Sunday, March 17, 2019

I need help extracting the metaphors (visual and structural) from the following link: http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2012/?adv=Small+Things+-+Mitt+Romney+%28SPAC%29+-+Nov+5

The first image we are shown in the advertisement depicts Barack Obama's body with a television in place of his head. On the television there are clips from Obama's own speeches. In the background, there is blue sky. This image metaphorically implies that Obama was, at the beginning of his presidency, making grand, overblown promises, indicated by the fact that the blue sky and the sun are in the background. Over the course of the advertisement, the figure of Obama shrinks, and his voice becomes high-pitched. This is supposed to suggest that the great, overblown ambitions and promises he began with have dwindled to almost nothing. The implication is that he was unrealistic or naive, or even disingenuous to begin with. The fact that we only see Obama's face through a television screen might mean to suggest, metaphorically, that he is superficial and concerned more with how he appears to the public than he is with the actual content of what he says.
Later in the video we see a sequence of images which serve as metaphors for the Obama presidency, from the Republican perspective at least. For example, we are shown a picture of a chain and padlock, together with the words, "A Stagnant Economy." The chain and padlock is supposed to serve as a metaphor to imply that under President Obama, the economy has stagnated and people have become metaphorically imprisoned within the economy.

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