Ralph Lauren: We are responsible
Glow in the dark mushrooms
Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.
Earlier this month, Jason and I guest blogged at Consumerist. Here's something I posted there that might interest you all as well:
Remember when you could buy barbiturates for the baby? Cover your house with asbestos? Or get heroin from the doctor? Okay, probably not, but thanks to the immortal beauty of advertising, you can take a trip back in time. Here's our pick of some of the most ironic ads in American history.(with apologies to my writing partner, Torchinsky, who loves Corvairs)
RSS Feed
I don't think ironic means what you think it means.
Wow, outmoded commercial images from the past are funny, and have unintended meanings for modern audiences. Who knew?
I've got a copy of the Union Carbide ad. It was in the back of National Geographic, November 1962 I think.
If you lived in Britain you could have obtained heroin from your doctor. This was back in the days of the highly successful plan to treat drug addiction as a medical problem which was followed by the loser plan of treating it as a criminal problem.
TMcCartney at #1, these are excellent examples of dramatic irony.
Somewhere I've got an old magazine ad for the "smooth flavor of Camel cigarettes" endorsed by John Wayne (who died of lung cancer.)
@4 NADRECK: You know, if we treated drug addiction as a medical problem instead of a criminal problem, it would lessen the crowding in our courts and jails and possibly reduce crime overall.
Oh, never mind.
@6: Yes, because our hospitals and emergency rooms aren't crowded at all
No, but I do remembered Johnson and Johnson's "Asbestos-coated Barbiturates with chewy Heroin Center for Infants," does that count? Mum tells me I loved that stuff.
Just as an FYI, the original image shown above was via flickr user, Wishbook (me), and the week after, I found another ad where the cellophane monster was eager to snuff the lives of three more innocent babes:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wishbook/3695444527/
Cheers!
Am I the only one who thinks these babies look like Leonardo DiCaprio?
@1 tmccartney:
Definition 3b from Merriam-Webster for irony:
"incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play"
I believe they know exactly what the word means and have quite appropriately appropriated it to describe the experience of looking back on certain bits of history with the benefit of hindsight.
I understand that misuse of the word 'irony' is a pet-peeve for many. I'm afraid my personal pet-peeve involves people who split unnecessary hairs with the definition of irony.
Say, I remember when, as a 10 year old kid I could go to the local hardware store and buy powdered asbestos. We mixed it with a little water and used it the way kids today use PlayDough. My electrician father used to bring home mercury from old industrial switches for us to play with: Did you know it has a neat, squishy feel when you put it in your mouth and force it between your teeth?
Now, homeowners and officeworkers panic if they find a trace of asbestos insulation and high tech cleaning crews rush in to clean up a few grams of elemental mercury. I'm not saying long-term exposure to large quantities of asbestos and mercury isn't dangerous. I'm just saying that the average American is more at risk from bacon than from terrorism... or asbestos... or mercury.
@ Zan #7:
If you think those places are crowded you should see our prisons.
You people going back and forth over the heroin medical/prison thing realize you all agree with each other, right?
"Ford's cost-benefit analysis showed that paying off potential law suits from deaths was cheaper than a redesign."
jesus fucking christ... see? that's why terrorists hate America.
That image of the babies wrapped in cellophane never stops being hilarious.
Interesting trivia about ad #5:
Thalidomide has recently come back into medical use, as a highly effective treatment for multiple myeloma (a type of bone marrow cancer).
My dad has been taking thalidomide orally since last fall to treat his MM. Unlike older chemotherapy drugs, it doesn't attack all fast-growing cells in the body -- it has a much more targeted action against the reproduction of myeloma cells. This cuts down tremendously on the bad side effects.
"Asbesos contains fire"... Sweet.
Corvair. My first two cars were Corvairs. Two time loser. I left the last one on the side of the road, with the pink slip signed off, under the widshield wiper, and the key in the ignition.
Pinto. I've owned two, but they were non-exploding station wagons. Stick shift. Fun.
My dream car is a '69 Corvair 2-door convertable (with a real engine under the bonnet), molded and painted to look a lot like an old Corvette. That's the kind of sick bass turd I am.