Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Singaporean Poster

During the break between semester 2 and 3, in october, i went to singapore.
An informal trip to visit my friend and visit the city/country.
It was weird to visit such a tidy country comparing to the swarming Ho Chi Minh city and i was quite destabilize by all these rules. I mean, I love this vietnamese shamble.

Anyway, i saw numerous and divers things in Singapore. Then, visiting my friend's university i came across a peculiar poster.
My singaporean mates asked me why i was so offended by this poster. And, I answered that we do not see this kind of propaganda since 1945 after the german occupation and the Vichy government.

Actually, this is a very simple design. A public toilet door, with the usual men/woman sign. Just make a hole in the wall in between and the man watching at the woman. Without the text, we could think it is just a funny allusion to voyeurism.

However, adding "Suspicious strangers? report them." the poster takes another dimension, not so proudly.

The first ideas which crossed in my mind is: encouragement to inform on others, denunciation. Even more, mixing the words suspicious and strangers obviously mean that Singaporean have to not trust strangers.

Finally, this poster shows how a simple design coming from simple ideas can have considerable power.

Though please guys tell me if my interpretation is shared and pertinent or if the reason i was shocked is simply due to the distressing French collaborationist past (at least the one my grand parents and my history teacher told me).

1 comments:

Madeleine Morris said...

I have to say, this iconography is a little confusing to me. It looks like... there's a woman in the bathroom, and a guy trying to get in because he has a bad stomach..."Help.. I need the bathroom!"

;-P