Class: This site has an excellent collection of posters from World War I. It will give you a sense of Miranda's visual world in Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
Thanks for the link, Professor Cook! I browsed through all the posters, and many things really struck me. The biggest thing that struck me was how nice it was that this effort was trying to bring people together and get everyone to help, but how overwhelming it all was. I am sure that it is really different to sit here in 2008 and flip through the posters and be able to leave it on the computer rather than having to face it all day every day, but I still got the sense of just how overwhelming this all was, and this link helped to give me some context for the story. I was surprised that I actually recognized many of the posters. One thing that was also striking to me was how they impacted me visually, I think because they used famous artists to create the posters. One that especially struck me was on page 40, the Before Sunset one.
Hi again. I wanted to say more about the posters, but had to get off the computer earlier, and now I can't change my previous post, so here I am again. The poster that I thought was most interesting and possibly most indicative of the times was the one on the first page that said, "together we win" but then it just showed men. I also thought all the food posters were really interesting (oops, I must be hungry again). Frankly, I am not sure if I could live without sugar (I'm not being dramatic, either). I now want to know what kind of recipes there are from that time period, because there is only so much you can do with cottage cheese and fish (and pig clubs), and without chocolate (American Chocolate Fund). There were also a few posters asking mothers to bring their children in to be weighed and have their height charted. This made me see how dire the situation was, if you had to conserve food to the point that the government wanted to check to make sure that your children weren't starving. I also saw quite a few ads for Liberty Bonds, which helped give some context to this story. I didn't know what a few of the posters meant though, like, "Be a War Daddy" (pg 18) and "Knowledge Wins" (pg 19). Most of the ads mentioned America or other countries, which just shows the contrast even more to me that Porter does not even mention America. These posters gave some great context for the story, because these posters were overwhelming, so I can see where Miranda felt overwhelmed by everything going on in her life.
I wonder how many kids would join a sheep sheering club now to help out soldiers? I think these posters are somewhat ridiculous and comical. I cannot imagine what the advertising rep/government official was thinking when he/she made a poster claiming that the war would be won by people eating more cottage cheese? Obviously everyone was cutting back and following rations, so why the pushy headlines. Miranda provides a good example of the sense of pressure people felt, and it is reiterated through these overwhelming posters. Like Miranda says, what good do these women's groups accomplish? Most of their collected goods never get to the people who need them and the purpose is simply to, "keep them busy" because, "women running wild with the men away are dangerous, they aren't given something to keep their little minds out of mischief" (290).
I just found a moment to look through some of those posters, and a couple of similar ship-themed posters really made me stop and ponder. They said something along the lines of you can help out the US by sending boys "Over There." They capitalized and quoted the words "Over There" as to imply that anyone outside of our country is simply across the sea and over there. ..They omitted the names of the European countries involved in the war as if they really didn't matter as much as the United States. They were simply over there. The "Over There" implies extreme difference, extreme separation. They are not over here, part of the US war effort. They are not over here, and true blooded American citizens, they are over there, less civilized and far from the moral mainland of America. "Over There" and while we are, in fact, helping those overtherefolks, we need to support the our American boys who "are fighting for us in the trenches."
5 comments:
Thanks for the link, Professor Cook! I browsed through all the posters, and many things really struck me. The biggest thing that struck me was how nice it was that this effort was trying to bring people together and get everyone to help, but how overwhelming it all was. I am sure that it is really different to sit here in 2008 and flip through the posters and be able to leave it on the computer rather than having to face it all day every day, but I still got the sense of just how overwhelming this all was, and this link helped to give me some context for the story. I was surprised that I actually recognized many of the posters. One thing that was also striking to me was how they impacted me visually, I think because they used famous artists to create the posters. One that especially struck me was on page 40, the Before Sunset one.
Hi again. I wanted to say more about the posters, but had to get off the computer earlier, and now I can't change my previous post, so here I am again. The poster that I thought was most interesting and possibly most indicative of the times was the one on the first page that said, "together we win" but then it just showed men. I also thought all the food posters were really interesting (oops, I must be hungry again). Frankly, I am not sure if I could live without sugar (I'm not being dramatic, either). I now want to know what kind of recipes there are from that time period, because there is only so much you can do with cottage cheese and fish (and pig clubs), and without chocolate (American Chocolate Fund). There were also a few posters asking mothers to bring their children in to be weighed and have their height charted. This made me see how dire the situation was, if you had to conserve food to the point that the government wanted to check to make sure that your children weren't starving. I also saw quite a few ads for Liberty Bonds, which helped give some context to this story. I didn't know what a few of the posters meant though, like, "Be a War Daddy" (pg 18) and "Knowledge Wins" (pg 19). Most of the ads mentioned America or other countries, which just shows the contrast even more to me that Porter does not even mention America. These posters gave some great context for the story, because these posters were overwhelming, so I can see where Miranda felt overwhelmed by everything going on in her life.
I wonder how many kids would join a sheep sheering club now to help out soldiers? I think these posters are somewhat ridiculous and comical. I cannot imagine what the advertising rep/government official was thinking when he/she made a poster claiming that the war would be won by people eating more cottage cheese? Obviously everyone was cutting back and following rations, so why the pushy headlines. Miranda provides a good example of the sense of pressure people felt, and it is reiterated through these overwhelming posters. Like Miranda says, what good do these women's groups accomplish? Most of their collected goods never get to the people who need them and the purpose is simply to, "keep them busy" because, "women running wild with the men away are dangerous, they aren't given something to keep their little minds out of mischief" (290).
I just found a moment to look through some of those posters, and a couple of similar ship-themed posters really
made me stop and ponder. They said something along the lines of you can help out the US by sending boys "Over There." They capitalized and quoted the words "Over There" as to imply that anyone outside of our country is simply across the sea and over there. ..They omitted the names of the European countries involved in the war as if they really didn't matter as much as the United States. They were simply over there. The "Over There" implies extreme difference, extreme separation. They are not over here, part of the US war effort. They are not over here, and true blooded American citizens, they are over there, less civilized and far from the moral mainland of America. "Over There" and while we are, in fact, helping those overtherefolks, we need to support the our American boys who "are fighting for us in the trenches."
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