The Usage of Jolly Rogers in Visual Communication

• Main Authors: Ding, Tsai-Jie, 丁才傑
• Other Authors: Hong, Ming-Hong
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/28887348091339905984

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 視覺設計學系 === 102 === The intentions of this study is to retrace the origin, the significance, the development of history, and the evolvement of usage of “Jolly Rogers”. The figure Jolly Roger nowadays is constituted by a skull and two cross bones, so that Jolly Rogers are always concerned with the meaning of “death”, “danger” and so on. I use hermeneutics and historical method to probe into the spirit of its existence with thanatology, philosophy, and iconology. Human beings are born to fear death, but the apprehension of death is hidden in deep of everybody’s mind; it does not appear all the time, but we could never get rid of it. For this reason, there are many kind of thinkings and religious beliefs that try to make people feel cool and composed when facing death. These thinkings are diverse because of the differences culture from culture, so that every one of them have their own argumentation as well as distinguishing feature; while all of the thinkings have a similar purpose, that is to explain what death is after all. The West started thinking with nationality in the end of the age Rationalism, and furthermore, with many new thought made people began using extremely different ways to observe this world that they lived in. It was not accomplished in short time, but was accumulated gradually during hundreds of years. I enumerate two important philosophers, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche to illustrate how the usage of Jolly Rogers changed, for the reason that their thoughts served as a link between past and future, as well as possessed the position that strode across the spirit of the ages. It looks strange that the exist of Jolly Rogers, and the huge amount that people use it under the fear of death of human natures. But if we tract back to its history, we can find that everything are reasonable. Pirates were desperado after all, therefore they might be able to face their own death composedly. Armies had to scorned of deaths in order to bring terror for their enemies. Both of pirates and armies should keep themselves in the mentality that they might lose their life momentarily. Furthermore, the skull in the Jolly Roger also hints of danger, therefore many warning labels about danger use Jolly Rogers as its visual symbols. Nowadays because of the thoughts and concepts of people in modern times became much more open then it was in the ancient periods, many folks started to use Jolly Rogers in different ways, although many other people still though skull figures as something bad with ban, for those who used it, Jolly Rogers might not be that serious and solemn.