A semiotic analysis of a famous poster of the May 1968 protest in France

“Retour a La Normale”

Semiotics

Mr. Bayouli

Siwar Ben Hamed

2010-2011
 This article proposes a semiotic analysis of a poster entitled

“retour a la normale” of the 2nd June 1968. The poster is a contribution to the 20th century

art which mangles into the disciples of paintings, sculpture and photography. My analysis of

this poster will be based on the semiotic approaches of Derrida and Peirce which suggest a

different semiotic approach by relating the meaning of the poster in relation to its context

and explaining the binary relationship of text/image.

The concerns in signs and the way they communicate has long been a theme of interest but

in the beginning of the 19th century it has been established as an independent field of

cultural studies due mainly to the Suisse linguistic Ferdinand de Saussure. Semiotics is the

study of signs and symbols; it often focuses on words or any communicative element from

an image to a banal object.

First , the general description of the poster is composed of a herd of sheep,

head down and going from right to left opposed to the text above “retour a la normale”

which the viewer first read. Colors are absent; in indeed, there are two primary colors: Black

and white.

The meaning of this poster varies that is why it is extremely important to understand its

signs. The first meaning can be a sociopolitical one “Mai 68” is a crucial period in the French

history where students in many universities revolted against the socio-cultural values and
traditional stereotypes which do not fit with modern societies and rejected the Gaullist

political system.

The second meaning is the mediation. The poster is in fact small and easy to handle or stick.

These characteristics define the image of the sheep as a propaganda sign that stands for a

rejection with the image of standardization and the use of this “cheap” media as posters

refers to the rejection of capitalist system which made “being rich and wealthy” as the only

way to fit in society.

The third meaning is a cultural one. The text above “retour a la normale”: “back to normal”

is an idiomatic familiar expression used in a specific period of time in France to entail that

nothing would change and everything is standardized to please the western traditional

values.

Now we move to analyze the poster according to a Peircian approach. The first sign is the

sheep which stands for human beings. This sign means that we are no longer considered as

rational humans who have differences, desires, and views. Difference is no more recognized,

desires are repressed and views are censored: all became the same and all have to still the

same.

The horns of the sheep take a spiral form which stands for the capitalistic system. A system

that drives the whole societies into a circular way of live .Capitalistic system control our lives
it is a totalitarian economic system that implicitly boarding us within a static stereotyped life.

This idea may be summarized in the familiar expression “to take the bull by the horns” in

French “prendre le taureau par les cornes “.

The horns may also suggest power. There is an obvious desire to challenge and reverse the

already made social consciousness but then contrast the image of the head down. The horns

are prepared to start a fight but nothing happens; there is no movement, thus the head

down implies a defeat.

Now, we move to the text above: First, the notion of fight and challenge can be expressed

with the word “retour”: the first connotation of this word is that there were a rupture in

some habitual thing : a break with the normality. The second connotation is the failure of

changing this habit and return to the former condition.

The redundancy established between the top and the bottom of the poster makes the image

of the sheep an explanation of the text: a completion of a cycle where we can see clearly

that the engaged party resulted in nothing. The May 1968 protest refers to a particular

period in the French history. During this period, the country saw the most important strike,

resulting in the economy coming to a virtual standstill, starting with a series of student

occupation protests.. Many groups of people revolted against modern consumer and

technical society and embraced wing positions that were critical of authoritarianism and

Western capitalism.

References:

http://imagesanalyses.univ-paris1.fr
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mai_68

http://www.marxist.com/may-68-france-month-revolution.htm

http://www.dinosoria.com/mai_1968.htm