You can’t believe what I saw from those posters
I don’t know about other people. But I am the kind of person who would think twice before going to see a movie. I would not risk my 2 hours of life in seeing a boring movie. Like everyone else on the planet, I don’t like spoiler. So my best guess about a movie before I actually see it is poster. A good poster usually convey the idea of its movie while not showing the entire plot to the audience. I like seeing film poster and thus I am surprise when I see some brilliant poster made by Douglas in my L&S25 course.
Emory Douglas is one of the leaders and famous art designer for Black Panther Party, an black nationalist organization formed in 1967 and mainly advocate for human rights and protection for black people. As the art director of Black Panther Party newspaper, Douglas created brilliant pieces of art works to gain influence. He believed that art work can express his idea to others and help with their ways to see life.
In 1971, Douglas published this artwork on Black Panther newspaper. In this poster, Douglas use children as the main element with red background and title on the top: “WE SHALL SURVIVE, WITHOUT A DOUBT”. Children is one of his favorite subject in artwork because it is very easy to be connected with hope by viewers. In the poster, the kid with glasses looks up to the sky with big smile on his face as if he sees a promising future for himself as well as all black children. More interestingly, in his glasses fit two picture about black people getting educated and having food in Panther’s Breakfast program. It shows how Black Panther is trying to direct the group of black people to a better future. Moreover, there is another kid smiling on the top of the hat with golden lights on his back as if the sun is about to rise. The sun usually represent hopes or other positive emotions. Here it shows Douglas’s confidence on the social status of next generation and wish them to have a bright future.
The second work is somewhat darker than the first picture, where he uses more profound subjects like guns and blood. In the picture, a policeman-like person is fell on a door which seemed to be broke by him as we can tell from the broken parts of the door scattering on the ground. A black woman is standing near the body of the man with a gun on her hand. At first glance, it looks like a scene of murder in a normal house. However, we can see deeper message from Douglas from the details of the picture. Firstly, there is a gun fell out from the policeman’s pocket. This, altogether with broken pieces of the door, gives viewers impressions of a man breaking into a woman’s house with violence and potential harmfulness. On the contrary, the woman has a bloom against the wall on her back, as if she just let go her bloom and took out her gun from the drawer. Such contraty dipicts an innocent woman who defends herself from an intruder. This actually follow one of the advocates from Black Panther that Black people should use their right to defend themselves especially from police brutality. The bricks exposed from the wall shows that the woman in the picture actually symbolizes the majority of oppressed black people because they are poor and afraid to fight back due to their inferior social status.
The third poster is called War and Protest, which was created in 1969. The most shocking part of the poster is the image of black people being persecuted in U.S.. The solider in the picture is a black man who was fighting in Vietnam. He had tears in his eyes not because of this war but the image in his head — his brothers in his hometown. This solider is crying because he is questioning his reason for which he is fighting here. I am fighting for my country which is killing my people. Why should I fight against other country while being invulnerable to help my brothers and sisters to from domestic social conflicts. By this vivid portrait of an black solider, Douglas showed that we need to focus and solved problems in our country before making moves into other territory. He wanted to remind attentions for people about he seriousness of racism in U.S. and also stop the war that causing other people dying far away.
Regardless of the controversial topic of Douglas’ work, it is very impressive from the perspective of pure art because he used all the elements perfectly in his work to construct a message that he would like to share with the public.
Work Cited
Emory Douglas, We Shall Survive without a dout, Black Panther newspaper, August 21,1971.
Emory Douglas, Shoot to Kill, Black Panther newspaper, Janurary 30, 1971.
Sam Durant, Rizzoli, “BLACK PANTHER: THE REVOLUTIONARY ART OF EMORY DOUGLAS,” 2007
