"Do you inhale?": Vintage cigarette advertisements

Here is another of my gif /slidehows of old ads. I've wanted to do one of cigarette ads for a while now, but once I started researching, I was inundated. There are just thousands of these things out there. I found whole sites devoted to them. They had all been neatly archived according to date and type. The fascination with these things continues, so full of jaunty lies.

Cigarettes were so normalized, so much a part of culture. They were associated with sophistication (long gloves and cigarette holder), rugged masculinity ("Come to where the flavour is!"), femininity (a bride throwing a bouquet after stubbing out her Lucky), and certain psychological benefits - lifting you up or calming you down, depending on which direction you needed to be levelled. And of course, there was smoking as social ritual, a harmless and fun form of recreation.

These ads exhort you to "be happy - go Lucky!" They depict adorable babies posing questions to their Moms and Dads about their smoking habits. Doctors exhort their patients to smoke Camels, because that's what THEY smoke. More than one ad asks "do you inhale?" Women are bursting with athletic health and glee, never getting fat because they smoke rather than eat.

Did all this shit work? I mean, did people actually buy them because of this propaganda?

Must have. Took a long, long time for the public to catch on. Mad Men was actually about the tobacco boondoggle and its eventual defeat, though the show then had to go on to other things (like foreign cars that wouldn't start, thus defeating carbon monoxide suicide attempts).

I saw a documentary about all this - hair-raising, it was, because by the end of it, it turned out Big Tobacco was doing better than ever, shipping their lethal substance overseas to the Third World where smoking makes the horrors of life just bearable. This is where you see pictures of three-year-old kids smoking.

Let's look at a few of these things in detail.

Babies abound in these things, and it's puzzling. Of course they're cute, but are the ads somehow, obliquely, telling women that it's OK to smoke while they're pregnant? They DID tell women that. Also that it was OK to smoke around them. Everyone did anyway. But I find this association especially creepy because it makes no logical sense.

One of the more chilling Lucky Strike slogans was "Smoke a Lucky to feel your LEVEL best!" This usually depicted a widely grinning young woman - in this case getting married and throwing her bouquet.  But it's the fine print that makes my stomach drop: "Luckies' fine tobacco picks you up when you're low. . . calms you down when you're tense - puts you on the Lucky level." Level seems to be the operative term here, the desirable thing. Cigarettes are being used as a drug to regulate mood. Did it work? Look at the explosion of antidepressant use today. Maybe we should bring back the Leveller?

No. No! Not one. NOT ONE SINGLE CASE OF THROAT IRRITATION due to smoking CAMELS! Now I know why we're asked not to use all-caps on the internet because it makes you seem to be shouting. In this case, an official-looking man in a white coat, presumably a doctor, is displaying case studies of people who have gone and smoked their brains out for months, and STILL do not display ONE SINGLE CASE of throat irritation. "Start your own 30-Day Camel MILDNESS Test Today!" Mildness is a term you see in a lot of these ads, along with flavour. To me, sucking smoke into my lungs via my mouth and tongue just wouldn't taste very good. But I may be wrong. I can see why it might put you off food, which in these ads is considered a good thing.

Let me just transcribe the text below the photo: "A really mild, flavorful smoke that enters your mouth pleasantly cool and filtered. Embassy's extra length of fine, mellow tobaccos provides extra enjoyment plus an extra margin of protection. Try Embassy! Inhale to your heart's content!"

This is completely chilling in light of what we now know about the value of filters in protecting people from cancer. They did absolutely doodlysquat, but for decades the public was told over and over again that they filtered out "tar" and other unwanted things. This was an obvious attempt to assuage public anxiety about all those silly things the Surgeon General had been telling them, that their lungs would rot and they would end their days coughing up blood in a cancer ward.

This is another aspect of the cigarette ad: gorgeousness. Some of these are just so beautiful to look at! How could anything so sophisticated and artful be bad for you? But soft! What lie through yonder advertisement breaks? Could it be - more reassuring text?

DO YOU INHALE? Luckies "makes no bones" about this vital question. "Keep that under your hat," said the cigarette trade when first we raised the question - "Do you inhale?"

But silence is golden only when it's unwise to speak. Let others explain their striking avoidance of this subject. Lucky Strike makes its position crystal clear. . . for certainly, inhaling is most important to every smoker.

For everybody inhales - whether they realize it or not. . . every smoker breathes in some part of the smoke he or she draws out of a cigarette.

Do you inhale? Lucky Strike "makes no bones" about this vital question, because certain impurities concealed in even the finest, mildest tobacco are removed by Luckies' famous purifying process. Luckies created that process. Only Luckies have it!  "It's toasted"

"Toasted" seems to imply that the tobacco has somehow been purified of carcinogens (a word that might not even have been coined back then). Someone in the tobacco industry waved a magic wand over it, rendering it harmless. Surely the good folks at Lucky Strike, the LSMFT people ("Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco") would know best, and would never do anything to harm the public. But those ads seem to bespeak certain nameless jitters among the general population, not to mention the tobacco industry itself.

Was it the fact that 90% of heavy smokers were pulling a Humphrey Bogart or an Edward R. Murrow in their final days and gasping their last in the cancer ward? Did no one put the pieces together? But if they tried to, Lucky reassured them: pish-tosh! WE don't mind discussing the matter even though everyone else is being needlessly coy about it. WE are honest about the fact that smokers inhale. But our product is so magically-produced, with shamans sitting out in the tobacco fields moaning incantations over it day and night, that those delicate throat membranes surely won't start to ulcerate, bleed, fester, bubble, blister and turn black.

A FRANK DISCUSSION AT LAST

on a subject that has long been "taboo"

"Let sleeping dogs lie!" So said the cigarette trade when first we raised the subject of inhaling. But dodging an important issue is not Lucky Strike's policy!

Do you inhale? That question is vitally important. . . for every smoker inhales - knowingly or unknowingly. Every smoker breathes in some part of the smoke he or she draws out of a cigarette! And the delicate membranes of your throat demand that your smoke be pure, clean - free of certain impurities!

No wonder Lucky Strike dares to raise this vital question! For Luckies bring you the protection you want - because Luckies' famous purifying process removes certain impurities concealed in every tobacco leaf. Luckies created that process. Only Luckies have it! 

So, whether you inhale knowingly or unknowingly, safeguard those delicate membranes!

"It's toasted"

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Bambi and Thumper are REAL!

Steven Galloway: outside of Canada, nobody cares

BLOGGER'S LAMENT.  I am absolutely exhausted. Just wiped out. I've been - somehow - don't know how - didn't want to do it, didn't want to do it - caught up in the Steven Galloway "affaire".

What's that, you ask? Who he? Outside of Canada, nobody cares. Steven Galloway is a former professor of Creative Writing at UBC (University of British Columbia, for my hordes of overseas fans). Professor Galloway had a habit of sexually assaulting female students, quite a number of them in fact, and some of them were beginning to actually complain about it. After an internal investigation, UBC dismissed him. 

But that is not the end, readers! The muck really begins here. In the past few days, 80 of Canada's creme de la creme/elite/"just plain old BEST" authors all lined up to sign an "open letter" to UBC protesting his dismissal. These Big 80, described in the press as "a Who's Who" of Canadian Literature, didn't think it was too gol-dern fair for The Professor to be held accountable for his actions - not to the point of actually losing his job! They insisted that a proper investigation be held to drag the situation out endlessly and allow Galloway to hire some crack lawyer who would blow down the (likely poor and marginalized) injured parties with one breath.

But the more people looked at this petition and the signatures under it, the more they smelled days'-old fish.

UBC is known as a sort of literary mill, a vast machine churning out new writers, who then, eventually, become Establishment: the new elite of CanLit. This is how the system renews itself: think of an immense, seething termite queen whose sole purpose is spewing out more termites.

If one unit of this family (and I use the term in a Sicilian sense) suffers in any way, the others must, according to their contract, rush to his/her aid. It is the termite way, and it is immutable.

The whole thing made me ill. To my mind, it was an extreme example of the wagons going in a circle, not to mention what Orwell might have called "wethink" (or, perhaps, "we-think"). A number of these CanLit muckety-mucks actually took their names OFF the "open" letter (which, to my mind, was about as closed a thing as I have ever seen), once they realized what it was they had actually signed.

Not to jest, because this has left me feeling like road kill. For the glittering Literatti will surely mass together when one of their own is under attack - while casually throwing a number of vulnerable, relatively powerless sexual assault survivors under the bus.

Or so it seems to me. 

Margaret Atwood, the Queen Bee or perhaps the Termite Queen of CanLit, wrote a letter of her own, which I won't reproduce here, but it's haughty. She tries to backtrack on her original statement, which compared Steven Galloway's dismissal to being burned at the stake in Salem. (Her references to a "witch hunt" strongly implied the students' claims were driven by hysterical delusion).

She has since made an effort to cover her literary ass, but it's a little late for that. Charmingly, she does remind us all that Galloway was "thrown in a mental hospital", which is apparently the worst fate which can befall a human being. The indignity of it - the horror, the shame - a Gulag Archipelago, UBC-style! It was all designed to cue the "He's Really The Victim" music.

If I jest about all this, it's so I won't cry. The whole thing exhausts me. Like Dorothy Parker, I only jest to keep from howling. (And please don't think I am comparing myself to her - I stopped drinking 26 years ago).

Margaret Atwood Follies: "gee, thanks, lady"

Margaret Atwood "can't write a novel," according to Norm Macdonald

(AARON VINCENT ELKAIM / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

By PETER EDWARDS Star Reporter

Fri., Nov. 18, 2016

After kicking off something of a one-way Canadian literary feud, comedian Norm Macdonald has deleted a series of Twitter rants in which he called author Margaret Atwood “a no-talent mountebank bent on fooling fools” and other insults.

Some of the tirade from Macdonald, a former Saturday Night Live star, came late Tuesday night and Thursday morning of this week, after Atwood tried to console Americans after the election of Donald Trump.

Atwood: “Just like the Wizard of Oz, Donald Trump has no magical power”

Macdonald: “You make a very good, if utterly obvious, point. So, you’re saying he DOESN’T have magical powers. Thanks.”

And then Atwood, a Toronto resident, tries again to console American readers with: “Dear Americans. It will be all right in the long run. (How long? We will see.) You’ve been through worse, remember.”

Macdonald replies: “Gee, thanks, lady.”

Atwood, winner of the prestigious Booker Prize for Literature, urges readers to take practical measures to help them cope with life under Trump, to which Macdonald adds: “How to SURVIVE in the era of Trump, lady? How about staying in your house with your money?”




Earlier, the 57-year-old Quebec City native observed, “Canadians have frauds and imposters just like everyone else. Most people in the arts are charlatans. One is @MargaretAtwood.” Macdonald later deleted the Atwood run of tweets (though they remain on his Facebook page), as he has done in the past with stories about meeting Bob Dylan, helping to write the SNL 40th anniversary special and more.

The comedian has a well-received book of his own currently out, Based on a True Story: A Memoir. Despite the title, Macdonald has described it, on Twitter and elsewhere, as a novel.

The shots he took online at Atwood went beyond her advice on life in a Trump America.

When Atwood sends a reader a handwritten quote from her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Macdonald jumps in and posts: “Oh, bad writing scribbled on a piece of paper. Well, who wouldn’t want that?”

Atwood has 1.32 million Twitter followers while Macdonald has 768,000.





Several of her fans jumped in to defend her. One posts: “as if I don’t have enough to deal with Norm hates Margret (sic) Atwood??”

Macdonald replies: “I don’t hate @MargaretAtwood. I hate bad writing.”

He then adds: “It isn’t her fault and I’d never have anything but pity for the talentless. But the Canadian school system makes you read her.”

One Atwood defender tries for some sort of anti-Trump solidarity but Macdonald has none of that.

“@normmacdonald In an authoritarian regime, the most important thing is whether you are ‘one of them’ or ‘one of us,’ ” he tweets.

“no,” Macdonald replies.





Macdonald accuses Atwood of “chasing celebrity and promoting anything for a buck” and compares her unfavourably to Canada’s Nobel Prize-winning Alice Munro.

“It is nauseating to consider that through shameless self-promotion someone like @MargaretAtwood could care consider herself Munro’s peer,” Macdonalds writes.

“Unlike Munro, @MargaretAtwood is incapable of writing a novel, yet churns out chum at an alarming rate,” Macdonald continues.

“Munro is the greatest writer Canada has ever produced but feels herself incapable of writing a novel. On the flip side sits @MargaretAtwood,” Macdonald continues.

Atwood, 77 ,did not respond to the Star’s request for comment.





https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2016/11/18/norm-macdonald-deletes-anti-atwood-tweets.html

Are we still friends?

Whack jobs: or, why we still can't deal with mental illness

I’ve been having some thoughts lately, mostly triggered by some recent events in the news. It’s about people’s language around mental illness. I have just a bit of trouble with names like loony, whack job, etc. being casually tossed around to label someone who is in psychiatric pain. I hear this every day of my life, and it dismays me. We often talk about “the other”, and I can’t think of a worse example of ostracism for something that is not the person’s fault.

But I am also struggling with the fact that people still sometimes use terms like “committed”,“ arrested” and “incarcerated” when referring to someone who is in so much pain that they are a danger to themselves and, perhaps, those around them. 

Being in hospital because you’re suffering to that degree is not like being dragged off to jail. Even if a person is “committed” (which I didn’t think existed any more), they can sign themselves out after 24 hours. They are not in leg irons. They are not being unfairly labelled “crazy” for their personal beliefs and left on some archipelago with the rest of the raving loonies. This perception is a “snake pit” mentality that harks back to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 

Sometimes people’s judgement is seriously “off”. What is the alternative for someone who has just said that he is going to kill himself? Just leave him there, send him home? If he were bleeding to death or had a heart attack or was in some other kind of life-threatening danger, I am sure he would be rushed to treatment. Why can’t we see suicide threats the same way? I think it’s because people are expected to just get it together on their own. Shape up. To accept help is to take on a stigma that might, perish the thought, hurt one’s career or standing in the community. (“You know what happened to him, don’t you?”) Some people, believe it or not, would rather die.

Why is a suicidal emergency so different? Because, I believe, we still look at mental illness with horror, paranoia and dread. Misinformation and ignorance is rampant. I’ve never heard of anyone being dragged off to the snake pit against his/her will, and it is extremely hard to get into the average psychiatric facility because there are never any beds (which should tell people something, but there’s an uncomfortable silence around it).

I watched an old TV show the other day, one of those black-and-white dramas, in which a husband and wife were accusing each other of being crazy. The term “put away” was used at least fifteen times. “Put away” is something you use to describe storing cups in a cupboard. But it also implies that you are “done”, that you will never live in the “real” world again. We don’t use this term any more – or at least, not often. But “incarcerated” is almost as damning.

The situation I’m writing about – and I’m sorry I can’t be more explicit, but I am not prepared to do that – seemed to trigger language that was, to say the least, dated, but also fraught with – what? Rage seemed to be uppermost, but I can’t tell for sure because I don’t personally know the people involved.

The first time I heard the term homophobic, I was very confused. Phobic means – fearful. Why would people be fearful of homosexuals? What did this have to do with their prejudice?

Everything. For fear comes of ignorance, and ignorance can be more willful than we want to know. I found this whole situation depressing because it also snagged into personal and professional hierarchies, elitism, and the unassailable power of the patriarchy, not to mention sweeping aside claims of sexual assault. (And where have I heard THAT one before?). 

We pay a lot of lip service to "reducing the stigma" (never eliminating it, as if that is just too gargantuan a task to even consider) and asking people to "reach out for help", neatly leaving it in THEIR hands when they may be too ill to reach out for anything. In cases like this, who will step up, who will be there to fill the void? In too many cases, no one, and the person decides life is too unbearable to continue with. Then it's "well, he just refused to reach out for help, so. . . "

I don’t know how much of this will be resolved (or even improved) in my lifetime. Looking at what has happened to women’s rights in the past few years, we might even go back to leg irons and snake pits. But for God’s sake, people, watch your language! Real human beings are involved. Equating a psychiatric facility with a prison implies some kind of crime, and there is no crime. The gulag is not part of anybody’s reality now.

in·car·cer·ate

inˈkärsəˌrāt/

1. imprison, put in prison, send to prison, jail, lock up, put under lock and key, put away, intern, confine, detain, hold, immure, put in chains, hold prisoner, hold captive; informal put behind bars
   

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New Girl in School: an illustrated guide

The New Girl in School

Papa do ron-de ron-de, do ron-de ron-de, do ron-de ron-de, oo

I got it bad for the new girl in school, 

The guys are flipping, but I'm playing it cool.

Everybody's passing notes in class, 

They really dig her now she's such a gas.

Pappa, pappa, pappa, do ron-de ron-de, do ron-de ron-de

Do ron-de ron-de, do ron-de ron-de, do ron-de ron-de, oo

I got a fad, pappa do ron-de ron-de, oo.

The chicks are jealous of the new girl in school.

They put her down and they treat her so cruel.

But the guys are going out of their minds

Cause she's the cutest chick you'll ever find.

A pa pa pa pa do ronde ronde, do ronde ronde, do ronde ronde 

Do ronde ronde, do ronde ronde ooo, I've got a fad for the 

Do ronde ronde ooo 

Papa do ronde ronde, do ronde ronde, do ronde ronde ooo

It won't be long till were having a ball, 

We'll walk n talk n we'll hold hands in the hall.

Never thought I'd make it through this year, 

Sure was a drag till she transferred here.

Pappa, pappa, pappa, do ron-de ron-de, do ron-de ronde

Do ron-de ron-de, do ron-de ron-de, do ron-de ron-de, oo.

I got a fad, pappa, pappa, do ron-de ron-de, oo.

Little girl if you want me to... 

I got a lot going

Little girl if you want me to... 

I got it bad, pappa, do ron-de ron-de.

Pets Who Hate Donald Trump

It might be food: Weight Watchers recipe cards, 1974

Harold Lloyd: those long ocean voyages

Harold Lloyd: fists of fury

Harold Lloyd Goes Psycho!

I've rescored some of my favorite Harold Lloyd scenes with "unusual" music. This one makes your hair stand on end.

Gecko dance!

Happy dog slides on ice!

CATFIGHT! Girl fights in romance comics

I may have actually bought some of these, or one, back in the '60s, but only so my brother Arthur and I could make terrible fun of them. It wasn't hard to do. Never mind the sociological significance of these things. They're FUN, and that's all I care about at this point! The "catfight" scenes could not be cropped exactly to match the others (perfect squares), so I had to fiddle around with them a bit on white backgrounds, but it was worth it, they are just SO cool. The "jailbird" one is a favorite, as are the "nurse" specialties (nurses being especially hot). One thing I didn't realize - and this is illustrated in a couple of the pictures - some of these comics were done in duplicate for two different markets: white and black. It's eerie to see the exact same backgrounds, clothing, captions, etc., but with women of different races. 

Those issues are, of course, completely settled in 2016. Aren't they? We honestly thought we had fixed it once and for all, and things would only get better. NEVER did I EVER hear so much about racial hatred and violence and murder and strife back then, during the height of civil rights fever. It's worse now, much worse. This is but one of the things I must contemplate as I keep on chugging and blogging. As W. H. Auden put it: "Life remains a blessing/although you cannot bless."

Banana extravaganza!

"What could possibly go wrong?": Inventions from the nasty past

Call these "un-ventions". Things the inventor should have thought twice about. Things that might even be hazardous to your health and wellness (and wellbeing and stuff).

How many of these all-purpose-douche-and-enema machines did they sell, anyway? And you could wash the dog with it, too. Come to think of it, that's not such a bad deal. But boy would you ever need to clean the contraption between uses.

Hmmmmmm. That "word of warning" tells the whole story here, as does the "dual purpose" bit. I think these things are designed for ease of access, and I don't mean for taking a tinkle. And do you know what, I would NOT want to get caught in my zipper while wearing one of these.

This thing, this evil metal nose clamp, is supposed to prevent pain from hay fever, "catarrh", etc.? What the fuck IS catarrh? Is this something the human race used to get, but just doesn't get any more, or does it just no longer exist? Perhaps, like quinsy, lumbago and grippe, it simply went out of style. But hey. . . maybe that means that this contraption actually worked!

I'll try not to comment on the name of the inventor.

This is another evil thing you stuck on your face. I don't think this cured catarrh, or cat-gut-guitar or whatever, just "analyzed facial flaws" - and if the contraption is any indication, this poor woman is ALL flaws. The guy is obviously a sadist: this thing has 325 screws in it that can be tightened any way he wants.

A related issue is the Toilet Mask or (even more sinister-sounding) "face glove". I can't help but be reminded of This Is Spinal Tap's album, Smell the Glove. They still sell things that look sort of like this, things that strap on to a woman's face and make her look like Hannibal Lecter.

Hey, it's a new kind of hat, all right. A fake hat. A charlatan hat. A faux hat. A phony hat. A hat-that-doesn't-really-grow-hair. But if it didn't work, you could get a job as a chef in a robot factory.

I looked at this ad with great puzzlement, trying to figure out just what they meant by diseases of the head: mental illness, perhaps? Or was the inventor of the device perhaps thus afflicted? Then I read the description, and there it is. . . CATARRH! So catarrh, we've finally deduced, is a disease of the head. But you've got to get one of these to cure it, and unfortunately they stopped making them in 1932.

This is one of those marvelous Victorian orgasm-machines that I wish they still made. It beat the hell out of having your doctor shove his hand up your skirt, a common therapeutic treatment of the day. The ad even mentions hysteria, a catch-all term which basically meant "horny" (thus the need for one's doctor to feel one up and produce "paroxysm"). I think I'd rather have my paroxysms on a real horse, but if you don't have the space or the oats and hay, this might just do the trick. Whatever that is.

I don't understand this thing - looks like he has some sort of beehive on his head, or an underwater device, except that it's made out of felt. I've seen fabric cocoons that you can wrap around yourself, but this - is that a fire extinguisher or an oxygen tank sitting beside him? What are all those gizmos and egg-slicer thingies on his desk? I don't know if I want to get too deeply involved.

And your hair would smell just great!

This has the largest cringe-factor - no, wait. That one is coming next. But when you see the little naked baby under a sun lamp, you just die a little bit inside. If you want your kid to Stay Brown Th' Year Round, this is the way to go - until Child Protection finds out about it.

And I am truly sorry for this one, but I had to include it for the sake of historical accuracy. A long, long time ago I posted instructions for prostate massage, not because I was interested but because it read like a translation of a translation of some indecipherable foreign language (I won't say "tongue"), and thus was rendered virtually incomprehensible. This thing gives a whole new meaning to one of my favorite expressions, "Sit on this and rotate". It is obviously a dildo, one which needs to be well-lubricated for use: "Note especially those little vent holes in the nozzle through which the unguent inserted in the chamber below may be forced out by turning the knurled cap."

I cannot say another word about this.