I wrote about poppies last year. You write about them at your peril….
This week I read a piece about an ITV newscaster who had opted not to wear a poppy on screen. It wasn’t that she was against it: she did wear one when not in front of the camera. Her argument was that ITV didn’t allow her to wear anything as a broadcaster that identified her as a supporter of other charities such as breast cancer awareness, mental health or child poverty (I’ve forgotten her actual examples). So why, she argued, should the poppy, paid for and worn in support of the Royal British Legion, be an exception to that rule?
I admire the logic and the ethics, but I’m afraid she is misreading the symbolism. She hasn’t quite cottoned on to what the public mostly think they are doing when they wear the poppy. In social sciences-speak, she has got the semiotics wrong.
The poppy is far more than the logo of a particular veterans’ charity. As the poppy field in the Tower of London moat demonstrates, it is not quite like most other symbols.
Read it all.
(Dean of Durham) Michael Sadgrove–Poppies: memories and many meanings
I wrote about poppies last year. You write about them at your peril….
This week I read a piece about an ITV newscaster who had opted not to wear a poppy on screen. It wasn’t that she was against it: she did wear one when not in front of the camera. Her argument was that ITV didn’t allow her to wear anything as a broadcaster that identified her as a supporter of other charities such as breast cancer awareness, mental health or child poverty (I’ve forgotten her actual examples). So why, she argued, should the poppy, paid for and worn in support of the Royal British Legion, be an exception to that rule?
I admire the logic and the ethics, but I’m afraid she is misreading the symbolism. She hasn’t quite cottoned on to what the public mostly think they are doing when they wear the poppy. In social sciences-speak, she has got the semiotics wrong.
The poppy is far more than the logo of a particular veterans’ charity. As the poppy field in the Tower of London moat demonstrates, it is not quite like most other symbols.
Read it all.