Rethinking the Image

Image source: https://50ansdepubs.com/Pubs/pub.php?p=Automobile/Rover/2631 (Accessed: 20 December 2025). © unknown

In May 1968, France was gripped by a momentous wave of mass protest and civil unrest, fuelled by economic, political, and social discontent. The month’s events would form a brief but significant chapter in the country’s collective memory,^[1] and the extent to which its varied and disparate aims were realised is still discussed and debated today.^[2]

The disaffection and desire for rebellion that facilitated these events was both encapsulated and encouraged by the graffitied slogans and screen printed posters, banners, and placards of the insurgent Situationist movement.^[3][4] Today, the resulting catalogue of imagery is widely celebrated as a visual representation of revolutionary spirit, with its basic but striking visual language still functioning as shorthand for ideas of protest and rebellion.^[4]

This French-language press advertisement by Rover, the now-defunct British car brand, appropriates a particularly well-known and often-reproduced Situationist poster from the May 1968 unrest. This poster was a call to action for grass roots protest, featuring a slogan which translated as ‘Beauty is in the street’, together with an illustration of a lone female figure throwing a brick.^[5]

Here, this image-text combination appears as stencilled graffiti rather than a printed poster, serving as an amalgamated, condensed representation of the visual language associated with the unrest. However, the parked car in the bottom-left of this small, black and white image, along with the photo frame that surrounds it, confirms its intended status as a historical reference.

The advertisement’s main tagline serves to link this reference to the product through a subtly deliberate misinterpretation of the original slogan’s meaning. Roughly translating as ‘Some of our dreams came true’, it implicitly substitutes the poster’s sense of a poetic beauty – the beauty of justice in the face of oppression – for literal, visual beauty. Viewed from a low angle, the car appears sleek and rakish, surrounded by a halo of light which accentuates the contours of its bodywork and draws attention to its chrome accents.

A period of civil unrest with a prominent anti-capitalist undercurrent may seem an incongruous source of reference for a car advertisement, but here, the appropriation of its iconography reflects the need for multinational companies to appeal to local markets by demonstrating sensitivity to the domestic culture. This sense of shared cultural awareness is continued in the advertisement’s secondary tagline, roughly translating as ‘The dream continues’, which appeals to a continuing spirit of idealism.

[1] Rubin, A. J. (2018) May 1968: A Month of Revolution Pushed France Into the Modern World. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/world/europe/france-may-1968-revolution.html (Accessed: 20 December 2025).

[2] Tormey, S. (2018) Be Realistic – Demand the Impossible: The Legacy of 1968. Available at: https://theconversation.com/be-realistic-demand-the-impossible-the-legacy-of-1968-87362 (Accessed: 20 December 2025).

[3] Merrifield, A. (2018) “Fulfillment was Already There”: Debord & ’68. Available at: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/3821-fulfillment-was-already-there-debord-amp-68?srsltid=AfmBOop-15OlM5iAaYMXMZ9tsZErwO8kW556UfaaQCDrbWVzdGRPeib4 (Accessed: 20 December 2025).

[4] Cookney, D. (2018) May 1968: The Posters That Inspired a Movement. Available at: https://theconversation.com/may-1968-the-posters-that-inspired-a-movement-95619 (Accessed: 20 December 2025).

[5] Digital Commons @ RISD (2017) La Beauté est dans La Rue | Beauty is in the Street. Available at: https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/archives_activism_politics/3/ (Accessed: 20 December 2025).