The assertion that the product placement of cigarettes in Bogart-Bacall movies, some of the sexiest scenes in any movies ever made, is not effective when shown on cable-TV venues in 2019 is about the stupidest thing I've ever read anyone claim about classic movies. That they were filmed almost eighty years ago doesn't diminish their unstated message associating smoking with enormous sexual desire anymore than the other aspects of Bogart's and Bacall's acting, the direction and noir cinematography or any other aspects of what makes people want to watch those movies, today.
The same idiot who made that claim was, a couple of years back, involved in a long brawl with me over the ersatz greatness of the entirely inferior Ken Tynan peddled* sex goddess Louise Brooks, someone who stopped working in movies before Bacall started and never held a candle to her. Anyone who thinks Bogart and Bacall weren't entirely better and more charismatic actors is the same kind of idiot who claims that those old smoking scenes aren't still able to influence the gullible and impressionable into thinking cigarettes are a quick and easy way to get some of that sex appeal for themselves. Hell, the Marlboro ad cowboy image of the mangy and as-dead Darrell Winfield - one of a number of those cowboys who were eventually killed by the coffin nails they peddled, works the same somewhat creepily necrophiliac way, today. For those who are susceptible to that kind of cowboy mange. You saying Bogart wasn't sexier than he was?
Those old product-placements work as well today as they did at the time to peddle that message, the only difference is the weak effect of later anti-smoking campaigns and restrictions that came largely as a response to the success of such tobacco peddling in the 40s and after in selling death. Bogart's for example. If the science, evidenced based "more speech" of anti-smoking campaigns worked to counter it, no one would be smoking, today. The fact is that smoking promotion through Hollywood and ad campaign tactics works, it's designed to sell and it does and it's still done with exactly the same motive as it was in the 20s and 30s and 40s.
* I can't remember where I read that Tynan's line of crap in that regard wasn't even original but something he'd copied from earlier idiot French cinema scribblers who made that bull shit line fashionable for a time. She was a pretty gal and sometimes call-girl whose alcoholism would have ended her career if her lack of talent and unreliability hadn't.
Update: Apparently the TV stupid Teanecker believes that they stopped the promotion of smoking in movies and TV shows in the 1940s. This temporary indulgence will end soon. As I said when I swore off, it felt like taking advantage of the retarded. I suppose I should feel ashamed of myself for giving in.
Update 2: If anyone wants to look into the phenomenon of post literacy in the early 2000s, the comment threads of Duncan Black's blogs constitute a typical specimen of it among those who hold college credentials.
What we see in movies matters, be it product placement for commercial purposes, or promoting ideas. Teen suicide rates rose after 13 Reasons Why on Netflix. https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEInJYuAa7rXskO2BzmhEm9AqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowjuuKAzCWrzwwxoIY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen Deaths directly attributable to free speech. I wonder if anyone will hold themselves accountable? Given the death toll from another of our "freedoms", and that no one can be held accountable I won't be holding my breath that anyone will take responsibility in this case either. We live in a broken world.
ReplyDeleteI think that mass, electronic media changed the reality that all of those old assumptions embodied in the First Amendment took for granted. And at the same time the mass media paid lawyers to make the case for their complete freedom to say whatever they found most profitable. I'm becoming convinced that liberties without responsibilities, especially when wielded by such powerful engines of propaganda will end up enslaving us if not in killing us. The Constitution is an inadequate 18th century document, manipulated by highly paid lawyers and others who are prepared to do anything for money and power. And our legal system is governed by antiquated ideas that enable that. The media and those it has propagandized are totally OK with that, the worst of them like the guy who trolls me are never going to look past the slogans they heard c. 1964 because they're morally and intellectually vacuous. We're ruled by Mike Teavee.
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