Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

An editorial in an October 1945 edition of the Saturday Evening Post asked the question, “Who is Kilroy?” Atop the editorial, was an illustration of service personnel musing over signs that read “Kilroy Was Here,” posted on palm trees in a military theater of World War Two (WWII). Hundreds of sightings reported variations of this sign, but little evidence exists of the actual artifact. Images of original graffiti are rare, as it was understandably uncommon for service personnel to carry cameras with them during the war. What we do have, however, is the question, “Who Is Kilroy?” and the narratives that attempted to answer it. Through rhetorical studies of circulation (Gries, 2013) and generic intertextuality (Bazerman, 2003), this presentation traces the absence of the “Kilroy was Here” image, exploring how it instead became realized by the circulation of its narrative ontology, not of the image itself. The lack of original artifacts and their images during WWII is supplanted by its discourse through such texts as news reports, advertising, songs, and comics. The circulation and intertextuality of the narratives arguably engendered the Kilroy Was Here movement not as an image but as a symbol of American idealism and ruggedness.