Using Anthropomorphism in Motivating People to Change Behaviors

Using Anthropomorphism in Motivating People to Change Behaviors
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Using Anthropomorphism in Motivating People to Change Behaviors
“I wish you had created me so that I could die,” was the final words of the plastic bag after it was unable to find its maker (Sondhi, 2010). The short film by Ramin Bahrani entitled “Plastic Bag (2010)” uses anthropomorphism to motivate individuals to change their behavior positively. Besides, anthropomorphism refers to the concept where non-human things are given features, traits, or characteristics of humans. For example, in the short movie, the plastic bag shares its life experiences of what it has to go through after it got exposed to the environment. The object has hands, skin, and can speak, which is unusual behavior for plastic bags. The narrator in the film, Werner Herzog, does his best to portray the environmental impacts of disposing of plastic bags haphazardly. In reality, were it not for anthropomorphism, one would not have understood the adverse consequences of polythene materials on the surroundings. Anthropomorphism is a critical technique that can motivate individuals to change their behaviors positively, particularly with respect to the use of a plastic bag.
Anthropomorphism makes the experiences of the plastic bag so real. At the beginning of the film, the object says that the most significant and good thing that ever happened to it was its first breath. Indeed, it was happy to be used for carrying groceries, and it felt useful. In other words, it had the proper meaning of life. When the woman, its maker, got home, the plastic bag says that she was quick in accepting it in her life. At this point, one can see the woman using it in different ways, and sometimes it was left alone to relax. The plastic bag says that it was independent and liked everything about how its maker used it. In essence, it even got a chance of meeting some of the woman’s friends and even helped her to carry tennis balls to the court (Sondhi, 2010). However, things changed when it met a monster, which is the term it uses to refer to the woman’s pet. The plastic bag hated the dog since it was the reason why it ended up in the rubbish dump. All its happy moments came into an end. Consequently, anthropomorphism shows how people use plastic bags and how they get into the dumping site.
While in the rubbish dump, the plastic bag says that almost everything else decomposed, but it was left strong and determined to find its owner. At this point, Bahrani wanted the viewer to see how polythene materials never decompose quickly even when exposed to agents of decay. From the dumping site, the plastic bag foll...