And now… for an un-commercial break
(A lament for another kind of “Stolen Generation”)
(c) Judith Light 1999
Remember the days of King Kong, astride skyscrapers clutching diminutive blonde in ravaging claws….
roaring Armageddan threats to the whole city; stomping on the environment, and the populace in the streets.??
Well he’s back…. and he has changed… but very little.
Now he is a Horseman of the Apocalpse.. Giant Marlborough Man astride the streets of Beijing. No oriental visage under that “real man”..cowboy hat. What recycling! . Out-lawed bill-boards from the west deported to the East.without even needing a touch up.
What a slick sleight of hand… No-one noticed the Knave of spades on quarter-horse slickly concealed in a tobacco giant’s sleeve, when he shuffled off our streets. What a deal from the Kings of Western Capitalism to the East. What a cultural coup. !!
About 4 years ago, a tobacco company representative was asked
on television (a telling vision indeed !) “In the light of present-day evidence of damage to health….. how do you justify your company’s massive promotion in the East and third world countries ?”
Was I the only person to see that interview, and the barefaced reply. ?
“No scientific proof that smoking is deleterious to those populations,
at this time, as it would appear it might be in the west.” Yes he did… he said that !! Open mouthed, I waited for lightening to strike the set; accusing newspaper headlines; for someone, anyone, to voice outrage…. Silence… One more piece of shit fed into our collectively wide open psyches, without a burp or a hiccough.
“Your a fanatic mum….” my kids object.
Everyone would accept panic and demand fast reaction to rescue a child teetering on the edge of a dangerous drop.. a staircase… a cliff edge… running out in front of highway traffic….That is how I feel when I see my young ones.. anyones children.. lighting up a killer cigarette !
I want to cry out “danger”; I silently scream “HELP’.
At 6 years old I treasure hunted good quality, only “slightly used” butts, for my addicted Father. Tobacco was rationed during the war for those not in uniform, but freely given to “fighting” men.. the message …”let ’em die happy”. Every dying man in the war movies brainwashing us on the glory of the battle, had a fag inserted into his final gasp by a fellow “hero”. Dad’s volunteer badge declared him unfit to fight, so he had to pay dearly for his manly ammunition, with ration tickets as well as cash.
Like the rum, sugar, flour and tobacco of our early settlements,
cigarettes were currency, and the bounty uniforms on leave, brought home to their families, along with chocolate for the kids.
Peace-time came. My first assertive act – to resign my job, as youngest in the family, emptying the household’s ashtrays, resolving never again to touch anyone else’s cigarettes…. I never have. Never to put such an insult to my own lips, and I never have.
Subsequently, I still have a sense of smell…and sensitive mucous membranes. Something of a disability in to-days world.
I had to give up a year of my nursing career to help my father through the complete removal of his lung; watch him sob through nightmares of being engulfed by the cancer, as an invasive triffid-like plant engulfing and digesting his body; witness his years of overwhelming struggle with the nicotine addiction, from the moment he came out of the anesthetic. (He was shocked to see all his bed-fellows in the post-operative chest ward reaching for a fix.. He at least resisted that, committing himself to years of sucking on endless boiled lollies and becoming diabetic.
I had to stomach the movie world selling …the “romance” of rising smoke; and the “sophistication” for women of posing and gesturing manicured hands. The ultimate turn-on was he or she lighting a cigarette, caressing it, putting it suggestively to the partner’s lips.. and the deep dragging in of the smoke. We weren’t allowed copulation on our screens.. all done by suggestion in those days. For male stars there was the dramatized Marlborough type punctuation and emphasis of match lighting, powerful drawbacks and the flicking away, in reckless “damn it” gesture of the barely smoked cigarettes. (Who has not laughed at the pimply faced boy. demonstrating his manliness with a fag or even a dead match ?? Remember smoke rings ?) I have lived long enough to see the “idols” of silver screen in early fade out, one after another, with cancer of the lung and it’s cousins, emphysema and heart disease
I had to watch my friends and family, and the next generation of my five daughters, flirt with the “coolness” of it all and “buy” the con completely. In this war for the hearts, minds, and bodies of our children, the enemy has million dollar weapons, and pedophilic appetites. There is the most fiendish hook for young females too, of “I can’t give up..I will gain the dreaded unforgivable kilos” Mothers are easily annihilated with “killjoy” and “wowser” labels. and the ultimate antidote to elder wisdom.. “What would you know”.??
Guess what….?? PLENTY !!
I KNOW SO MUCH IT HURTS.. I KNOW THE GAME AND THE ROTTEN GREED OF THE OPPONENT. THE BIASED RULES AND THE POWER THAT MANIPULATES THE BOARD… MOST OF ALL.. I KNOW THE FINAL SCORE.
I watched a Father-in -law, and a mother-in-law, die from Emphysema.
My present dear husband’s first wife died from the same, and we watch in despair, OUR children and grandchildren, treading the same path.
Recently David had a stroke. doctors NOW say the probable cause was his early smoking. and “passive” smoking years with his deceased wife!
I have watched the growth of Asthma and S.I.D.S. with our children in the community, and seen how slowly and quietly statistics are made public of “smoking connections”…still no definitive proof of course. All my life I have listened to the garbage of “no absolute scientific proof” of the harm done by smoking, despite the absolute evidence of my own eyes and my professional experience. I have watched nurses and doctors, move from being in the vanguard of smoking. So popular the defense “Well my doctor smokes”. Many of my friends and colleagues have predeceased me. The professionals are quietly cleaning up their own act but are predictably slow to admit the errors of the past. Emphysema was called “The old men’s disease”, when I was a nursing trainee. Since “liberation” allowed women to smoke, during and after the war, we now have complete equality with this disease.. Liberation indeed.
I have had to live with the abomination of ash-trays, “butt” filled and for 60 years have fought for clean air to breath especially when people smoked everywhere.. including theatres. buses, trains, planes, restaurants … everywhere. Occasionally people would ask “Do you mind if I smoke ?”…. A positive response to that brought disbelief, shock, even abuse or at best would be laughingly ignored. I longed to imitate the response of a brave friend who used to reply to this query “Not at all…as long as you don’t mind if I fart in your face.”
And…I am no PASSIVIST….smoker either – “smoke did NOT get in my eyes.. so to speak.. my version of that romantic line.. “They say some day you’ll find.. all who smoke are blind”…I of course reply, “when the lovely flame dies.. smoke has wrecked your lives” Oh sneaky language to infer peaceful acceptance when evil assault is being done. That good old Aussie boy Hoges and his “‘anyhow..have one” that swept away thousands of kids just when they were getting some clue to the dangers…of course – fun is taking risks isn’t it ?.. living dangerously… ignoring your elders.
I fought back. I helped support and finance the “Bugaup”campaign in it’s brilliant use of Tobacco billboards to turn messages around. Someone scale the Beijing monster now and change “Marlborough” to “Vile and Boring” as those brave clowns used to do. I wonder would the Chinese characters convert..?
I fought the good fight for some clean air in public places… yes I was one of those who forced airlines buses and trains to the brink..clean air became almost as important as the service of a drink
It is a war and I’ll fight, to the death, (as is so tragically often the case) I will defend myself and those I love. The ultimate weapon the Marlborough Man yanks from his holster is ridicule.. “old bag, wowser, square.” It will take more than a few sniggers and labels to frighten me.. I have survived more subtle dirty tricks than that, in my life..
N0,, “You wont get me…with your smoking guns”. !!
And the “Kool” image…?
Guess what kids
you have been suckered like sheep to feed
almighty multinational greed.
(Every sheep in a mob thinks security is the tail in front of it)
You have swallowed more “baa baa” to the puff
than any of us oldies who have gone before
and whom you so scornfully abhor.
I have lives to save…
If that makes me a “fanatic.” I am proud to be one, like Yul Brynner
dying of cancer and challenging that paper cowboy to one last draw.
They censored him. “Dropped” him on the cutting room floor.
“They” banned his advertisements..
too effective that dying man just begging “Don’t Smoke”.
In his memory and in his name I say
“Lights….. off”, stop the camera, and the inaction. “
Send this idiotic monster on horseback off into one last blazing sunset.
My Mother said it…
“Those who live by the fag…die by the fag”, well… she said “gun”…
both “bull-shit boy” (and “girl” in liberation times) instruments of death,
when all is sold and done !!
Judith Light 