Water Aid Advertisement- THEORISTS

Question 1

Reception Theory- Stuart Hall

Answer 1

• The use of the hand-held camera shots and indirect mode of address made Claudia connote that the audience is following her story.
• This is according to Hall’s theory, is the dominant or hegemonic encoding created by Water Aid.
• The fact that she is named creates the preferred reading that she is real and the audience should invest in her narrative, sharing WaterAid’s ideologies.

Question 2

Post- Colonialism- Paul Gilroy

Answer 2

• Water Aid is encouraging its British audiences to ‘help’ those like Claudia who live in ‘less developed’ countries. 650 Million people still don’t have access to clean drinking water.

Question 3

Cultivation Theory- George Gerbner

Answer 3

• The non-diegetic voiceovers made by well-known voices and the slow motion tracking shots shows the emotive representations of people suffering.
• The target audience’s likely liberal political perspectives will have been shaped by exposure to previous, generically similar adverts, shaping their world view that the suffering of people less fortunate than themselves can be alleviated by charitable donations.

Question 4

Representation- Stuart Hall

Answer 4

• The images of a dry, dusty African environment in which people maybe struggling to survive, form part of the “shared conceptual road map” that give meaning to the “world” of the advert.
• The positive audio codes challenge these stereotypical representations, creating enigmas around why Claudia is so positive. The solution to these enigma’s is given to the audience at ‘1:00’ when we first see the water pump