Envt Campaign- B.E.A.C.H. #3

#3. The environmental campaign that I am going to evaluate is called the B.E.A.C.H., or the Beach environmental awareness campaign Hawaii. Basically, this organization is a non-profit entity that raises awareness and offers some solutions to combat the problem of debris that is found on many of the Hawaiian beaches. I think it is definitely a step in the right direction that the organization is actually offering up solutions as opposed to just raising awareness, but what I am going to focus on is how the website is constructed aesthetically, which essentially constructs an imagined community, which Toxic Tourism frowns upon and discourages. One need not even read the description of the organization to get a sense of the fact that this so called organization seems more pleasurable and vacation-like than anything else. Beautiful blue water and sea creatures splash right across the top of the page, and right away, at least in my opinion, I get the impression that this is more of a vacation website than an organization fighting for the lives of these animals. It almost has a seaworld feel to it, where the animals are to be looked at, rather than helped. Right off the bat this goes against one of the aspects of effectiveness that is talked about in Toxic Tourism. Instead, the website should be less touristy looking and more geared towards sharing the pain of others, in this case, the others being the animals,rather than glorifying their image. Hence, an imagined community is formed. The image up top is almost a spitting image of the one that is displayed across the webpage for the Hawaiian organization.




http://www.letsgo-hawaii.com/captcook/captcook1206_47b8.jpg