The Lure of the Tropics and the Colonial Emporium: The Study of Book Illustration and Newspaper Advertisement in Colonial North Borneo

Abstract

This paper aims to study the relationship between colonialism, natives’ representations, and the promotion of Western products. An illustration from Agnes Newton Keith’s semi-autobiography, Land Below The Wind (1939), and an advertisement from a North Borneo newspaper, The British North Borneo Herald, are used as the corpus for this study. The illustration in Keith’s book illustrates a native woman, a Western man, and a tropical setting set in the colonial era. Meanwhile, the newspaper advertisement promotes a healthy tonic drink from a British brand, Wincarnis. The discussion on the aspect of colonialism, natives’ representations, and promotion of Western products is carried out with the semiotic analysis of the illustration and the advertisement using Kress and van Leeuwen’s framework of The Grammar of Visual Design (1996/2006). Elements such as symbolism and image positioning in the illustration and the advertisement are analysed to emphasise ‘the lure of the tropics.’ From the analysis of the corpus, it is found that Agnes Newton Keith, who is also the illustrator of the book, and the advertiser of the brand Wincarnis seem to promote the ideologies of imperialism and colonialism brought by the British Empire. However, the enticing and sexual messages in both illustration and advertisement make one questions the morality of the Empire itself.