Tow #24

Tow #25 Visual Text

           

            On March 8^th Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370) went missing carrying two hundred and twenty seven passengers, from 14 different nations, and twelve crewmembers.  An hour after take off the flight went missing, without any radio contact of distress or bad weather.  The final transmission sent from the plane was the co-pilot, who left one final radio transmission, “All right, good night.”  Now, more then 20 days later not much is known about what happened to the flight, however that didn’t stop the media from spewing countless “possibilities” onto the public without any real information, evidence or facts about the flight being found.  The “possibilities” being released range from a simple engine failure to an unexplained one in a million chance meteor strike that vaporized the plane on contact.  Now that pieces of the plane are being recovered many of these theories are being released less and less, however American people continue to believe them. 

            It is because of this fact that Joe Heller created this political cartoon.  To show the ridiculousness in speculating on an event that no one can predict.  To appeal to the American people Heller uses an allusion to the March Madness brackets that have been also trending lately.  These March madness brackets have been in the news this year because of the large amounts of upsets that have been experienced and the unfortunate gambling that has accompanied it.  In this political cartoon Heller lists multiple “possibilities” and theories in a bracket similar to the NCAA March Madness brackets.  This allows the American reader to create a bridge between the ridiculous MH370 theories and the numerous wrong brackets that many Americans see today in the media.  This is an effect devise because it is something that Americans can relate to and understand the ridiculousness of these theories.

            Joe Heller is the editorial cartoonist for the Green Bay Press-Gazette and was previously the cartoonist for the West Bend Daily News.

https://www.politicalcartoons.com/cartoon/a3200d3d-a254-4f6c-9a5c-9aed6e94fe66.html