Someone talked!
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Library of Congress · LC-USZC4-2118 (color film copy transparency) · Public domain · Catalog record
The pins
Context
For discussion
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Loaded language "Someone" The word accuses nobody and therefore everybody. Each viewer is invited to wonder if the someone was him.
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Scapegoating The pointing hand A drowning sailor points out of the picture. Ships were sunk by U-boats, code-breaking, and convoy routing; the poster blames a conversation.
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Appeal to pity The face Water to his chin, eyes on the viewer. The sailor is drawn to be grieved for before the viewer has read the words.
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Oversimplification "Talked!" One verb for the whole chain from a remark in a bar to a torpedo. Every link in between is left out.
Frederick Siebel's poster for the Office of War Information, 1942, winner of a competition for security posters. A drowning sailor points out of the picture, water to his chin, under two words. The careless-talk campaign assumed that enemy agents were listening in bars and on trains, which there is little evidence they were; its deeper purpose was to make the home front feel itself under military discipline.
- The sailor is pointing at you. What has the poster decided you did?
- What is the evidence that careless talk sank ships?
- Why would a government want civilians to feel they could be guilty of something?
See also
Same era, or the same techniques.
