Don’t Keep Calm

Warning: Profanity below. Or is it obscenity? It’s like porn and erotica, I never know the difference. Whatever, if rough language offends you, do not read on. Although really, if rough language offends you, what are you doing here? Anyway, I’m having a bad day so this is a pretentious rant. You have been warned.

You know, you give the world a classic graphic, and everybody screws with it and pretty soon it’s dead. I guess we just can’t have nice things.

I am, of course, talking about this:



It was a morale poster originally produced in WWII Britain in case of invasion, only given limited distribution because the invasion never came, and then forgotten, which seems inexplicable now given how its re-emergence has made its variations legion. The only thing I can think of is that Britons in 1939 had bigger things to think about than being cute with government propaganda. (A visual history of the poster is here; google the phrase and click “Images” to see more variations than you can imagine.)

And now the damn thing is everywhere. If it had stayed in its original form, I’d be fine with it. I think the original is brilliant, right up there with the “I Heart NY” logo, its simplicity emphasizing its emotional content and impact. Plus it’s British. It sounds British. That’s a stiff-upper-lip poster if there ever was one, with the not-so-subliminal footnote from British history: “We won.” And they won not in any small part due to their dogged determination to keep on going while the bombs fell. Yes, I know we helped, I know without American intervention it might not have turned out so well. And I also know that somebody’s going to say that carrying on hasn’t always served the English in good stead, that the Romans invaded Britain and conquered the Anglo Saxons, and then the Normans/French invaded Britain and conquered the Anglo Saxons, but I think you have to take a close look at the “conquered” part because if you notice, the international common language today is not French and it sure as hell isn’t Latin. Keep calm, carry on, and eventually, the world will see it your way. Or at least say it your way. And to keep that spirit going you hang up posters that perfectly capture that Anglo-Saxon spirit, and then seventy years later the Americans take the poster and fuck it up. I’m assuming we’re the only ones dicking with it, but it’s probably everybody. Still, I blame us. We did the same thing with Coupling.

I’m not a purist, I’m good with the idea of people doing their own interpretations of a classic–I love the ShakespeaRe-Told version of The Taming of the Shrew much more than the original–but in order to make a successful parody/homage, you have to (a) understand the original at a deep enough level to play off the subtext and (b) be smart enough to make it better. And the vast majority of the derivative posters I’ve seen have been subtext-free and dumb.

The Keep Calm subtext is pretty close to the surface: Keep calm and your natural strength and endurance will carry you through. It reminds people that they are strong, it reinforces a basic human need to keep on going and rewards the reader by saying, “You, YOU will survive because you WILL keep going. It’s the Way We Do Things.” So if you’re going to rif on that, you have to start with same basic idea: Keep Calm and (do this thing I’m telling you to do and you’ll survive). The possibilities there are huge and usually missed. For example:

Here’s a clue: putting two exhausted memes together does not re-energize either of them, especially when they have no relationship to each other.

Then there’s:

Keep Calm and Eat Cupcakes

Keep Calm and Eat a Brownie

Keep Calm and Have Dessert

Keep Calm and Have a Beer

Keep Calm and Drink On

Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

If you’re an American, those variations make sense: we’ve been sedating ourselves with food for decades, so eating is our way of carrying on. Still not original, intelligent, or surprising, but at least there’s some meaning there.

More annoying to me are the ones that are just plays on words, most of them obvious:

Keep Calm and Hang On (says the same thing as the original, just not as well)

Keep Calm and Rock On (says the same thing as the original, just not as well)

Keep Calm and Party On (says the same thing as the original, just not as well)

Keep Calm and Marry On (no, that’s not clever because there’s a royal marriage)

Keep Karma and Carry On (Huh?)

Keep Calm and Carrion (it sounds like the original except we changed that word, get it? GET IT?)

Keep Calm and Wear A Thong (written by a fourteen-old-boy who then snorted until Pepsi came out his nose)

Even those are better than the ones where the re-designer just wanted to shove his or her obsession in:

Keep Calm and Love Twilight Forever

Keep Calm and Watch Glee

Keep Calm and Come to the Dark Side

Keep Calm and Love Running (see if it said “Keep Calm and Keep Running,” it would have been great)

So which ones do work? I like the ones that are tied to pop culture memes that are still going strong, giving the old message a new context:

Keep Calm and Boldly Go

Keep Calm and Call the Doctor

Keep Calm and Don’t Blink

Keep Calm and Call Giles

Don’t Panic and Carry a Towel

Those all work because they change the context, not the subtext. It’s still “Stay calm and do this and everything will be all right,” but now it’s tied to a different world. The close tie to the subtext is why that last one works even though none of the words are the same: it still means the same thing. As opposed to

(crickets)

I will also confess to a fondness for the ones that screw with the subtext:

Panic and Run Away

Hide Yer Wife, Hide Yer Kids

Freak Out and Call Mom

But the really clever parodies are the ones that access the subtext in a way that creates the shock of the new. The reversals above, while fun, are just that, the flip sides of the original. Great parodies take the original where it has not gone before while staying faithful to the sense of their origins. My three favorites are below (the middle one is the zombie apocalypse, the last one is courtesy of Toni Causey):

But the best one of the bunch, the one that has the most emotional impact, the one that means something, is this:

Over seventy years old, its meaning assaulted by thousands of imposters and wannabes, and it’s still the best. Keep calm, little poster. You’re going to outlast all the rest.