Have We Lost the Art of Nuance to Social Media?

The Poppy

What do you see when you look at this image above? The icon of a poppy. A poppy you might find blowing in the wind by the side of the road, or the kind you’d pick for its seeds to bake into bagels or cook up to make heroin. We know the connotations, but to one without visuality, it is simply a red flower. But it has become a symbol for the soldiers who gave their lives for our country in the world wars. We understand this because of the social understandings we have grown up with in the United Kingdom. Although before the wars, the poppy might have stood for nothing. It might have simply signified a new season due to their time of blooming. For a junkie it might signify their addiction. For someone with a chronic illness it might signify pain relief. Lately it seems to be taking on a whole other meaning in a bid to fight political movements such as Black Lives Matter. The poppy is polysemic, a text that can be interpreted in several ways depending on the observer. Sometimes the poppy might be anchored with the typical signifying language one might expect to see next to a war memorial such as ‘lest we forget’.