TOW #12 | Visual - EBOLA!

America is the country known to supersize everything--from drinks to people to even rumors. Most of the times, these “supersized” rumors and epidemics cause such a great deal in the United States that many begin to forget the abhorrent consequences to supersizing other things as well. The Sacramento Bee decides to address and bring awareness to this fact in their visual text, “EBOLA!” portraying the people’s ignorance to other health issues due to the prioritization of health concerns popularized by media.

The most prominent device the Sacramento Bee employs in their visual text is the utilization of words. “EBOLA!!!” is written in large font inside of a thinking bubble above the man’s head. By making the word “ebola” in a large font, the author is able to portray to their audience how important the man in the text considers the issue of ebola to be, so much that it trumps over all of the other problems he is encountering, such as obesity, smoking, and drinking. This creative use of wording continues throughout the text as the author writes “super” and “big” on the french fries to emphasize the large amounts of food that Americans consume and how that adds to one of the many overlooked health issues in the United States. The author also writes statistics in the empty spaces next to the man of the amount of deaths related to obesity, smoking, and drinking. Adding statistics to the cartoon allows the audience to understand how large-scale these health issues are and how many deaths they can cause, unlike media-popularized health epidemics like ebola.

Although the American public may not be aware, the next “big issue” will be taking over their nerves, brainwashing them to avoid a certain disease and once again steering their eyes away from the true issues that cause so many health-related deaths. The Sacramento Bee takes this issue and creates a unique cartoon that both highlights the overshadowed issue and criticizes the American public.