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We Can Do It !
It
has been established
that Leeds Postcards
made this image accessible
and popular throughout
the world since publishing
and distributing in
1986. well done us!
We
Did It !
How
an obscure in-house WWII
corporate poster became
a popular progressive meme
A
major World War II feminist/labor
icon which has inspired
hundreds of modified homages
is popularly known as “Rosie
the Riveter,” memorialized
in numerous posters, magazine
covers, t-shirts, coffee
mugs and advertisements.
This spunky gal is proudly
holding up her buffed arm
and encouraging us to get
it done.
The
problem is, she’s not Rosie
the Riveter. Her thought
balloon says: “We Can Do
It!”, and she was produced
by Pittsburgh artist J.
Howard Miller as an in-house
poster by the Westinghouse
corporation’s War Production
Coordinating Committee in
1942.
It
was displayed for only two
weeks in their Midwest factories
where women were making
helmet liners. Ed Reis,
Volunteer Historian for
Westinghouse, was interviewed
in 2003 by California Federation
of Teachers publications
director Jane Hundertmark,
and he explained that Westinghouse
made 13 million plastic
helmet liners out of a material
called Mycarta, the predecessor
of Formica (which means
“formerly Mycarta”). On
the other hand, “Rosie the
Riveter” was a snappy and
highly publicized national
meme.
Even during a war with broad
public support such as WWII,
the government needed media
to maintain patriotic participation
in the face of hardship
and despair. The Office
of War Information (1942-1945)
was the principal agency
responsible for that task.
And when the workforce started
to run out of men, the nation
needed women.
The
phrase, “Rosie the Riveter”
had entered the public sphere
on the radio as a snappy
song with that title by
Redd Evans and John Jacob
Loeb. In 1944 Republic Pictures
released the musical film,
“Rosie the Riveter” During
the war, the most popular
image of “Rosie the Riveter”
was a painting by Norman
Rockwell that appeared on
a cover of a May 29, 1943
Saturday Evening Post.
But
how and when did the popular
“Rosie the Riveter” term
get indelibly linked to
an obscure WWII poster image?
The most thorough academic
analysis of this meme is
“Visual rhetoric representing
Rosie the Riveter: myth
and misconception in J.
Howard Miller’s ‘We Can
Do It!’ poster” by James
J. Kimble and Lester C.
Olson, published in Rhetoric
& Public Affairs, Winter
2006. The authors scratch
their heads and note that
“Thus far the earliest reproduction
of (or reference to) the
‘We Can Do It!’ poster that
we have found in the postwar
years is in a 1982 Washington
Post Magazine article that
discussed poster reproductions
then available from the
National Archives.” Well,
they were on the right track.
Nailing down the details
of art history require a
lot of digging. As a graphic
activist with many connections
in the social justice community,
I started by looking through
mail order catalogs and
advertisements in alternative
publications – the way people
used to learn about new
posters before the Internet.
What I found was a fascinating
confluence of feminist and
labor media efforts influencing
each other, directly and
indirectly.
The
key step was made by Helaine
Victoria Press, the feminist/labor
publishing organization
co-founded by pioneers Jocelyn
Helaine Cohen and Nancy
Taylor Victoria Poore. They’d
met in 1972 and moved to
Indiana a few years later.
Circa
late 1970s – The U.S. National
Archives produce a postcard
of the WCDI image. According
to a footnote in Kimble
and Olson’s essay, the poster
is so popular that the National
Archives ranks it among
its top ten most requested
images.
1982-1983 – Helaine Victoria
Press begins distributing
postcards from the National
Archives. HVP co-founder
Jocelyn Cohen remembers:
“The NA had several propaganda
postcards from posters with
women and the war effort
and we sold those too. But
Rosie was the one that sold
like hotcakes.”
1985
– Helaine Victoria Press
produces their own version
of WCDI postcard, from one
seen at National Archives,
tying “Rosie the Riveter”
title to the WCDI image
for the first time in the
backside caption.
1986
- Leeds Postcards (England)
publishes their own edition
after successfully carrying
the HVP version.(their independent
distribution sells it through
UK and Internationally and
back to the USA via VisionWorks
in Greenland Mass.
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