A Semiotic Study on War Posters

Semiotics: A study of signs

A Semiotic Study on War Posters

Acknowledgement

This report wouldn’t have seen the light at the end of the tunnel had it not been for Dr. Seema Khan-

walkar who encouraged & challenged us & settled for nothing less than our best efforts.

Focus

The following study is set during the times of World War II when the bigger national powers ‘sceptre’ed

the world colosseum & used war propaganda to score high on the sympathetic quotient of the nation &

in turn the world. The focus of this study is to understand & analyze this phenomenon through the U.S.

war propaganda & how the super power used it to their advantage to turn tables amongst the global au-

dience.

Hypothesis

The hypothesis statement for the entire study is ‘USA used propaganda posters during the war with sub-

liminal texts so that the civilians would get influenced, in turn mobilizing opinion the way the ‘thought

leaders’ had anticipated’.

Introduction

A historical backdrop

The face of human kind got a deep ridden scar in 1945 when the universal mayhem named World War II

came to an end with the explosion of an atom bomb in the Japanese territory of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

The world wide turmoil which commenced in the late 1939, divided the world into two powers viz. Allies

& Axis till the unfortunate event happened in the Asian quarter of the world. The Allies emerged victori -

ous & as a result United States of America & the Soviet Union grew to be superpowers of the world.

Their quest for global dominance left their clothes stained with the blood of innocent civilians across the

globe. However, in order to have an upper hand in the political arena as well, these superpowers re-

sorted to use of lens, propaganda & dynamic war journalism in order to mobilize the masses. Propa-

ganda posters were deployed in order ‘to paint the town red’ so as to capture nation’s military triumph

Submitted by: Karan Chandna (e7019), Komal Lath (e7023), Kshitij Pandey (e7024), Niyati Sharma (e7036), Rajeesh R. (e7041), Shradha Agarwal (e7056), Subhamoy Das (e7058), Varun Attrey (e7062)


over axial powers around the world so as to connect with the patriotic & sympathetic side of people

back home. To cut the story short, the United States of America went in with full gusto to propagate a

general hatred & an implied support for the nation’s military forces campaign towards world domi-

nance.

Why have we chosen this topic?

Semiotics as an application can be extended to the fabric of many…in-fact every sphere. We decided to

test waters on our knowledge of semiotics by applying it to some very basic visual texts like posters. It is

not unknown that United States of America had been acting the Big daddy of all nations and the World

War II just cemented the power structure of that nation. However such global supremacy necessitated

mass killing in the other, poorer countries, which needed to be put in a completely different light to fel-

low citizens to garner political support. As a result of which, the photographs of mass suffering in the

Asian lands of Hiroshima & Nagasaki post the ‘Atom Bomb’ incident were suppressed in the US media

circles & the triumph of their military coups were projected to a ‘Herculean’ pedestal. The means of pro -

paganda were many…journalism, posters, photographs etc. In our opinion we wanted to analyze how a

very basic medium like posters could also be semiotically analyzed to convey rich, deep yet latent mean -

ings. It was an interesting thing to note the play of form, visual imagery and paradigms that cohesively

gave way to an altogether new construction of meaning…the way USA wanted so as to justify their bru-

talities and negate Nazi Germany & other Axial powers.

Methodology

The methodology adopted to analyze the posters, (refer appendix) that were issued by the US govern-

ment to mobilize the masses in their own country, would restrict the universe of our analysis within the

quadrangle of signification, paradigms associated, denotations & connotations & finally iconification.

The posters would be analyzed under the lights of the signifiers in the posters & in turn what did it sig-

nify for the general public, the paradigms associated which are communicated through the generous use

of codes & symbols, the denotative & connotative meanings of these posters & finally the negative

iconic quotient imparted upon the axial powers to put them in the bad eye of the general public so as to

justify mass killing in these parts of the world.



Analysis

This analysis concerns a semiotic analysis of posters whose similarity is based on the fact that all concern the posters prepared as propaganda by the USA (In conjunction with the Allied powers) to coerce the Axial powers, and all were found in the within the textual context of war posters.

We therefore present a ‘semiotic deconstruction’ of the posters that have been chosen (please refer to the Annexure) in terms of their status as signs, whose associative meanings not only gave a favourable impression of the country, but also the sublime power context in which they were situated and high-lighted; thus illustrating Umberto Eco's claim that the medium and message may be 'charged with cul-tural signification’.

Paradigms

The use of Umberto Eco’s theory is very significant in this regard as the ‘paradigm’ in which the war posters have been based, are heavily influenced by the social paradigms (the angst against USA which was rising and therefore to mellow it, Germany was made to look like a devilish country) , economic par -adigms (the economic unrest). The medium being posters used for propaganda and the message being ‘exuding power by USA among the nation and the rest of the world through sings, symbols, iconography etc.

Iconography and Codification through symbols…Signified and signifier

Although all of the posters do not physically represent the product, they all provide an important iconic representation of both the propaganda and what the codification, should stand for. Thus, analyses of all the posters strongly focus upon the visual imagery, and the ways in which this imagery generates the ap-propriate signified concepts (or emotional overtones) which promote the image of the product. Take for instance the colour red that has been very prominently and overtly used to signify the bloodshed caused by Nazis and therefore mobilize opinions against the Germans who belonged to the Axis Powers.

The fonts used also have a startling impact on the way the message can be perceived. Poster 3 for in -stance shows ‘warning, our homes are in danger now’. The very fact that the typography and word con-structions (the semantics, syntactic and paradigmatic) meaning emerges strongly that Germany is one that is destroying the world and that to protect your homes, you need to support your country – USA.

The visual imagery when ‘decoded’ very bluntly describes the 2 powers – Japan and Germany trying to assert their power( the globe focusing on USA, their expressions of complete power and disgust over the USA and the very fact the placement of the text)

Denotations and Connotations



The signifier Hitler with his facial expressions, hand gestures and body language signifies contempt for the world and USA in particular. In Poster 2, the shoe kicking the white house bearing a Nazi symbol which lies in the paradigm of the social construction of the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles. The concept was to show the ‘blitzkrieg’ phenomenon and again the linguistic semiotics – ‘we’re fighting to prevent this’, shows the extent to which USA went to protect its atrocities and justify the horrific deeds.

Thus an overview of the analysis as was presented in class covered the way the posters were designed, their historical perspective as to why each poster was made and the backdrop of it being constructed. We then peeled the onion layer bit by bit to unravel the deeper texts hidden within the codes of its con-struction like visual imagery, fonts, colours, the people who were depicted (Eg. Poster 1 showed surren-der by the blue collared workers post the Great Depression), the syntactic, pragmatic and semantic meaning of the visual text, the appeal which it then generated and the overall effect it had on the masses.

Applying the theoretical framework:

Barthes expressed his view that a newspaper photograph, posters are, ‘objects that have been worked on, chosen, composed, constructed, treated according to professional, aesthetic or ide-ological norms which are so many factors of connotation

There are many decisions taken by the poster creator such as; focusing, subject, angle, that pro -duce various representations, and readings, creating different connotations. From the choices made from the paradigm sets of these signifiers, and the syntagmatic relationship between them, it is possible to decode and compare the posters

Bibliography http://library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/amposter.htm

Writing the image after Roland Barthes – Jean Michael Rabate

http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/semiotics.html


http://library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/amposter.htm


Annexure 1


Fig 1.1 Fig 1.2

Fig 1.3 Fig 1.4



Fig 1.5

Documents

A Semiotic Study on War Posters