Propaganda Art - Week 4

This contemporary piece of Propaganda art is a Propaganda Poster from North Korea. It shows North Korean children, each representing a different branch of the North Korean armed forces, destroying the head symbolizing the US army. The text reads: "Playing war by strangling the American pigs is exciting".

The intended audience of this piece is North Korean children, and most likely their parents as well. The message in this piece of propaganda art is that it is fun to "play" war, and exciting to pretend to destroy Americans, so the real thing must be even better. This piece of Propaganda makes use of card-stacking. Only the bad features of the US army is shown, symbolized here as an old ugly head that is breaking apart, and that must be very weak. The children on the other hand are shown as powerful, on a higher plane than the army head (possibly a form of deification) and with dynamic, energetic poses, and smiling faces. It tells a sort of half-truth. The text on the image could also be seen as a "glittering generality", since it has no context and does not show the negative aspects of war such as losses on both sides. There is somewhat of a visual context to the image, but overall this statement evokes feelings and is not factual. Transfer is also employed with the juxtaposition of children and armed forces imagery. The creator of this piece most likely intended for the viewer to associate the innocence of play (using children) with war, making it appear fun and not scary, gory, or any of the other things that war generally entails.