Political Semiotics: Daddy, What Did You Do in the Great War?
Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. The poster titled “Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?” is a political propaganda poster used during World War One. Propaganda posters knew what context the poster should be placed in and what content the poster needed to have in order to make an impact on its target audience. This poster in particular focuses on fathers’ and their reputation. It is clearly evident that this poster has a catchphrase where an emphasis is placed on word “you” by capitalizing every letter and underlining it. This poster pictures a father with his daughter and son during a post-war period. The father’s son is playing with his toys while the father’s daughter is sitting on his lap and reading about the great war. Then the father’s daughter asks him, “Daddy, what did you do in the great war?” to which he has no reply and he gives the audience a sad, deep and blank stare. The man in this poster is being depicted as a man with a sense of shame and cowardice because he decided to not enlist himself for this war and fight for his country. They are trying to send a message to the men that they need to contribute to the potential victory and not just be there for the spoils. It is safe to say that this poster is smart for getting the children involved because a father never wants to leave his children without an answer and he never wants his children to question his manlihood since he is seen as a superhero to them. Moreover, the poster is also showing that the daughter is finding out about the great war through a book instead of her father because he is embarassed to let her know that he didn’t contribute to the victory whatsoever. Furthermore, the son loves playing with his toy soldiers because he thinks his father is a brave warrior, who is capable of doing anything. Unfortunately, his father is none of the things he imagined him to be and the truth is about to be revealed to him when his sister is pressing his father with hard questions. This poster is trying to persuade fathers to look manly infront of their children by earning a good reputation and being a role model. However, I feel this poster is sending the audience a message of misconception, which means the message is based on faulty thinking or understanding. I say this because your children are always going to be proud of you no matter what you accomplished in life. Also, if you go to the war you might not even make it out alive so that means you won’t even be able to see your children again. This realistic scenario easily defeats the message of this poster but unfortunately the government doesn’t care about that as long as their main objective is reached, which is getting men to enlist for the war. In that respect this poster was very effective because a lot of people did enlist for the war.