For my image presentation I was inspired by John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” 4th episode that is centered around publicity. It made me raise the question where did it all begin, when did we start selling a dream instead of the need that products fulfilled. “Lucky Strike” ad campaign “Torches of Freedom” (1928/29) is one of the first modern advertisements targeting the unconscious desires of people, instead of a certain, practical need.
This specific “Lucky Strike” cigarette advertisement is a composed image of graphic and verbal elements. In its center we see a young woman. She has pale skin, dark curly hair, and her rosy cheeks suggest that she is healthy. She seems to be relaxed, satisfied, even happy. The way she poses and is dressed renders her appealing to the male gaze. A bit downwards the cigarette package is featured. However, the text, which in this case functions as an anchor, completes the message the image is sending. It reads: “To keep a slender figure, no one can deny… Reach for a lucky instead of a sweet.” So forth the image is not so much selling cigarettes as the slender figure that a woman could acquire if she smoked, because then she would not indulge herself in too many sweets. In its irony the green background reinforces the promotion of smoking as a healthy activity, as opposed to the women’s sweet tooth which leads to obesity.
“Lucky Strike” ad, circa 1928
The man behind this campaign is Edward Bernays. Today he is known as the inventor of public relations. He was the first to link mass produced goods to people’s unconscious desires which marks the beginning of the all-consuming “self”. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and he began to use Freud’s discoveries about the human psyche to market and sell products. Therefore, when the CEO of the tobacco company approached him with the challenge of selling cigarettes to women he came up with the idea of body transformation. In the other posters it is even more telling how the cigarette package, the object that is promoted, takes a backseat in the image, and the slim, healthy body takes the spotlight. It creates this false notion that when purchasing cigarettes, the package is only a means by which the woman unlocks the slim body – she “purchases” her dream body.
Nevertheless, an important aspect that needs to be taken into account, is the fact that before this ad campaign, smoking was tabooed for women in American society. Cigarettes were a symbol of masculine power. If a woman smoked, she was associated with loose morals and vulgarity. Therefore, it was a real challenge for Bernay’s to break this stigma. Although after the first ad posters promoting cigarettes as an antidote to obesity, women indeed began to smoke indoors, they were still uncomfortable lighting up a cigarette out in public.
To break the taboo for good, Bernays consulted a psychoanalysis in New York, and together they used Freud’s theory, that humans have a tendency to follow leaders and have a weakness for symbols which appeal to their unconscious desires. The key words were a weakness for symbols . With a slogan “Torches of Freedom” Bernays turned a relatively dull object – cigarette – into a symbol of emancipation. Bernays orchestrated a performance, gathering a group of young debutants and arranging that they lit cigarettes and raised them, exclaiming the slogan marching down the streets of New York during the Easter parade in 1929.
It all comes down to what John Berger is addressing in “Ways of Seeing”. Products by themselves are neutral objects. It is the glamorous and exotic context in which they are placed that render them desirability. His episode also draws parallels with another BBC documentary “The Century of the Self” where I was first introduced to Edward Bernays and this campaign.
The main ideas and concepts that were discussed after my presentation were:
- The male gaze are strongly present in the poster even though they were thought to target female audience;
- The notion of future is at the heart of modern advertising: if you buy this product, you will become more slender; however, one never does, there forever will be something to aspire to so that there forever would be something to promote;
- In its irony, although the ad is promoting female liberation, it is contributing to the insecurities and issues of body image women already had. cursed are known to set women free in the early 20th century. diet culture became as a substitute for corset that would cage women ever so stiffly;
- We finished our discussion with the cultural meanings attached to cigarettes. While in America, smoking was a taboo for women, in Europe cigarettes have always been associated with intellectuals, for example. Nevertheless, Hollywood stars and cinema was yet another element that reinforced the tobacco market from the 1930’s onward. Today, there is an alarming concern about wapping that is marketed as “less bad” than cigarette smoking and thus they have become almost as a toy for teens.
Sources:
- https://biblio.uottawa.ca/omeka2/jmccutcheon/exhibits/show/american-women-in-tobacco-adve/torches-of-freedom-campaign
- https://antonabroad.com/breaking-taboos-edward-bernays-torches-of-freedom/
- https://yourstory.com/2014/08/torches-of-freedom
- https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-freedom-women-and-smoking-propaganda/
- “The Century of the Self”
