's perception of the wolf changed after

they noticed that his weakness was due to smoking cigarettes. After the wolf could not blow

down any of the houses, the pigs looked at him with such pity. The way they viewed him went

from a powerful to powerless. It seemed as if the pigs had lost all their fear towards him and

viewed him as weak because he could not blow down the house and continued to harm himself

by smoking cigarettes. The wolf gave up on trying to blow down the houses, took out a cigarette,

and proceeded to smoke. Almost as if the wolf had given up on himself as well. This visual

portrayed what happens in real life, because often when people see a person smoking a cigarette

there is many thoughts that may run through their head. Some people think that smoking is

disgusting, others may think that it is dangerous but over all their perception of that person

changes. Jameson Dumaurier wrote a blog about smoker- shaming and he wrote about some of

the discrimination he has faced due to being a cigarette smoker. "I have been the victim of

intolerance and discrimination, all because I fail to meet societys expectations of the perfect pair

of lungs. I have been subjected to being called names. Worse, Ive been denied access to all

kinds of places including restaurants, bars, airplanes, schools, and churches"(Jameson

Dumaurier). This was used to make people realize that the way other people see them changes

when they are smoking. Sometimes the discrimination is enough to convince a smoker to stop

smoking cigarettes.

This visual did an excellent job at catching the viewers attention of the people closest to

the intended audience. People do not like to be reminded of the bad decisions they are making so

they find it easy to change the channel when this commercial comes on. However, it is not that
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easy to get rid of a child that is constantly reminding you that smoking is a bad choice, smoking

can cause health issues, or that smoking can changed the way a person who smokes cigarettes is

viewed. It could have been easy to just say that smoking is bad. However the producers came up

with a visual that a helped wide variety of audiences understand what smoking will do to a

person's lungs with also giving information at the end of the commercial. The commercials that

campaigning against smoking cigarettes must be working because there has been a decrease in

the use of cigarettes among teenagers. "From 2011 to 2016, current cigarette smoking declined

among middle and high school students"(Smoking and Tobacco Use). Hopefully the

commercials created after the Straw City commercial will be just as affective when it comes to

spreading awareness to teenagers about how harmful smoking cigarettes can be.
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Works Cited

Dumaurier, Jameson. Stop Smoker-Shaming. Thought Catalog, Thought Catalog, 15 Jan.

2015, thoughtcatalog.com/jameson-dumaurier/2015/01/stop-smoker-shaming/.Acessed

25 November 2017

How Smoking Affects Your Body. NHS Choices, NHS, www.nhs.uk/smokefree/why-

quit/smoking-health-problems.Accessed 14 November 2017

Smoking & Tobacco Use. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention, 20 Sept. 2017,

www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/youth_data/tobacco_use/index.htm.Acc

essed 25 November 2017

Straw City. Youtube, The Real Cost, 27 Jan. 2017,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGHOdbYq3ZM.Acceseed 14 November 2017