The aphorism fits so well with our situation one would think it's brand new. However, as ReporterJon Henley noted in yesterday's edition, Keep Calm and Carry On is 70 years old."Back in the spring of 1939," he wrote, "it was an anonymous civil servant who was entrusted with finding the slogan for a propaganda poster intended to comfort and inspire the populace should, heaven forbid, the massed armies of Nazi Germany ever cross the Channel."
The invasion never happened, of course, so Keep Calm and Carry On was never used. It was probably unnecessary anyway. People who could emerge from air raid shelters morning after morning to stoicly collect casualties and clean up rubble, as did the Londoners, obviously have KC&CO in their DNA. But it's good advice for the rest of us.
-----
The story relates well to the theme of this blog. Few techniques for implanting a message work as well as a memorable aphorism, slogan or whatever you want to call it. As I noted in previous posts, one of the best practitioners of this is Smokey the Bear and one of the best examples of a rhetorical device is antimetabole.
2 comments:
Is "keep calm and carry on" anything like Bush's advice after 9/11 to go out and buy things? Good posting, Dad. It is good advice - aphorisms certainly capture attention. As my father once said, "shut up and listen!" THAT caught my attention!
Thanks ... but I can't imagine a man as calm and reasonable as your father saying "shut up." You must have misunderstood him.
Post a Comment