Subversive semiotics and ironic anchorage on Vrye Weekblad covers: A visual analysis

Abstract

The apartheid-era Afrikaans press's compliance with apartheid politics and ideology is commonly recognised. This article investigates the newspaper Vrye Weekblad as an exception in this regard. A reading is made of four selected Vrye Weekblad front covers, through a qualitative visual semiotic analysis based on a Barthesian model, in order to describe the covers’ subversive and anti-apartheid tendencies. This analysis reveals that the subversive tendencies at work on the covers represent an open assault on the ruling National Party's (NP) norms and values, especially in terms of the bastions of apartheid Afrikaner nationalism, such as traditional reformed Christian beliefs, symbols of Afrikaner patriotism, concepts of racial purity and white ethnic superiority. The myths present on these covers, while functioning to undermine dominant ideologies, also naturalise an ideology of Vrye Weekblad's own, by creating alternative myths of a critical disposition towards the NP government. The subversive encoding of these covers stems from an ironic tension in anchorage between the conventional connotations associated with the cover images and their accompanying text, which undermine the dominant meanings of the images. This article seeks to contribute a theorisation of this ironic anchorage as a mode of encodification within the broader context of mythical representational practices. The author proposes that as these Vrye Weekblad covers were published under much the same uncertain circumstances as are experienced today with the African National Congress's (ANC) looming Protection of Information Bill and Media Appeals Tribunal, one might see the same occurrence of subversion through ironic anchorage in the contemporary South African media.