The Clock is Ticking

Nickelback - Savin' Me

Kurt MySpace Video

Audience: The target audience consists of those that do not value the time that is given to them in their everyday life, which is true for every person at one point or another. Whether life is just beginning, coming to an end, or at any point in between, the message presented in this video applies to those of all ages, but most especially to adults who have become too self-absorbed to recognize the importance of helping other people.

Argument: The fragility of life as defined by the limits of time urges us to live the way we want to live and help those that we can along the way, because the fragility of life created by the limits of time characterizes life by the time we have left, which is continually becoming shorter by the second.

Implicit Assumption: Whatever characterizes life by the time we have left also urges us to live the way we want to live and help those that we can along the way.

Goal: To cause us to re-evaluate the way we think about our own lives, and the role we have in the lives of others.

How:

Logos:
At the beginning of the video, a man saved another man from being hit by a bus. The man that was saved then realized that he was able to see the allotment of time that the people around him had left to live. At the end of the video, the man saves a woman from being crushed by a falling object, and the woman is then able to see the time each person has left to live. This helps establish that those that have been helped by others are more able to see the needs of others that are in the same situation. This produces a chain that starts with one person and continues to grow as more people are being helped.

Accurate: The man could not save everyone, and not everyone needed to be saved, showing that everyone is at different stages of life. For some life was just beginning, for others they still had a long time to live, and then for some others, like the woman in the ambulance, it was her time to go.

Symbolism: By showing that each person has an allotted amount of time to live, and that the course of life can be altered by one person, we are able to see that one person can mean the difference between life and death, but not just in a physical sense. There are times in all of our lives when we are struggling with loneliness, frustration, or discouragement. In those times, we can help each other overcome those struggles.

Is it effective? Yes, but perhaps not to the same extent for everyone. The audience is most likely to think ore about the video due to waht I identified as logos. For those that spend time thinking about the video after watching it, the goal of the argument is likely to be achieved.