North Korean Posters as a Mean of Propaganda

Propaganda is an attempt to spread social and political values to influence peoples thinking, as well as to control and shape their behavior. It is an inseparable tool of the North Korean state. In a totalitarian state where digital information is restricted, the standards of living are low, and access to education is limited, propaganda is a part of almost all everyday routines. Its key function is to support the existing regime and teach citizens to obey it. Drawing on semiotic methodologies, this article examines North Korean propaganda through the prism of visual art and identifies distinctive features of posters as one of the major elements of the complex system of North Korean propaganda. The relevance of this work lies in the permanent interest in the phenomenon of North Korean propaganda in the international arena. The purpose of this work is to study the distinctive features and characteristics of propaganda posters as an integral part of North Korean propaganda. The objectives of this work are a detailed consideration of the propaganda system, its distinctive features, structuring of campaign posters, slogans, and messages with their accompanying translation, embedded within this type of propaganda.

Chinese Propaganda Posters

This chapter explores the changing meanings, production, and display of Chinese propaganda posters, with a particular focus on the University of Westminster’s China Visual Arts Project. It covers topics such as archival work, gender and happiness, and education. Chapter contents: 8.0 Introduction (by Harriet Evans) 8.1 The Chinese Visual Arts Project: Graduate Work in Records and Archives (by Freja Howat) 8.2 Women Model Workers and the Duty of Happiness in Chinese Propaganda Posters (by Maria-Caterina Bellinetti) 8.3 A Throw Back to School Days (by Cassie Lin)

REPRESENTATION OF THE USA IN THE CONTEXT OF IMPERIALISM IN THE PROPAGANDA POSTERS PUBLISHED IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

A negative process started in Sino-USA relations after establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC), PRC made policies against the USA, which it accused of being imperialist. Tensions between China and the USA led to the presentation of the USA to the masses as an imperialist country and the national enemy of Chinese people in Chinese media. The study tried to reveal how the USA was presented to the masses and through which messages it was built as an enemy country in the context of imperialism in anti-US posters in China. For this purpose, 8 posters determined within the scope of the study were analyzed in the light of the German linguist Karl Bühler's Organon Model, using the semiotic analysis method. As a result of the study, it was claimed in the posters that the USA had imperialist goals and led to war to achieve these goals. For this reason, the message that the imperialist aims of the USA posed a threat to both China and world nations, and world nations must act against the USA in order to end the danger posed by the USA was given. Thus, the Chinese administration tried to legitimize the anti-USA policies implemented during the Cold War.

Dwie przestrzenie wojennej propagandy. Język utworów moskiewskich Okien TASS

The aim of the article is to analyze the language of the Soviet propaganda posters from the Second World War period, containing the poetic commentary of the members of the Moscow TASS Agency. The research reveals the main means of persuasion used in the poems. The subject of the analysis is the phenomenon of spreading ideas in two basic social spheres that occurred in the Soviet Union during the war period, which include people who took direct part in military actions, and Soviet citizens who provided the army with all the necessary materials. Texts addressed to potential soldiers contained a direct call to defend the homeland and family. Their most important manipulative tools were emotional arguments and the technique of stereotyping the enemy. Ideas and personal patterns were instilled in the minds of the fighters with various linguistic manipulation techniques. The propaganda referenced to the belongingness need. Different propaganda techniques were used in poems targeted at people behind the lines of hostilities. The authors of the texts of TASS Windows used colloquial language, comprehensible to a wide audience. They created a vision of a world divided into two opposite poles and referred to respected authorities or raised new role models. The propaganda of the victory also required different techniques of information manipulation. The TASS Windows present the unique contribution of the Soviet poets to the action of the mobilization ofsociety to take part in the fight against the German aggressor.

The Topic of the Soviet-­Ukrainian War (1917–1921) in Ukrainian Cinematography of the 1920s

Most of the films about the revolution and the Soviet­Ukrainian war (1917–1921), made by AUPhCA in 1928–1930, proved to be uninteresting and did not gain big success among the audience. These films were made mostly by the methods of propaganda, posters, without much depth into the essence of the phenomenon, the script was built on a certain pattern — a parallel demonstration of good, brave guerrillas and scornful whites, i.e. on the one hand stupid bourgeois, mocking and torturing their class enemies, on the other hand — smart, heroic, friendly representatives of working class. According to some contemporaries, films about the events of the Soviet­Ukrainian war required other forms, a different embodiment. From naked propaganda, from stencil scheme to a more in­depth identification of the moments of class struggle, from a simplified external reflection of events, to a more specific individualization of the participants of the events. However, these films played an important role in the development of adventure cinema.

Red Collections in Contemporary China

“Red Collecting” is a widespread phenomenon in contemporary China. It refers to the collecting of objects from the Chinese Communist Party’s history. Red Collecting has received only minimal treatment in English-language scholarly literature, much of which focuses on individual object categories (primarily propaganda posters and Chairman Mao badges) and overemphasises the importance of Cultural Revolution objects within the field. Because of this limited focus, the collectors’ motivations have been similarly circumscribed, described primarily in terms of either neo-Maoist nostalgia or the pursuit of profit. This article will seek to enhance this existing literature and, in doing so, offer a series of new directions for research. It makes two main arguments. First, that the breadth of objects incorporated within the field of Red Collecting is far broader than current literature has acknowledged. In particular, the importance of revolutionary-era (pre-1949) collections, as well as regional and rural collections is highlighted. Second, it argues that collectors are driven by a much broader range of motivations, including a variety of both individual and social motivations. Significantly, it is argued that collectors’ intentions and their understandings of the past do not always align; rather, very different understandings of China’s recent past find expression through Red Collecting. As such, it is suggested that Red Collecting constitutes an important part of contemporary China’s “red legacies,” one which highlights the diversity of memories and narratives of both the Mao era and the revolutionary period. Image © Hou Feng

Visualizing Africa in Chinese Propaganda Posters 1950–1980

This paper examines depictions of Africans in China during the period when China moved to establish diplomatic relations across the African continent – the foundation of what would become Africa–China relations today. Chinese posters were early forms of mass visual interaction with (the image of) foreign nationals. They reflect how Chinese society viewed itself in relation to others as it developed a global awareness through domestic mobilization. This study investigates how Africa and Africans are depicted in Chinese posters and how they shaped and/or reflected discourses of the period. It also examines motivations behind the inclusion of Africans in Chinese posters, arguing that this largely had a domestic rationale. By historicizing the meaning-making process of the image of Africa in 20th-century Chinese posters, this paper demonstrates that Chinese posters informed public opinion by defining friend and foe, focused more on China and her Cold War entanglements than on Africa, and simultaneously challenged and reinforced some widely held stereotypes about the continent.

Colour me Revolutionary

Colour in China has a long history of artistic, symbolic, religious, and mythological use. This paper takes the idea of colour as a meaningful element within Chinese society and introduces the use of visual colour grammar as a new way to identify and breakdown the use of colour within political art and propaganda posters. The use of colour has been adapted by visual linguists into its own unique visual grammar component, relaying much more information than just a symbolic transfer from sign to signifier. Meaning within political posters can be derived from regularities in use, presentation, and conventional meanings. Colour as a visual grammar component is expressed through the three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. This paper explores how the Chinese views on colour interconnects with the metafunctions of colour to look at the political posters of the PRC. I will discuss both the approach to art as a text that can be ‘read’ through visual grammar and present colour in the Chinese context as more than a symbol making device but as a meaning component in and of itself.

Propaganda, masculinity, and the French interwar novel

My dissertation centers on literary representations of non-normative gender performances, the struggle around new gender norms, and the lived realities of gender in pre- and post-World War I- (WWI) era France. The novels discussed in this study, L'Immoraliste (André Gide, 1902), Chéri and La Fin de Chéri (Colette, 1920 and 1926, repectively), and Voyage au bout de la nuit (Céline, 1932) all depict how WWI significantly disrupted French life and troubled gender roles in nearly all environments. The novels that I analyze reveal, in particular, how French manhood became a source of nationalist anxiety in this era, as masculinity was seen as weakened by prior French military defeats and the so-called "excesses" of the belle époque. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the dissertation puts WWI-era novels in dialogue with the visual culture of war propaganda found in French government-sponsored propaganda posters. As I show, propaganda posters heavily promoted heteronormative standards of French masculinity, disseminated images of the ideal French male as physically powerful, courageous, and ready to defend family and nation, and reminded young French men that they carried the weight of defending not only the nation, but the future of French masculinity and the health of the population more broadly. As my study argues, novels by Colette, Gide, Celine, and others call into question WWI propagandized gender norms by imagining alternative gender performances and creating spaces for self-determined gender performances. My dissertation thus argues that novels by Gide, Colette, Céline, and others demonstrate that the normative standards encountered in WWI propaganda were, in fact, fictions that belied the lived realities of gender.