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Contents
The Grim Reaper Campaign and its Unruly Metaphor
HIV/AIDS: Perceptions and Policy in the 1980s
Defining Hidden Public Health Risk in the Grim Reaper PSA
Moving Forward: More Conscious Health Messaging
Today, these same kinds of errors are still occurring in the field of health communication. During the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump’s use of terms like “Kung-Flu” and “the Chinese Virus” led to an anti-Chinese sentiment among his followers (Santis, 2020, p. 6). In doing this, the president also created a familiar narrative that positioned China and its people as the enemy instead of the virus itself, leading his followers down a hole of violent Sinophobia. It appears that similar problems of cultural responsibility persist into contemporary health discourse. By personifying a virus and creating an anthropomorphic villain, be it COVID-19 or AIDS, an audience is prone to fill the role of the villain with another human group. As a counter, Semino (2021) discusses the implications of using fire as a metaphor for the novel coronavirus. This metaphor proves to be a versatile and effective use of symbolism to convey the importance of wearing masks and following health guidelines. Most importantly, though: “Fire metaphors convey the dangers posed by people being in close proximity to one another, but without directly attributing blame: People are described as inanimate entities (trees, kindling, fuel) that are consumed by the fire they contribute to spread” (Semino, 2021, p. 55). By using a metaphor where the enemy is inanimate, audiences are unable to place a person or group in that role, but they can still understand how the specific virus travels and spread. In the same vein, communicators can look at HIV/AIDS as a fire. While HIV and COVID-19 are very different, much of the metaphor still applies. If embers are used to represent the germs that are spread when a person infected with COVID-19 coughs (p. 55), they could also be used to represent the bodily fluids that can spread HIV. Instead of inspiring audiences to wear masks, this could inspire them to use condoms. Therefore, communicators can more effectively and responsibly use fear appeals and metaphor when viewers are unable to make a connection between the vehicle and a group of people. This also eliminates the possibility of any moral judgments being made, eliminating the possibility for parable, and still providing important information. The possibilities are endless, especially when there is so much more to be taught. However, caution must always be invoked when dealing in metaphor and fear appeal, whether parabolic in nature or not.