PETA

(backtracking)
Personally, the role of agency in Barton's piece/PETA case was very reminiscent of the Asch article.  I mean this in the fact that I argue the animals and crippled people are both without agency, instead giving it to the "writer" of the piece,  or in this case, human activists.  Both groups are stripped of their true identity, instead recreated under direction of the writer/ activist in order to appear weaker than they are.  This evocation of pity helps to dehumanize the groups by "continuing pernicious stereotypes" (Barton 195).  While I understand that animals cannot be "dehumanized" as they are not human, such advertisements removes the agency of the animals to make them even more helpless, if not uncomfortable being in their situation.  No advertisement is going to highlight on the positive care received by the animals, it will instead focus on only the final stages of care or other extreme cases of explicit animal abuse.  However, unlike the United Way, which Barton classified as an "American Business" (188), PETA and other groups remain "group" status.  While they may fully well function as businesses, the majority of the public will continue to see them as a bunch of extremists who are together in an organization.  In this sense, I think PETA has as little agency as the animals they represent, as both are considered a product of how the people view them. 

One particularly interesting point of Barton's was her ideas of the "Supercrip".  She states that "presenting disability in the figure of a supercrip reinforces the stereotype of disability as adversity requiring transcendence" (195).  However, in the slideshow presented, I fail to see any examples of the Supercrip animal.  PETA's method of attack instead chooses to focus on the other tactic Barton outlines, "reducing disability to the figure of the child...to...reinforce the stereotype of disability as lifelong dependence" (195).  PETA, and other animal activist groups, use the idea of "lifelong dependece" to evoke empathy in order to call others to action.  Reducing the animals to nothing more than this "Other" Barton addresses, a group relient on others to survive.  However, whereas Barton's example of the United Way was able to provide many benefits to the Other who act as recipients, I think the case of PETA will be a bit more difficult.  People will continue to eat meat, and since our society shifted argricultural techniques to that of a indsutrialized system, it seems more cost efficient to store and kill animals as we have been for years.  True, it is not the cleanest, but this is where individual choice (not necessarily codependent on active PETA status) enables one to choose whether or not they eat the meat.