The Medical Cross

This week's lesson on semiology and symbols was very enlightening. As similarly as I am learning to take a step back and look at the "why" of enjoying video games or anime, I am now looking at different logos and signs used not only in pop culture but in every day life. I began to think about all the similar images used not just in America, but around the world, such as traffic signals that can be almost universally understood. Yet as I was searching for which one I'd like to examine more closely, I kept coming back to the universal symbol of medical personnel: the medical cross.

In America, the cross is usually synonymous with The Red Cross organization and as such is almost always displayed as red on a white background. In Europe, it is more commonly a green cross on a white background, or vise-versa, which denotes more of a pharmacy than a doctor.

Red Medical Cross logo, stylized. (image source)

The symbol itself in red and white eerily reminds people of the white cleanliness of hospitals, the sheets, gauze, uniforms, etc, but the red? Is it blood? You would think such a color would put people off, but I believe it has much more to do with the country it originated: Switzerland. In looking into the history of the symbol and the Red Cross organization, I immediately thought of combat medics. The symbol was derived from the Swiss flag after a tourist witnessed the horror and destruction while traveling abroad to Italy during the Italian unification wars.

Flag of Switzerland over the Swiss Alps. (image source)

This citizen returned home with much commentary, soon writing a memoir book of seeing almost 50,000 wounded soldiers simply left on the battlefield. His ideas evolved into a conference that formed the basis for all combat medics in the armed forces of the world, and also the basis for the Geneva Convention and it's laws about the rules of engagement and treatment of prisoners of war. Subsequently, the flag of the country that inspired such a global structure was imitated in the symbol of the organization of medics.

Combat medics of the Red Cross are clearly marked with white armbands and symbols on their helmets to denote that they are non-combatant personnel and need not be targeted by either side as they are only there to help the wounded. They assist with conflicts and disasters as an impartial third party.

World War 2 re-enactment. (source)

Even without all this history being told, if you were in a foreign place or were approached by a foreign person, and needed medical assistance, it would be very easy to use this symbol to communicate what was needed.

Historical background source: https://www.peimag.com/why-is-the-medical-symbol-for-first-aid-a-red-cross/

Gears of War's Logo

Image Source

Gears of War released in 2006 for Microsoft's Xbox 360. The soldiers in the game are referred to as "Gears", and they work for the Coalition of Ordered Governments, or C.O.G (Get it? Gears, COG? Heh.). This small amount of information is actually all we really need to make sense of their logo, a blood red skull inside of a gear.

The logo in question
Image Source

First thing's first, here's the breakdown of the logo.

Sign: Gears of War Logo

Signifier: Blood-red colored gear and skull
Signified: Gears of War series
Myth: War and death

We obviously know the sign is for the series Gears of War because it is paired with the title in the image above and on the cover art for the series. It's seen on all four of the games (Gears of War, 2, 3, and Judgment) covers, and will also be included in the upcoming Gears of War 4.

Breaking the logo down now, we can look at the signifiers. What makes this logo relevant to the game series? We know from the title and the basic premise of the game that the soldiers are the gears that make the C.O.G. operate, hence their name, and why it's present in the logo. Then we look at the word "War". War implies death, and blood. Since blood is red, we can pretty easily figure out why they colored the logo red; they want to imply that the game is bloody, and there will be violence and death. Inside of the gear, we see a skull, which we know as the symbol for death, because when a person dies and their body breaks down, left behind at the top of their skeleton is the skull (the symbolic properties of the skull could be a blog post all on its own).

By applying these three elements together in the logo, we know what the game is about before we even play it. There will be blood, and there will be death. Since this is the key element of the gameplay in the series, the logo is now synonymous with the series itself, and becomes the game's signifier.