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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by GrahamColm 17:43, 10 October 2012 [1].

We Can Do It!

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We Can Do It! (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Binksternet (talk) 15:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This article gives the reader startling information about the popular misconceptions surrounding the famous image. The article has been assessed as a Good Article and has undergone a peer review. After gaining access to Highbeam and thus the pivotal scholarly source by Kimble and Olson, I fleshed it out a bit more. I think it is ready for FAC. Binksternet (talk) 15:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

SupportComment. Good article. I query its global persective in 'legacy'. I don't know about other countries, but the image is pervasive in Australia, used not only by feminist / women's groups but also the labour movement. Examples:

Not sure if used in other countries in the same way? hamiltonstone (talk) 01:25, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    • Hamiltonstone, for pervasive appearances of the poster I used references that specifically mentioned how the poster was used in popular media. The links you show here are not accompanied by any sort of explanation about the image. Neither of them refer to it at all. Such individual appearances or reworkings of the poster image are legion, but I don't want to fall into the trap of synthesis and original research by trying list as many as can be found, or even a representative sample. Instead, I looked for discussion about the image and quoted or summarized what was being discussed. Binksternet (talk) 04:01, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I realise that, but as it stands the article reads as though this is an entirely American phenomenon, which it is not. I was just providing the links to help show that this is the case. I'm not suggesting you list them, but that the article as it stands doesn't provide a worldwide view of the subject. I understand that may present a difficulty to some degree if the scholarly sources you are using don't discuss the content outside the States. Yet I'd be reluctant to support a US-centric WP article just because the sources are US-centric. (Just to be clear I am obviously only talking about the "legacy" section of the article). Not sure of a good solution. I'd be interested in other editors' views... hamiltonstone (talk) 12:18, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This image of Julia Gillard worked into "We Can Do It!" allows us to name an Australian politician as one of the several politicians (not just American ones) who have had their faces pasted on the "We Can Do It!" figure. The page does not describe the image so we don't have a great source, just a minor item. suitable for putting an Australian into a list of politicians. Binksternet (talk) 05:45, 27 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hamiltonstone, I have added a Gillard paragraph to the article, hoping that it would solve one problem without creating another. I wanted to address your observation that no other country was represented, but I did not want to push too far into original research. I would like you to assess the diff, check out the references (bare as they are) and tell me whether this paragraph is deserving. Binksternet (talk) 22:25, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My initial reaction is that this ticks the box of demonstrating that the appropriation / reuse of the image is not just a US phenomenon, but it does so using a relatively obscure example. Obviously Julia Gillard isn't obscure, but the artist and commentary in question is. I'm not sure how the sources are going to be considered in terms of RS (I mean flickr and tumblr). The use by people like AMWU is a bit more mainstream. But I understand that presents you with the problem of a lack of actual commentary. In those circumstances, perhaps you have come up with the most appropriate solution. But i'd webarchive the urls :-) hamiltonstone (talk) 12:16, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the danger of bringing that paragraph in is that the artist is not so very notable. The guy is picking up some notice, though; he's just about notable enough for a Wikipedia biography. At the BBC webpage, a bit about Phoenix says "Proving you do not have to be a young, rebellious teen to begin a street art career, this paste-up was created by “Phoenix”, a psychiatrist with his own grown-up children, who began creating pieces after taking a street art tour and being inspired to try it himself." (By Christa Larwood.) FatCap mentions him: "Street Art By Phoenix". He's listed on Wikipedia's Street art in Melbourne page. Beat Magazine wrote that Phoenix had a gallery showing: "Street Art Exhibition By Phoenix". So perhaps it is okay that we bring him in. By the way, I was unable to cache or archive the Flickr pages. Flickr is hosted by Yahoo; they are mortal enemies of Google and they do everything they can to keep Google from getting in their stuff. As a result, not even the Wayback Machine can archive a Flickr page. Binksternet (talk) 15:05, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, OK, thanks. hamiltonstone (talk) 12:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Moved to Support, as ccomments below dealt with. Johnbod (talk) 12:35, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments Very nice article; a few points. Well done for your efforts to contact experts, recorded on the talk page.
  • "However, most observers credit Geraldine Hoff Doyle as the model for the image." - "observers" the right word? Maybe "sources", "commentators", "lazy jornalists" .... "Many" might be more cautious. Johnbod (talk) 16:35, 29 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suspect your screen is narrower than mine; on mine images 2&3 and 5&6 overlap, & there is a big white gap after 6. Always difficult to suit everyone, but I have rearranged so it looks better on wide screen, sacrificing exact placement by relevant text to overall layout, which is imo the way to go, and the way professionals do it. Feel free to revert.
  • My inner art historian would have liked to see a paragraph somewhere placing the image in a wider context of visual images of women at work (Vermeer, Courbet, Russian posters etc etc), which I suspect would be pretty easy to source. I can't pretend the article lacks comprehensiveness without this.

Johnbod (talk) 16:35, 29 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was prevented from writing a paragraph about the historiography of images of women at work because there were no good sources discussing how "We Can Do It!" was positioned within that field. For starters, nobody ties together Vermeer and Courbet and J. Howard Miller, the artist of this poster. In my search for sources discussing context I only found writers who made wrong assumptions, embracing the common misconceptions about the poster: that it was used to recruit women workers, that it was famous during the war, that it was produced by the US government and that it was empowering to women. The biggest problem is with writers conflating "We Can Do It!" with Norman Rockwell's painting Rosie the Riveter or with the general "Rosie the Riveter" wartime meme. Once Kimble and Olson destroyed those misconceptions in 2006 I was loathe to base a section on disproved or flawed writings, sources that obviously did not perform any kind of research on the poster before launching into speculative interpretation.
Kimble and Olson devote quite a lot of text to the Rosie the Riveter concept in order to show how the "We Can Do It!" poster was never part of it until after 1982. I think our Wikipedia article on "We Can Do It!" is best served by briefly summarizing the conclusions of Kimble and Olson. I don't think we need to expand into a greater discussion of images of women at work since the conclusion will always be that "We Can Do It!" was only minimally engaged during its intended viewing period: two weeks during 1943. Misinformed sources such as this 2009 editorial in The Economist are not much help in setting the context of the poster in today's world. The greater discussion about images of working women is much more appropriate in its own article, perhaps titled Images of women at work, or the narrower Images of women in war production. Some of the discussion could be at the Rosie the Riveter article insofar as that article is the de facto catchall for images of American wartime production work performed by women. Other options could be an images section in Women in the workforce, Women's roles in the World Wars, Home front during World War II, or United States home front during World War II. I think it would be too tangential if the general idea of images of working women is positioned within this one poster article. Binksternet (talk) 18:50, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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