| the humble cigarette | | Date Created: Jul 17, 2006, 09:13 AM |
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What more perfect symbol is there of Western culture and society than the cigarette? It is an affectation. It has no nutritional value and even its neurochemical stimulation is so slight that one doesn't consciously notice it until it's withdrawn.
It is the perfect consumer item. The stuff grows in the ground like a weed, it's subtly but fiendishly addictive. And, best of all, here's what makes it a better consumer item than the iPod: people have to keep rebuying cigarettes because the way that you use them is to destroy them. Nearly a perfect capitalist artefact except that it kills the consumer. At least it does it slowly.
And somehow, the ludicrous concept of inhaling a portable file became a fashionable practice. One of the great American comedians, Bob Newhart, has a routine in which he enacts half of a telephone conversation -- he's the marketing executive of the company that imports items that Sir Walter Raleigh finds the new world. His incredulity at the idea of tobacco usage is wonderful: "Tow-back-oh, eh, Walt? So what is it?.... Oh, it's a leaf. So you eat it like a vegetable, then? Oh. Well, what do you do with it then, Walt? Wait a minute. Yeah, ok, you dry it out.... and then shred the leaves... uh huh, what then, Walt? You roll some up into a piece of paper, uh huh.... and then... you stick it in your mouth and set fire to it! Yeah, you know what, Walt? I don't think that's gonna catch on back here."
We look with curiousity and amusement on societies where people artificially enlarge their lips or stretch out their earlobes or deliberately scar themselves. And then we pay to let corporations enslave us and damage our hearts and lungs. |
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