public service announcements

I found most these images at Photo Basement, but all were originally posted at The November Coalition’s Random History of Alcohol Prohibition page.

“Good for the engine, but not for the engineer. Good for commercial purposes, but not as a beverage.”

The white man’s burden isn’t infantile non-whites in need of oversight, it’s saloons.

Connecting drinking alcohol with nationalism and the downfall of America.

Again, being anti-alcohol is patriotic.

Do you love drink more than you love your children? Or America?

But we see many of the same themes in the anti-Prohibition campaign:

So now if you love your kids and want them (and, implicitly, America) to be secure, you’ll repeal Prohibition.

“Protect our youth. Stamp out Prohibition. Love our children.”

At first I wasn’t sure if this was pro- or anti-Prohibition (asking people to vote to repeal it, or to overturn the repeal). But according to this history of Prohibition, Democrats came out with a “wet” (anti-Prohibition) platform as a way of drawing “ethnic” (i.e., European immigrant) and working class votes. So the message here is that we need to protect our children (and wives?) from the hordes of gangsters and bootleggers who emerged because of Prohibition, and their way to do this is to vote Democratic.

Thanks for the tip, Miguel!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Laura K. brought our attention to these ads with not-so-subliminal sexual content (via haha.nu). Some of them are so-not-so-subliminal that they may not be safe for work.

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Myra M. F. sent us these four breast cancer awareness ads to compare and contrast (find them here).  They are all super pink-ified (because men don’t get breast cancer… oh wait, they do), but the first two use stereotypical femininity and the latter two challenge them.

(1)  Ah the lovely young middle-aged woman (I stand corrected), the ruffley white blouse, the slight head tilt, and the fashionable breast cancer scarf.  You too can look oh so good while you fight breast cancer!  Go Ford!

(2)  “Expose the Truth.”  Those awesome knockers on that gorgeous anonymous babe could someday be victims of breast cancer.  And we can’t have that!  Support breast cancer research!

Consider how different these next two are:

Here we see a woman who accepts some conventional definitions of femininity (make-up, pearls, earrings and, of course, pink), but rejects the idea that women should be ashamed to lose markers of femininity (“We can live without our hair.  We can live without our breasts.”) and instead looks bravely towards a cure (“We cannot live without our hope for a cure.”)  Plus, this image is about action (a race) instead of fashion (a scarf), suggesting that it is also a rejection of the idea that to be feminine is to be passive or powerless.

And this image actually mocks the symbolic ribbon and, I will add, bracelet activism (how feminine are ribbons and bracelets?), in favor of appropriating a masculine symbol (heavy machinery) by turning it pink and putting it to work against breast cancer.  The text at the bottom says: “Stop breast cancer!  It’s in our power!” 

Four ads, all with the same message, all mobilizing femininity, but in two very different ways. 

Thanks again to Myra!

Here is a video of the famous “crying Indian” anti-littering PSA from the early 1970s:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM[/youtube]

The actor, Iron Eyes Cody, was not actually Native American, he was Italian American. You can read more about him at snopes.com.

In case you didn’t know, the famous “Chief Seattle” speech about the need to honor the earth and care for the environment was written by a white guy, also in the early 1970s.

These could be interesting for discussions of environmentalism and American Indians. Why do environmental messages somehow have more authority if they supposedly come from an Indian? Would the “Chief Seattle” speech be less meaningful if we knew a white guy wrote it? Why?

They could also be used in discussions about the appropriation of Native American culture and the use of non-Indian actors to play Indian roles. It’s also interesting as an example of how American Indians are often depicted as historic throwbacks who are still living in the 1800s (and are all from plains tribes and wear big headdresses): even though it was 1971 and the guy was standing next to a highway full of cars, he was dressed in buckskin and feathers. Because, you know, that’s what Native Americans wear, all the time. Believe me, back in Oklahoma, that’s all you see.

NEW: Another fallacious Native American environmentalist was Grey Owl. Grey Owl was a Britain named Archibald Belaney who adopted an Indian identity and became famous in Canada for his conservationist stance. Here is his wikipedia entry.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

The propaganda below, from World War II, was distributed by the U.S. government.  In the posters, venereal disease (later known as sexually transmitted disease, and even later as sexually transmitted infections) is personified as a woman. Remember, venereal disease is NOT a woman. It’s bacteria or virus that passes between women and men. Women do not give it to men. Women and men pass it to each other. When venereal disease is personified as a woman, it makes women the diseased, guilty party and men the vulnerable, innocent party.

In this ad, the soldier is made innocent with the label “The Young, The Brave, The Strong.” The first girl is labeled “prostitution.” She says to the soldier: “Two girls I know want to meet you in the worst way.” The two women on the stairs, with the faces of skeletons, are labelled “syphilis” and “gonnorhea.”

Text: “Warning: These enemies are still lurking around.” The women are labeled “syphillis” and “gonnorhea.”

This one is my favorite. A female skeleton in an evening gown walks with her arms around Hitler and Hirohito. The text reads: “V.D. Worst of the Three.”

Here are three more:

At least some of these can be found here. Thanks to the unbeatablekid pointing out a source in our comments.

NEW: Marc sent us a link to these images (all found here):

A matchbook:

A pamphlet distributed to soldiers:

Thanks, Marc!

Occasionally we here at Sociological Images like to put up something we really like. To that end, I submit to you this public service announcement for science careers in the European Union (made by a German ad agency):

I like that it’s actually creative, instead of relying on the good ol’ objectifcation, nudity, violence, sex, or all of the above. I also like that the people in the commercial just look like people. Proof that you don’t need people in the 99.9th percentile of beauty and thinness/beefiness to make a good ad. What do you like about it?

I’m not exactly sure how these images could be used in the classroom (to talk about state promotion of the family? the social ills of alcohol? gendering alcoholism?), but I think they’re fascinating. I found them at the Museum of Anti-Alcohol Posters.

“Cause- drunkenness”

“No mercy for hooligans!”

“Alcohol: Pain of nature”

“Bartered”

“Rich inner substance”

“Have mercy on your future child”

“This new dress becomes me well”

“Harmful to health, family and descendants”

“Vodka brings with it”

“alcoholism”

This Australian ad for Lipton tea suggests that it’s mind clarifying qualities are so good that it could help even George Bush achieve the feat of naming all 50 states.

This Brazilian ad for Rolling Stone, featuring a picture of George W. Bush, reads: “We don’t show naked women to sell more. At the most, we show some asses.”

This Chinese Greenpeace ad, portraying Bush’s spin on global warming, reads: “Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Voice yours at forum.greenpeace.org.”

This Chinese ad for an erasable pen reads: “Everyone makes mistakes.” 

In Malaysia, Bush is used to sell Smart cars.  Text: “Still looking for weapons of mass destruction.  Not smart.” 

Also in Malaysia, Amnesty International makes fun of Bush in their effort to inspire opposition to Guantanamo Bay.  “Write to him and help stop torture at Guantanamo Bay.  Remember, use simple words.”

This is a Mexican ad for a dog kennel.  “We don’t discriminate any kind of breed.”  (The source says that, in Mexico, like in the U.S., “dog” is a name for a bad person.)

 This ad for a Mexican newspaper reads: “Such a complex world needs a good explanation.”

This is an ad for the movie American Psycho in New Zealand.

In Portugal, playing war games (paint ball) is advertised as equivalent to playing George W. Bush.

This Swiss ad threatens, if you fall off your bicycle without a helmet, you may end up as dumb as George W. Bush.

These and more borrowed from here, found via adfreak.

Update: There have been some really nice points in the comments about how, in the process of making fun of Bush, we are also seeing the further stigmatization of “people with developmental disabilities, brain injuries, and psychological diagnoses” (that from Penny in the comments).