Over There: A Battle Hymn For A New Public

You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. Dollars to donuts I’ll bet everyone’s seen it. I mean, it’s everywhere. It’s on retail walls and in homes. It’s on doormats and beer cozies. T-shirts and totebags and chocolate bars – oh my! I know you know it. I know that you know that I know it too. That simplistic sans serif phrase emboldened in eye catching color with a strikingly plain graphic. I give you:

Why is this everywhere?

I’ve always just casually dismissed this phenom. Shrugging it off as just one more meme or, as I referred to it in conversation once, silly trendy inspo shtick. It's been copied and parodied to death. You can buy virtually anything adorned with the original slogan. It’s gotten to the point where I no longer even look at it for what it is or says -  it has so saturated the market as to inevitably blend in with all the examples of wasteful consumerism that I find so offensive.

Until now that is. The story of this tenacious little print has been brought to light recently, and its roots are far more developed and meaningful than I could have guessed. This video does a bang up job of explaining it (and I suggest you watch it so that what follows makes sense):

So as it turns out, this seemingly innocuous bit of commercially mass produced "art" has rich important beginnings - an old poster from World War II England designed to nurture the Brits' notoriously stalwart posture in the face of unimaginable difficulties. This combines two things I’ve always found endlessly fascinating – war propaganda and the British (although I’ve never really thought of the two together before). I spent the two summers before and the one after my freshman year in college working at an honest to god Olde Tyme Photo joint on a boardwalk on the Atlantic Ocean. I was subjected to boundless hours of humiliation having to bark at tourists while dressed as a saloon girl or gun moll, pleading with them to spend their money with promises of an experience they’ll never forget (hell, the picture to remember it by is just a bonus really - but buy this $40. frame anyway). Part of the shop’s appeal was the atmosphere we created, complete with period music. To my naïve astonishment, my summer soundtrack included quite a number of turn of the century war rally cries – some familiar and optimistic, some just down right racist. It was here that I first got a taste for the power those tunes held - how such simple assertions like “Loose Lips Sink Ships,” if framed just so, can cause a man to regard his previously trusted contemporaries with slit eyed scrutiny.

A Call To Action

Being more of a visual artist, when I discovered propaganda posters, I was hooked. How sentiments and design can come together to change minds is both awe inspiring and utterly frightening. Let's not forget that persuasion is the ultimate goal of propaganda and that people are often more swayed by what they see than what they are told. Coming to full fruition during the mayhem days of the two world wars, propaganda posters have been and still are used for both good and evil. It's in constant flux, scuffling with both sides. The dichotomy of this nature, and the poster’s inability (as an inanimate thing) to control its own fate is something I could philosophically wax on ad infinitum, but let's get back to the task at hand. Regrettably, over time the concept of “propaganda” has taken on a heavily negative weight despite the fact that it really can be used for good. There is no shortage of examples where poster campaigns have had positive outcomes - Rosie the Riveter empowered countless American women to come out from behind the apron and do their bit. However too often they are used to further a less than socially beneficial agenda. Overtly oppressive Communist governments and the Nazis (no modifier needed) took the idea of wallpaper politics to new levels of indoctrination with ultimately destructive outcomes.

Enter the English. I've always admired them. They're witty and urbane. They make some of the best music and lately some of the best horror movies (but that's a topic for another day). And oh my heavens! those accents. They also seem like a pretty decent lot who've done sufficient good for the world - present and past. Being the first country to hold off the German occupation is no small feat and the immense pressure to continue to oppose Hitler’s desire for European domination is enough to make anyone cry in their tea. I can’t even resist giving in to my dogs’ big ol round eyes and surrendering my couch territory. It’s not surprising, given the dark uncertainty that was WWII era Europe, that their officials felt the need to create a little bit of wisdom and encouragement. Keep your heads about you chaps. We’ll get through this thing together. This idea of British stoicism in the face of crisis has long been something I feel the USA should envy. What I do find surprising is that, in it’s time, this one poster never made it into the general rotation of wheat-pasted state-sanctioned graffiti. 

Yet now, over a half century later, it has – but with a twist. It's no longer a call to collectively maintain routine and that ever so coveted stiff upper lip while your country is in an actual physical war. Its modern message is not the patriotic call to stand together as one nation in the face of the avarice of a common enemy. People use it now, especially in the states, as an insulator from others. Once again it seems we’re faced with uncertainty and chaos – wars on women, religion, drugs, climate change, healthcare, tort reform. The list goes on. Yet it is a turmoil of our making and with ourselves. We are at war at home with each other. It's Bedlam. Anarchy. Nothing is accomplished without an insult or a boycott or a filibuster. 

It's all so helter skelter and otherworldly. It's headed right for us and we're bombarded! The little guys, us, feel left out of the whole situation because it’s gotten so big that we’ve lost sight of where we even fit in. Am I angry this week about my taxes or my vagina? Is the economy getting better? Am I a slut? What’s a dividend again? Now when people keep calm and carry on, they do so within themselves. It’s how they get by as individuals not countrymen. It’s how they deal, not with Nazis, but with traffic and cell phones and with being unemployed. Our brave new world doesn’t need political propaganda, it needs life propaganda. Our country is so polarized, our government so aloof, that we’ve taken to relying on past time battle cries just to get us through our morning bagels. Buy the print, read it, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and get on with the day. Repeat as necessary.

You know what? I think I’m ok with that. As long as it's not hurting anyone, do whatever it takes to get you through today and then again tomorrow. I’ve had a reawakening to this overplayed piece of advice. If a little mantra is what people need to keep from collapsing under the weight of modern life, then I’m all for it. Knowing that the message came from someplace very powerful and culturally enlightened really helps, and I’m glad that I stumbled on the above video. I’m glad I took the time to read further into the not so humble beginnings of such a grand little poster.

In fact, I think I’m gonna buy one. I'm gonna keep on keeping on.