depicting death at war #socrel13
DESCRIPTION
Abstract: http://ww2poster.co.uk/2012/12/abstract-accepted-depicting-death-at-war/TRANSCRIPT
Dr Bex Lewis, Research Fellow in Social Media and Online LearningCODEC, University of Durham
Depicting Death at WarSOCREL Annual Conference11th April 2013
http://ww2poster.co.uk @drbexl
Total War
• During the war, a ‘shared sense of national identity had to be mobilised amongst the people of Britain’. Achieved partly through propaganda posters, more and more people ‘were encouraged to identify themselves as active citizens, as active members of the nation’, a citizenship ‘to be earned by communal and individual service of one’s nation in wartime’.
Lewis, R., Unpublished PhD thesis (2004), quoting Noakes, L., War and the British: Gender and National Identity, 1939-91, 1998, p.48.
The nature of warfare…
… increasingly technologised … increasingly depersonalised
World War I: The Heroic Individual
World War I: Sport
The Spanish Civil War (1936)
• A public notice aims to inform or command. A poster aims to seduce, to exhort, to sell, to educate, to convince, to appeal. Whereas a public notice distributes information to interested or alert citizens, a poster reaches out to grab those who might otherwise pass it by.
• Susan SontagRead more: http://j.mp/ww2posterch2
In Situ: March 1943
Benedict Anderson: ‘Imagined Communities’
what ‘makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name’
http://tinyurl.com/imaginedcommunities
Citizen Warriors
• The boundaries between the civilian and the combatant soldier were blurred during the war, with ‘propagandist attempts to personify the entire population as heroic’.
• Lewis, R., Unpublished PhD thesis, quoting Paris, M., Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000, 2000, p.201
The “Citizen-Soldier”
Ministry of Information
• Central governmental publicity machine
• Formed September 1939
• Tell the citizen ‘clearly and swiftly what he is to do, where he is to do it, how he is to do it and what he should not do’.
http://ww2poster.co.uk/2009/04/1939-3-posters/
http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/
RURAL LIFE V URBAN DECAY
Beauty in Destruction
“Pictures Which Hurt”
Fougasse, 1940
The Human Cost?
Too much reality?
Abram Games (1914-1996), War Office
• 1940: Infantry• ‘an understanding of
what the ranker thinks, does and, perhaps more important, does not do’, as the army mentality was different from that of the ‘outside world’.
• 1941: Recruiting Posters for RAC
• 1942: “Official War Office Poster Designer”
Individual Responsibility?
Careless Talk in the Army
DEATH TO THE ENEMY
Depicting the Enemy
Bloody Hitler…
Enemy Ally
HEALTH & SAFETY
DANGER in the Factory (1)
DANGER in the Factory (2)
VD: A Scourge of War?
HEADING TO THE FUTURE• The day will come when
the joybells will ring again throughout Europe, and when victorious nations, masters not only of their foes but of themselves, will plan and build in justice, in tradition, and in freedom..'
• The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Chuchill, C.H., M.P. Jan. 20th, 1940
Post-War• “I am grateful to
your correspondents who have pointed out that the ubiquitous poster is intended to represent a widow, as I have been labouring under the misapprehension that it depicted an actual victim.”
• Mass-Observation
Conclusions
• Death conspicuous by its ever-present absence.
• Variety of campaigns• Mixed responses
• ‘Harsher’ images more accepted in the armed forces despite the notion that the civilian was part of the ‘fighting front’.
Thank you for your time…
QUESTIONS?
http://ww2poster.co.uk@drbexl @ww2poster