"Declare war on SARS!" (2003 Chinese poster, courtesy Marta Hanson)
What do Johns Hopkins University’s don’t-spew-the-swine-flu posters have in common with China’s anti-SARS ad campaign, circa 2003?
Except for the (undoubtedly coincidental) use of bright red and yellow, not much.
H1N1 poster. (From JHU website.)
Perhaps that’s just as well. A JHU History of Medicine professor analyzed this Chinese SARS poster and others, in a Lancet article last year and found echoes of the Maoist themes that permeated public health messages during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
“Public health posters were an integral part of the mass political and public health campaigns of those movements to enforce conformity, test loyalty and designate enemies,” wrote assistant professor Marta Hanson.
Still, the Chinese posters are pretty classy compared to the utilitarian smiley-face guy covering his sneeze.
The example included here uses 14-character lines, resembling a style of classical poetry and also has some similarities to Mao’s famous 1958 poem “Farewell to the God of Plague.“
