Analysis of Propaganda Posters - Essay Example

Furthermore, they put significant pressure on women to not try to stop men in their lives from enlisting, by implying that it was unpatriotic to do so.  This probably would have been successful, because such tactics tied directly into self-conceptions of masculinity (Jarvis 2004).

The second poster, from WWII, had entirely different goals.  They were attempting to influence the population to live in more austere conditions, by sharing and reducing the use of resources.  They take two different approaches: the Hitler one attempts to invoke guilt, by treating non-austere people as traitors, whereas the second tries to play on positive emotions, telling its viewers that they are making soldiers happy by providing them enough by forgoing extra food.  These may have been less successful because they did not tap as directly into essential parts of people’s identities (Gullace 2002).

These two paintings are both reactions to the First World War.  One of the things that becomes very apparent is the disillusionment artists experienced with the propaganda: this directly counter propaganda by maintaining their similar style (especially “Mustard Gas Victims”) while portraying fundamentally different things: the true experience of war. They fundamentally seemed to need to communicate the true horror of what they had experienced during the First World War, possibly to break the romanticized ideas that had been formed in people’s minds based on war propaganda of the time (Tolson 2010).

These are two modern pieces of propaganda.  The first is an advertisement for M&Ms, which directly places on the propaganda of the past, especially Soviet propaganda.  The second, with a distinctly modern, clean typeface, is an advertisement for the Kony 2012 group, which accepted large amounts of funds to supposedly help find and arrest Kony, and help his victims.  One of the interesting things about both of these pieces of propaganda is that they play on their viewer’s desire for connection.  The M&M one encourages its viewers to be part of a tribe, in favor of one hero and against another.  The Kony 2012 image encourages the reader to “join the revolution,” subtly implying that otherwise they will be left behind.  This possibly speaks to a growing need in today’s population to be more deeply connected, possibly because so many traditional connections have eroded.