Superheroes, emojis or brands: How can transnational symbols help local protest?
By Delia Dumitrica in collaboration with Sintija Vingre
Why would a protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine crop Hitler’s features onto Putin’s face? While never mentioning Hitler by name, the protest sign invites you to understand the Russian leader through the lens of Hitler’s historical reputation as a dictator who embroiled the globe into WWII. Hitler’s mustache and hairdo are symbolic elements here, condensing an emotionally powerful historical context evocative of the unfathomable destruction of war. They provide a shortcut to framing Russia’s leader and his current actions as evil. With a few visual elements, then, this protest sign crafts an analogy between two political leaders that, in turn, explains why citizens publicly demand that Putin is stopped.
In my research, I have been particularly interested in what such transnational cultural references do for protests. Transnational cultural references refer to symbols that are often associated with particular countries or regions that get to travel across borders and become well-known to the international public. While studying a set of approximately 60 protest signs used in the 2017 anti-corruption movement in Romania, I was struck by how individual citizens taking to the streets tapped into a wealth of cultural references to craft their political message. From Shakespeare’s Othello to the Marvel universe, such cultural references helped protesters convey their views of the Romanian political class and their plea for a solution to the generalized corruption in the country.
This is, by no means, specific to the Romanian protests. You might have already seen women dressed in red in women’s rights protests in Poland, Illinois, or Mexico. The iconic cloak (borrowed from Margaret Atwood’s famous novel The Handmaid’s Tale) has become, according to The Guardian, “the most powerful feminist symbols of protest” operating a “subversive inversion of its associate with the oppression of women”. Such transnational cultural symbols are often re-appropriated and incorporated into local causes, re-used in homemade posters, art installations, and banners to express dissent and amplify the cause. In my research, I noticed that protesters favored five types of such symbols :
- political references including past and present leaders, slogans, events, etc.
- digital culture references such as hashtags, emojis, or popular video games
- classical and popular culture references, from novels to pop-songs and TV series
- culture jams of international brands
- and, references to gestures or slogans that have become iconic for various reasons (e.g. the feminist slogan “My body my choice” or the motivational catchphrase “Keep Calm and Carry On”)
Protesters often mix-and-match such references from different cultural contexts, inserting them into local causes to convey political grievance.
What do transnational symbols do for protesters?
When looking over the various posters captured by participants during protests and shared on social media, I was struck by how citizens tapped into well-known references like superheroes to amplify their cause — wondering why they would do so.
For instance, a protester dressed as Captain America held a homemade sign reading (in English): “Dragnea, from the White House to the White Gate!”. To fully understand the local meaning, you would need to know that Dragnea was the leader of the ruling party accused of corruption and the main political target of the protests at the time, while White Gate is a literal translation of the name of Romanian town Poarta Alba, famous for its political prison.
Yet, even without knowing these local meanings, tapping into the Marvel cinematic superhero universe makes the protest’s message somewhat relatable to wider audiences. You may immediately associate Captain America with the fight for justice and the White House with the formal seat of political power. Furthermore, invoking superheroes in protests may speak to you even if you are not interested in politics. Thus, Marvel-afficionados can become audiences for political messages. Indeed, the use of well-known superheroes — or the creation of new ones — is a common protest trope, as Vinodh Venkatesh explains when talking about protest culture in Latin America:
“common citizens […] regularly don outlandish outfits and adopt comic-book inspired persona to promote social change.”
What makes transnational symbols useful for protest communication?
Recognizability: Transnational symbols re-used in protest are often iconic — meaning, they are widely known and recognized internationally. They are often used for their attention-grabbing potential, and, in many cases, the original meaning of their production is (at least partly) silenced. In using them, the protest signs also change these resources’ meaning and endow them with a protest-specific message.
During the 2017 Romanian anti-corruption protest signs, several protesters re-used Donald Trump’s popular electoral slogan “Make America Great Again!”, by creatively replacing the word “America” with the names of two popular Romanian prisons, Jilava and Rahova. The small alteration humorously implied that jailing corrupt politicians would make these prisons “great again”, while still evoking a well-known slogan. You may not know anything about Romanian prisons — or about the corruption of the political class; yet, the (in)famous English-language slogan is catchy. While not understanding the local cause, one can nevertheless recognize the reference.
Easy-recipes for interpretation: By combining such widely recognizable symbols, protest media construct a new political message. Usually, such combinations provide audiences with ready-made recipes for interpreting current events.
Using historical figures to criticize contemporary political leaders is often a preferred strategy in protest — and we have already seen this in the above-poster adding Hitler’s hairdo and mustache to Putin’s face. Such combinations were also common occurrences during the 2017 anti-corruption protests in Romania, where current political leaders accused of corruption were often rendered as Hitler or Stalin. References to such dictators help protesters quickly and negatively frame their political targets in a visually powerful way.
Ludic appeal: The re-appropriation of transnational cultural resources and their use in generating new political messages is often playful and, in some cases, even humorous. In bringing together two different contexts in an unexpected manner, our expectations are vexed and the creativity of the protest sign construction is foregrounded. Such meaning-making work constitutes a form of vernacular creativity which can be understood as a process of re-combining multiple cultural resources in creative ways to boost the recognizability and emotional impact of the message conveyed by the protest sign.
Vernacular creativity is often an eye-catcher not just for bystanders, but also for the news media. Take for instance this poster from my study, creatively bringing together Romanian politics and online porn. The tagline in English — “Dumb threesome fucks an entire country at once” — further anchors the humorous effect: the three politicians are labeled stupid, while the reference to “threesome” rehearses the widespread homophobic framing of homosexuality as a degrading means of attacking political targets. The contrast between the visual of the grinning politicians and calling them “dumb… fucks” adds to the humorous effect of the poster.
How can this help social justice protest communication?
As social justice activists have to fight for media and public attention alongside other social actors advocating for various causes, becoming visible is key to successful protest communication. Transnational cultural resources can be a means of increasing visibility not only because they create opportunities for interesting and funny photographs, but also because they can capture the attention of those less interested in politics. The international dimension remains important, as protest communication often needs international awareness to the local cause and allies around the world. The recognizability of such cultural resources, their ability to pack an interpretive frame in a concise manner, and their ludic appeal can co-exist in the same protest sign, thus enhancing the potential for the poster’s message to be noticed and grasped (even if in a superficial and fragmented way).
If you are thinking about tapping into such transnational cultural references during protest communication, then the following three recommendations may be of help:
- Use multiple languages in your protest signs to enhance the possibility that an international audience could read and understand your message.
- Select symbols from the popular cultural texts of the day to attract attention to your protest signs.
- Combine multiple transnational cultural symbols in a creative way to make your message catchy and memorable.
Nevertheless, remember that such transnational cultural reference are never fully universal — we often tap from cultures that we hold in high esteem, assuming everyone will recognize them. Furthermore, the use of such transnational cultural resources is just as likely to alienate as they are to attract attention. What remains important is that their use remains subsumed to the political message that you seek to convey.
