Mystery of the Day: Who's Shushing Me?

Our new sketch group finally has a name: Secret Hospital, a name which Michael picked. Apparently, in the Spider-Man comic books, his wife Mary Jane Parker (née Watson) had an acting gig on the oddly named soap opera Secret Hospital. Even as a kid, Michael wondered, how do you keep a hospital full of patients secret?

I couldn't find an image of Mary Jane acting on Secret Hospital online, so I decided to mock up a quick image for the MySpace page. I found a jpeg of an old postcard of the Los Angeles County General Hospital, which looked enough to me like the hospital I remembered from the opening credits of the real-life soap General Hospital. (It turned out I was right, though the hospital is now called the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.) Then I wanted to add a picture of someone doing the "SHHH" sign, and I came up with this poster. I'd seen the image before. But I wondered: "The Ch'agua are listening?" Who exactly are the Ch'agua?

So I googled it, and one of the only things I found were these posts in a blog called Chirky. They had a contest where readers were asked to decide who the Ch'agua were. The winner said they were "composers of Latin American porno music," but I preferred the runner-up answer: the Others from Lost. No real answers, though, which is when I first started to suspect that this was not actually the real, original propaganda poster. My girlfriend mentioned that she was under the impression that this was originally a Russian poster, whereas I'd been thinking Cuban or Central American. But...why would it be in English? Is it a translation of the Spanish?

I started casting the net wider and eventually found another version of the same poster, this one apparently in Russian (or some language in a Cyrillic script). It wasn't clear from the page where I found it whether it was from the USSR or from one of the other Eastern Bloc countries. I don't speak enough Russian to know. (I can sound it out, thanks to a trip to Russia when I was 13.) I'm pretty sure it says "Don't [something]" but I try "Don't Speak," "Don't Talk" and "Don't Whisper" into an English-Russian translator, and it doesn't match up. Nye voltai.

After reaching a temporary dead end with the Russian poster, I go back to the original poster. "The Ch'agua are listening." Who are the Ch'agua? And what's that symbol in the corner, with the Yin/Yang symbol and a lightning bolt? I re-Google the slogan, look further down the page and click on a link called "Horde Toons." There, on their wallpaper, was the symbol! I realize that the page seems to be dedicated to in-joke humor about something called "The Horde." (It reminds me of when I first stumbled upon The Church of the Sub-Genius.) According to Wikipedia, a horde could refer to Communists, Mongols, Masters of the Universe characters, Warcraft faction...AHA! Then I find the culprit.

Those of you who have been to renaissance fairs (and I have not) may know of The Society for Creative Anachronism, a group of medieval and Renaissance history hobbyists who take pleasure in getting together in costume and, well, geeking out. They seem to have a sense of humor about the whole historical reenactment thing, and no matter how much research they do on the time period to which they have dedicated themselves, they never let accuracy get in the way of a good time. The group had its origins in a graduation party for a Berkeley medieval studies student in 1966 and has now grown to some 30,000 members in America and beyond.

In 1971, in the land known as the Middle Kingdom (that's Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and parts of Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan and Ontario to you), an SCA meeting was shaken by the arrival of what was basically a biker gang dressed in fleece. This was the first appearance of The Great Dark Horde, a fraternal organization (or "household") within the SCA. While others in the organization are dressing up as noblemen, princes and knights, the Horde pay homage to the more egalitarian, if still fairly brutal, Mongol empire. The members' persona, however, aren't expected to be Mongol, or to dress as if they were in the employ of Kublai Khan, a policy which is compared to the tolerance with which the Mongol Empire treated the many cultures over which it ruled.

The Horde's symbol? The yin and yang with the lightning bolt. And one more search led me back to the page of the person who probably introduced the "Ch'agua are listening" poster to the web. According to his glossary page, Ch'agua means "outsiders." (I'm not sure if that's a creation on the Horde's part or not. I don't think it's the modern Mongolian word, though I could be wrong.)

I turn my attention back to finding the origin of the original poster, and finally find a lead on a Russian website:

The spot that will catch your attention is the eyes. The eyes are omnipresent, always strict and tenacious. Whatever position you may choose - to the left, or to the right of the poster - there is no escaping these eyes. "Don't Wag Your Tongue!" for there are enemies everywhere and they are on the alert, insists a working woman in a red scarf, with her finger pressed to her lips. And we understand that her words are meant for us. Surprisingly, this austere poster is the most popular. Today we take it in a different way, of course, with a touch of humor. But the idea itself appeals to many, especially foreigners. If for us the poster is history, for foreign connoisseurs it's an exotic fruit.

No mention of who the artist was, though. So I search "Don't wag your tongue." Nothing. I use a virtual keyboard to type in the only letters I can read in the above jpeg, and then put that into Babelfish. It's translated as "DON'T STIR." Okay! I search that and find a link from a Dig discussion to the jackpot: this amazing online collection of propaganda posters. There a section in English, but it doesn't have as much text. So I plug the Russian text underneath the poster into Babelfish.

AGITATIONAL POSTERS/THE SOVIET AGITATIONAL POSTERS "poster - this is the destructive impact, directed toward the head of class enemy, this is - the agent of mass involvement, and to it must be shown proper attention" - thus wrote artist Dmitriy stakhiyevich Moore, who drew within short June night one of the best posters of Civil War. Red Army man indicates by finger directly you: "you, he says, were written down by volunteer?" Moore said: "I assembled many conversations apropos of this poster. Some told me that they were shamed him, which it was shameful not to be written down by volunteer ". Its Red Army man was commissioner, he called people for the protection of revolution, he required determination and courage. How to calculate, how many people did convince this Red Army man, within one short night drawn by large artist? This is poster- champion. Moore correctly said: "we related to the skill as to the uprising!"

Not the best translation, obviously. And confusing, because it gave me the impression that Dmitry Moor—"Moore" or "Moor" was his pseudonym—was the painter of our "Don't Stir" poster. But after painstakingly reading his bio in Babelfish translation, I came to doubt this. Why didn't they list credits for each poster? And why is it that they have bios for every artist whose work is featured on the site, but none of them appear to have created the poster I'm looking for?

Finally, by plugging in the actual Russian words for "poster" and the slogan into Google (I know. I'm obsessive, OK?) I came up with the artist behind the poster. Nina Nikolayevna Vatolina (1915-2002), designer of such stunning if hilariously patriotic posters as Be A Metal Worker!, Glory to the Mother-Heroine!, Glory to the Heroic Soviet Woman!, Fascism: An Envy Enemy of Women, and our holy grail...1941's Do Not Chat! Glory to Nina, Heroic Propagandist and Provider of Clip Art for T-Shirt Designers and Biker Nerds!

And just for you, I typed in the entire text to the poster and got a bad but legible translation from Babelfish:

будь на чеку, в такие дни подслушивают стены недалеко от болтовни и сплетни до измены

you be to the linchpin, during such days overhear the walls not far from the chatter and gossips to the treason

Now, seriously...I've got to get back to work.

Further reading
The U.S. is still making "Loose Lips Sink Ships" posters!