The Art of Fallacies

Brent Johnson

Ms. Lori Stoltz

English 117.18

4/7/05

The Art of Fallacies

A fallacy is defined as a false notion; a statement or an argument based on a false or invalid inference. Fallacies can often be labeled as highly deceptive. For this reason, fallacies are often used in advertising to bait viewers into specific products. There are quite a few different types of fallacies for example, begging the question, attacking the person etc. With each fallacy derives more different situations in which a specific fallacy can be used. For example some products use popular athletes or famous people to entice viewers to buy their product. Other fallacies consist of reasoning that is based on circular reasoning in which the true purpose of why you should purchase this product is never revealed. All of the fallacies used in this paper came from a commercial web site in which the commercials have and are still being aired on television.

In the first television advertisement, the famous singer and producer P. Diddy is displayed as being stranded on the side of the road with car problems. Along comes a Diet Pepsi truck in which he hitch hikes a ride. The commercial immediately cuts to a red carpet event with paparazzi, famous people, etc. Immediately, interviewers at the this event start photographing P. Diddy exiting this Diet Pepsi truck and start asking him about his alleged new ride. The very next day or so the commercial leads the viewers to believe that celebrities such as Carson Daly are driving Diet Pepsi trucks as if it is the new fad and cool thing to do.

The logical fallacy in this commercial that will be focused on is Bandwagon or in Latin, ad populum. The bandwagon fallacy implies that something is right because everyone is doing it, has it, etc. In this specific commercial, P. Diddy is displayed as a celebrity who is endorsing the product of Diet Pepsi by using one of the Pepsi trucks as transportation to a very important celebrity event. The viewer is led to believe that because P. Diddy is in this Diet Pepsi truck that he must approve and in fact enjoy the product. Also, by showing another well-known celebrity such as Carson Daly driving a Diet Pepsi truck, the viewers are left with no other thought than the fact that all the celebrities in Hollywood must enjoy and endorse this product. This advertisement pushes very strongly that Diet Pepsi is cool by association of celebrities and not once mentions the taste, calories, or any worthwhile information. One can only think that everyone in Hollywood is doing it therefore I should as well.

The second television advertisement is for Degree antiperspirant. In this commercial an action figure or lack of action is called the Mama’s Boy. The ad depicts a grown man who is pushed around and babied by his mother. The commercial displays the mother forcing him to sit in the front of a shopping cart like an infant would at a grocery store. It then cuts to a scene where it shows all the cool and nifty things that this lack of action Mama’s Boy doll can do. It shows how there has been an internal magnet placed in the belly of both the Mama’s Boy and the mother figure so that there is never separation between the two. The commercial then goes on to show the six different guilt trips the mother can say in order to humble the Mama’s Boy doll. At the very end of the commercial, it cuts to the punch line of the ad, which states, “Some men never take risks, for those who do use Degree Antiperspirant.”

The fallacy that will be focused