Anzac Square Located in the busy city centre of Brisbane is Anzac Square. Anzac Square was constructed to commemorate those who served Australia in a war. This essay will examine the war memorial in Anzac Square as a landscape and analyse the ways in which semiotics, culture and framing shapes the messages and feelings that the audience experience when visiting such a war memorial. The essay will concentrate on the areas of metonym, metaphor, intertextual, circumtextual and extra-textual framing, along with cultural knowledge, code and convention.
The lecture notes (week 8 2003) state that a landscape is an identity that people can recognise, inscribe and collectively maintain certain places or regions in ritual, symbolic or ceremonial terms; conversely these places create and express socio cultural identity. The Anzac Square Memorial is named ‘The Shrine of Remembrance” and is a rotunda made up of 18 concrete pillars. At the base of these pillars is black metal fencing and on top of the pillars is a round concrete slab with the middle removed. Around the inside of the top of the rotunda are these words: ANZAC, Cocos Islands, Romani, Jerusalem, Damascus, Pozieres, Bullecourt, Messiness, Ypres, Amiens, Villars-Bretonneaux, Mont St Quentin, Hindenburg Line. On the inside base of these pillars are small lights that create mood for audiences who view the monument at night. The rotunda can be viewed from all angles due to the staircases that surround it and lead down into the park.
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Inside the rotunda is what is known as the ‘Eternal Flame of Remembrance’. This is made up of a green / black metal that has four legs and stands on a rounded block of the same colour and texture. On top of this stand is the flame. Around the base of the stand is the word ‘Remembrance’ written twice. A park on one side and a road on the other surround the war monument. The frame is the busy city and there are many buildings that are visible no matter which angle the monument is viewed on.
Around the monument are benches each with plaques dedicated to a different group of service men and women. There are four flagpoles one in each corner of the ‘chessboard’ of green and yellow tiles that surround the rotunda. Behind the monument is a plaque with the words “For God Kind and Empire.” Semiotics is the study of the way meanings are produced through signs. Semiotics studies anything that communicates meaning (Griffith University 1997).
This war monument uses semiotics in order to connect with its audience, using metaphor and metonym. This war monument uses metonymy through the writing of the place names above the concrete pillars. The words above the rotunda are all places that Australians have served prominently and by adding those words the monument becomes a small part of a larger picture. This larger picture will change with each war as the monument is now not for just one war, but for all wars in which Australia has had some participation in. Metaphor is also used when looking at the Shrine of Remembrance. The 18 concrete pillars are not just concrete pillars.
There are 18 of them to represent the ‘Year of Peace’ in 1918 (Rogers and Long 2002).
The memorial itself has fluid lines and is easily accessible at yet it is strong, sturdy and functional and is able to withstand the elements. This is very much the image of the military forces that pride themselves on being strong and powerful in the face of adversaries. Another important aspect when analysing a landscape is to look at the framing. The intertextual framing of the Shrine of Remembrance is that it provides a link between this war monument and another (Griffith University 1997).
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Not all the editors I have met can do that. Quite a number of them have to take their French and German second hand. No, I will not disparage the editors. They are an overworked, misunderstood class. Let them remember, though, that if I cannot see the fire at the end of their cigarettes, neither can they thread a needle in the dark. All I ask, gentlemen, is a fair field and no favor. I have ...
The evidence in this particular monument is the plaque, which states- “To the Men and Women who by patriotism and sacrifice served their country during the Great Wars 1914-1918-1936-1945 and in Hallowed memory of those who made the supreme sacrifice this monument is erected by the people of Queensland.” By viewing this plaque, the reader is invited to remember all those who served in war, yet the plaque can only be understood if they know what the Great Wars were and what they involved.
Thus, the Shrine of Remembrance uses intertextual framing. A second aspect of framing is the circumtextual frame. This particular frame is that which surrounds the text and guides our interpretations (Griffith University 1997).
The circumtextual frame for the Shrine of Remembrance is the city centre.
It reminds us that although we go along with out everyday lives, we must also remember that there are those in society and in the past who can’t go along with the everyday activities that we take for granted. The frame is busy, yet the park and the Shrine are calm and relaxing and without the busy comings and goings of the city framing the tranquil feeling may not have the desired effect. The lecture notes (week 11 2003) state that the Australian War Memorial produces an effect of national identity by organising contact within a sophisticated intertextual field. Modern discursive distinctions between history and memory, reality and theatricality, individual and collective, and secular and sacred become mutually inflected or contaminate though close proximity.
The extra-textual frame is the information that we bring that is outside and separate to the text (Griffith University 1997).
It is extra knowledge that we bring to the text, which may create an oppositional reading to the one that many people would interpret. In this circumstance the extra-textual frame is the one that by reading the plaques and looking at the flame and experiencing the war memorial, a person will read that the soldiers who went to war and died went senselessly and that the Shrine of Remembrance is glorifying a bloody and irrational act and should be torn down. The next major aspect to look at and analyse is that of the cultural knowledges. These are the knowledges that members of a particular culture have in common (Griffith University 1997).
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For example, a Japanese person will make a different reading of an Australian war memorial than an Australian person would due to the knowledges that may have been silenced in teachings in Japan.
In the Shrine of Remembrance the names at the top of the rotunda would only have true meaning to a person who knew the significance of the places to the Australian people. Another is the assumed knowledge of the Eternal Flame of Remembrance. There is no plaque explaining why the flame is there. One must assume why the flame is there and it is therefore the assumed knowledge which makes the shrine much more meaningful for certain members of a particular culture. When you place all the elements of the Shrine of Remembrance together, you become aware of a code within the memorial. A code is made up of a set of signs and the rules for using and understanding them (Griffith University 1997).
In this case, the codes that are present are the Australian flags on the flagpoles, the name of the place that the shrine is located: Anzac Square, and the location itself that together create a sense of national pride. Code works closely with the notion of Convention. The glossary (Griffith University 1997) defines convention as a common social practice or agreement. The act of visiting the Shrine of Remembrance is a convention along with returning to the shrine each Anzac Day to lay wreaths of flowers. Convention is important for the function of a war memorial as without it, it is worthless and loses all meaning. Ken Inglis (1998 cited by Nicoll 2001 p.
3) states that ‘a war memorial may signal exultation, pride, gratitude, mourning. It may even, though this is everywhere rare, express opposition to the war in question. People can pick and choose among the messages. The strength of each, moreover, may change over time and new messages may be added…
whatever else they are, the memorials remain sites for mourning victims after war.’ The evidence of convention at this site is the seats, for visitors to sit at, return to and rest and the garden, a place for many to enjoy whilst they return to mourn, remember or celebrate the lives of Australians soldiers. In conclusion, the Shrine of Remembrance is effective as a war memorial as it successfully evokes feelings of national pride and melancholy but most of all; it allows different people to bring their own ideas, meanings and feelings to the site. This is important for an effective landscape, as the purpose of a landscape is an ongoing relationship between people and place, it is something that both works, and does work. The Shrine of Remembrance and Anzac Square is a memorial that will continue to be visited by both locals and international guests for years to come as it works to connect with it’s audience and provide a way of seeing.
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* A conflict between organized groups within the country or between two countries created from a formerly united nation state. * A violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies. (James Fearon, “Iraq’s Civil War” in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007.) * A high-intensity conflict, ...
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Memorializing the Digger. Brisbane: Griffith University FACULTY OF ARTS, 1997. Glossary of Terms. Brisbane: Griffith University RODGERS, P. & LONG, K.
, 1997. Shrine of Remembrance Anzac Square, Brisbane. Anzac Day. Available from: web [Accessed 10 th June 2003].
