Visual Analysis – “Remember Pearl Harbor”

               This image was found in a plain google image search, so that context is not too helpful when trying to glean some aspect of the targeted audience, so instead I would like to consider this image in the context in which it would have been used. As an example of World War II propaganda targeting the general public, this could have been posted anywhere, but most likely in proximity to a war bond dealer. This image is targeting patriotic Americans at home during the war years.

                For those patriotic citizens, this poster would have evoked many different motivations.  The “Remember Pearl Harbor” tag line at the top brings out sadness and pain like salt on an open wound for what happened in Hawaii. The distorted figure in the Nazi uniform waving the alms of peace in the face of a national symbol provokes anger at the Japanese for lying, and vengeful rage to get back at them for what they did. That image also, coupled with the swastika on the knife held in the Japanese arm acts as a unification device building a common enemy in the minds of Americans – an important step in war rhetoric. A crucial part of establishing the common enemy is to dehumanize the outgroup, which is done by having the long nails on the hand of the knife and the distorted figure that is supposed to be a Japanese soldier. That unification device makes American's feel confidant, that this enemy can defeated because we (the ingroup) are inherently better than they are. The arm in the background is a very powerful part of this image, evoking fear and an overhanging foreboding – essentially saying that the enemy, both Japanese and Nazi, are poised and ready to hit the US in a devastating way again while we (the Statue of Liberty), stand idly by, unaware. The Statue of Liberty is not even looking at the Japanese man, adding to the feeling of aloofness (an aloofness you can solve by buying war bonds). By having the date of the Pearl Harbor attack written on the blade of the knife, it is bringing up the feelings people had right after the attack, and saying that another attack can be prevented if you buy war bonds. Given the position of the knife to America’s back, it is portraying another attack as imminent, while drawing on the public’s memory of the horror that came because of it to elicit the dread of it happening again. “What can you do to ensure that it doesn’t? Buy war bonds.”

                The Statue of Liberty is an interesting part of this image, which really ties into the behavior the image sparks. It was targeted at a patriotic American audience, yet a national symbol for liberty and freedom – some of the reasons we were fighting – is presented as a helpless figure, subject to the Nazis and the Japanese. It makes a person want to literally reach out and grab the arm holding the knife and pull it back to save liberty. That feeling translates into doing whatever they could to help the vulnerable American nation. Luckily for them, the answer of how to save the Statue of Liberty, America, and the ideas of freedom and liberty is plainly written at the bottom – “Buy War Bonds”.

                As far as belief, it is telling the viewer that America is under immediate danger, even if someone is telling you peace is near. The sense of impending doom is strengthened by the involvement of Pearl Harbor, and because it was such a powerful event in American society, it becomes just as strong in American propaganda. On that day we went from a country at peace (despite being on the brink of war) violently into the throes of war, and that is the sentiment captured and expressed here by the combination of the symbols of the Japanese figure (feigned peace) and the poised knife (imminent destruction). The main thing it wants you to believe is that Pearl Harbor can happen again, and more importantly, if you do not buy war bonds, it will happen again.

                I don’t believe this image falls into the clean cut “types” that Aristotle outlines. It sure plays on the quick to anger, but since the common trait to its targeted audience is patriotism, a trait not limited to the young, old, or the 49 year-olds, I think it might transcend age (but that could be my own idealistic bias).

In the 1940s, the young had just emerged from the depression, and because of that I believe them to be more frugal than Aristotle allows. Aristotle says “[t]heir lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation, for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past” (bkIIch12). This can fit the picture in an interesting way, since the allusion to Pearl Harbor draws in the brief past, and the position of the knife adds a notion of ever-approaching destruction – something the youthful would be concerned about. The elderly on the other hand, the opposite of the Aristotelian youth, live mainly in the past rather than the future, but if either age bracket had a deep tie to patriotism then it would be equally effective, never mind if the person was looking to the past of future (bkIIch13).

The elderly, as Aristotle describes them, have a tight coin purse and are suspicious, but keen to promote self-preservation (bkIIch13). “Their fits of anger are sudden but feeble”, so in a weak moment they might remember the attack and buy a war bond (bkIIch13). It doesn’t fit there, since the attack, which is still painful today, would have been at the forefront of the majority of patriotic peoples mind. “They live by memory rather than hope” (bkIIch13). The Aristotelian elderly do not respond to hope, so they doesn’t fit the picture either since by nature of the ongoing war and the perched knife, the hope for peace and a resolution of the conflict is the point of the propaganda. The self-preservation aspect is interesting, since it has some element of hope ingrained in it innately, but that seems almost contradictory. Due to the complex argument presented by the picture, the overarching Aristotelian types of "young" and "old" do not fit, but more the more narrow elderly interested in self-preservation would fit along with the young who refer to the future (but have a feeling for the past).