Jennifer Aniston Vs. Mercedes Benz Ice Cream Commercials

Part Number One: Fallacious Arguments

One: Jennifer Aniston Aveeno Positively Radiant Moisturizer commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOEbnTa5rkQ

This commercial uses the fallacy of Appeal to Authority. They have used a celebrity, Jennifer Aniston, to make the argument that their product is great and you should buy it. They have Jennifer Aniston say great things about a beauty product which will make people want to buy it simply because she is famous and beautiful so people will want what she says is a great product.

Two: Dove Self Esteem Commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SRRCKLUE6g

This Dove self esteem commercial uses the fallacy of appeal to emotion. Their argument is that you should take part

in the Dove real beauty workshops for girls and to get you to do that, they are playing with your emotions, which makes you feel bad about the fake body images that are being put out for the world to see. They are making you feel bad that young girls are seeing these images and are expected to look a certain way when it is humanly impossible, but they will try. This makes the viewers sad and wanting to help out and help girls.

Three: Mercedes Benz Ice Cream Commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJkUHXCVuEI

This Mercedes Benz commercial uses the fallacy of faulty analogy. They are comparing not having the new Mercedes Benz to not having ice cream and that is a horrible analogy. Their argument is that you should not wait to buy a Mercedes Benz and keep telling yourself “maybe next year” the same way that Raymond has done his whole life with Ice cream. Raymond has made a promise to himself to never try ice cream until he is thirty years old, and he is keeping that promise to himself. That is not the same as not buying a Mercedes Benz and to be waiting until you can afford the

car.

Part Number Two: Analyzing a Debate

A Debate on Child Labor Taken From,

https://www.wizness.com/wizness/go.aspu=/pub/NP&nId=200&lngWiz=EN

The cons of Child labor

• Children workers often have extremely difficult working conditions: very long work duration (from

12 to 16 hours a day), injuries from machinery, health problems from chemical poisonings, and no

access to drinking water or toilet blocks.

Children who have worked in these conditions suffer from

life-long disabilities and die at younger ages. This kind of child labor is of course absolutely immoral.

• Because of their young age, children are less expensive to hire, less likely to protest on their working

conditions or salaries, and therefore, easier to fire. Businesses are not bound by any regulations and

most of companies tend to abuse this situation and literally exploit them.

• While children are getting jobs in factories because of their low wages, adults often face difficulties to

find work due to child competition. They tend to feel unproductive and ashamed that they can’t support

the family, but that their children are, which causes social issues.

• By working every day, children miss school and the proper education that could enable them to find

better-paid jobs in their adult lives. Children labor perpetuates poverty and exploitation from

companies.

The Pros of Child

Labor

• Child labor may be a financial necessity for families, who don’t make enough money to buy the basic

essentials to survive. “Poverty is the main cause of child labor”, and “the less educated the parents, the

more likely the child will work” explains Werner Haas. In certain areas, families are forced to make

their children work to be able to feed them, which is simply tragic…but the grim reality!

• Child workers are not always exploited like in Dickens’ books: they may work alongside with their

parents to run the family business, like for instance to help at a restaurant or at a shop. Child labor can

be seen as a “participation” in foreign families’ work ethic, and was part of normal life in almost every

society in history.

• In certain cases, regulations can do more harm than good. For instance, read the case explained by

Toby Webb from EthicalCorp. As already happened in Bangladesh or Pakistan, companies can forbid

child labor because of pressure from Western customers. Children that used to work in textile factories

lose their jobs overnight and end-up working in less-paid sectors, with more dangerous working

conditions like metalworking, or worse join criminal activities or sex trade. Child labor in textile

factories may be safer than the alternatives.

Child labor may be acceptable if the work is appropriate, light and not harmful to their health or

development, and if children have time left to attend school. In our context of intensive globalization,

price is the main buying factor for consumers. Companies will then be tempted to cut their costs, and

keep using child labor. A reasonable compromise could be found for children: companies, associations

and governments together could set up programs, like in Brazil, to divide children’s time between their

work at factories to help their families and school attendance, which is their only chance to build a

better future. Is it, as Toby Webb explains, the “best of bad options”?

Nevertheless, we can ask ourselves the influence of Western consumers who always want to buy goods

at the lowest prices but at the same time condemn the use of child labor or the lack of environmental

protection from companies. The important increase of fair trade in recent years proves that we have a

role to play and are finally ready to take conscience of our purchases’ impact on the social and

environmental stakes of the planet.

For this debate, I would say that the argument for what is bad about child labor is the

stronger argument. The argument for what is good about child labor mostly gives more reasons

for what is bad about child labor, they do not have enough to say about the good things that

come of child labor and get side tract by talking more about the bad things about child labor.

The argument about what is bad about child labor is stronger because all of its premises are

valid and relevant, where as the argument about what is good about child labor is not as strong

because not all of its premises are relevant to its conclusion of what is good about child labor,

the premises begin to talk about how it is bad, rather than good.