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  • Essay / "We Can Do It" by J. Howard Miller as an iconic motivational image of the 20th century

    One of the most iconic images of the 20th and 21st centuries is a "We Can Do It" poster created by J. Howard Miller During World War II, men had to leave their jobs and their countries to fight in Europe While the men were gone, women had to take their jobs and support their families and their economy. country The poster was inspired by a photograph of Naomi Parker Fraley - a young woman wearing a cute red and white polka dot bandana working in a factory in Alameda, California in 1942. The poster depicts a woman who looks like. to Naomi raising her arm and showing her biceps on a bright yellow background with the phrase "We can do this." This article explains why this image is iconic, what it means, and what its significance or value to public culture is. . Say No to Plagiarism Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Shouldn’t”. Being banned? Get the original essay As Hariman and Lucaites (2007, 27-29) describe in their article, iconic images are images that refer to something widely distributed in all media formats and represent emotions and meanings universal, are recognizable and understood as being a representation of an important historical event. This image fits this description perfectly because "We Can Do It" is extremely well known and shared in a variety of media, it has a simple message that is understood by everyone and the movement of which this image becomes one of the symbols is widely supported. and understood. The background of the image affected its meaning and original message. As Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright (2009: 9) say in Practices of Looking: “a single image can serve a multitude of purposes, appear in a range of contexts, and mean different things to different people.” After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government urged military manufacturers to produce more weapons and other military products (Herold, 2018). However, the atmosphere in large factories was very tense due to conflicts between workers and union management (Herold, 2018). It is for this reason that a campaign was launched to alleviate the conflict and boost the morale of all factory workers (Herold, 2018). In 1942, the Westinghouse Electric Company decided to create a series of propaganda posters to boost the morale of all workers at the plant and encourage them to continue their hard work (Herold, 2018). Other posters like “Together we can do it!” and "Keep shooting 'em!" were created around this time, similar to “We Can Do it” (Rubenstein et al., 1998). It was not until the 1980s that the poster gained popularity among the general public and became a symbol of the feminist movement. Today, the poster has been remade and parodied several times. Many advertisers still use this image with some modifications to promote their products. The image appeared on clothing, vending machines, mugs, refrigerator magnets, pins, and other similar merchandise and products. The image was also used by the Clorox company to advertise its household cleaning products (Wade, 2007). The image also appeared in the film Captain America: The First Avenger (Landekic and Albinson, 2011). It has also been used in political campaigns featuring Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, and Julia Gillard (Herold, 2018). There was also another problem with the poster. The person depicted on the poster was a.