The Forest By David Scharf Essay
What's It Like to Be Depressed?
David Scharf, a university student, takes a creative approach on explaining the difficulty of dealing with the real world and the depression brought about by it, in a short animated film called "The Forest". The video starts out with a 12 year old girl narrating her life. She doesn't like school; she feels alone among people; her father pushes her very hard. To escape the pressures and sadness of the real world, the girl spends much of her time daydreaming about a beautiful forest, her happy place. She gets in trouble at school and her father then becomes fed up with her “distantness” and seeks the help of a professional. The specialist straps the girl to a machine and sucks out all of her creativity. She began …show more content…
Scharf uses relatable imagery. He shows school as a place that is "more of a mind prison than a place to learn about life." Many people see school that way; it's just a place to memorize information rather than actually learn. He also shows the marketing system with crude puns of business names like "HELL" instead of the computer company “DELL” and “HIV” instead of the clothing company “H&M”. Imagery like that shows our faults in marketing. We see brands but don’t really look at what that stand for or support. We feed into the lies of advertising.
Scharf uses mostly emotional appeals but also some logic. In the school he shows students connected to a machine, violently shaking as they are being “taught”. One boy even explodes and falls to the ground still shaking. Scharf meant for the boy to show that some students can’t keep up with standard school and mostly end up dropping out. The boy brings a feeling of “pity” for students who are taught like that. People begin to feel uncomfortable with the life the girl lives and what she has to endure. Logically, people see her life as “bad”, but as we look at our own lives we start to see parallelisms, perhaps even striking fear in some, that their lives are so
David Scharf, a university student, takes a creative approach on explaining the difficulty of dealing with the real world and the depression brought about by it, in a short animated film called "The Forest". The video starts out with a 12 year old girl narrating her life. She doesn't like school; she feels alone among people; her father pushes her very hard. To escape the pressures and sadness of the real world, the girl spends much of her time daydreaming about a beautiful forest, her happy place. She gets in trouble at school and her father then becomes fed up with her “distantness” and seeks the help of a professional. The specialist straps the girl to a machine and sucks out all of her creativity. She began …show more content…
Scharf uses relatable imagery. He shows school as a place that is "more of a mind prison than a place to learn about life." Many people see school that way; it's just a place to memorize information rather than actually learn. He also shows the marketing system with crude puns of business names like "HELL" instead of the computer company “DELL” and “HIV” instead of the clothing company “H&M”. Imagery like that shows our faults in marketing. We see brands but don’t really look at what that stand for or support. We feed into the lies of advertising.
Scharf uses mostly emotional appeals but also some logic. In the school he shows students connected to a machine, violently shaking as they are being “taught”. One boy even explodes and falls to the ground still shaking. Scharf meant for the boy to show that some students can’t keep up with standard school and mostly end up dropping out. The boy brings a feeling of “pity” for students who are taught like that. People begin to feel uncomfortable with the life the girl lives and what she has to endure. Logically, people see her life as “bad”, but as we look at our own lives we start to see parallelisms, perhaps even striking fear in some, that their lives are so