Читать книгу Bizarre - Lawton Mackall - Страница 11

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It is wrong to assert that our fiction magazines have lost their power to inspire, to uplift. High romance and whole-hearted cheerfulness have not deserted them. These qualities have merely migrated to the advertising pages. The morbid, unpleasant fiction is only a short interlude between the innocent joys of Nabiscos and fireless cookers, and the wholesomeness of Mellin's Food. After sin and adulteration comes 99-44/100 per cent pure.

The people in the advertisements help us to forget those in the stories. These pictured endorsers display a generosity that I have not met with elsewhere. They offer me, a total stranger to them, the most delicious refreshments, costly gifts in silverware, whole suites of furniture; they make me aware of "long-felt" wants; they volunteer to teach me Spanish or osteopathy or plumbing in ten lessons; they propose to send me immediately a portable house in many pieces, or a new lease of life in many doses. They take a most personal interest in me, enquiring sympathetically, "Are you bilious?"

Here, I confess, I sometimes feel embarrassed. When my old family doctor asks me, in the privacy of his office, questions of this sort, I am prepared to answer them; but when, as I am turning over the pages of a magazine at a public news-stand, someone bobs out from behind a respectful soap advertisement and accosts me brusquely with, "How is your liver?" or "Are you bowlegged?"—I feel positively uncomfortable.

This forwardness, due to the bad influence of the fiction characters, is, I regret to say, a trait of some of the women. (How sad it is that editors should wilfully allow them to be contaminated! I have seen a little Campbell Soup girl of quite a tender age, placed on the same page with a heroine whose only topic of conversation was unmoral love.) Luxuriant creatures, as unabashed as they are beautiful, invite my approval of their stays, and make disclosures of the most sensational kind. All of this may be in accordance with the modern ideas of frankness, may be part of the sex-education campaign—but somehow I can't get used to it. I am still old-fashioned enough to believe that woman's place is in the home, especially when she is undressing.

However, while the behavior of these people toward me is occasionally a bit disconcerting, their deportment toward each other is uniformly admirable. In their own sphere they lead model lives.

Their family devotion, for example, is a treat to behold. Just see Mama and Papa and Susie and Marian and little Jack, all seated around the dining-table! From their happy smiles it is easy to tell that they love each other and Jell-O. After dinner, dear kind Papa will not bury himself in the evening paper, as selfish, inconsiderate papas do—he will give Mama and the good, rosy-cheeked children each a stick of Spearmint. Then all the family will gather 'round the fire in peaceful attitudes and listen to the phonograph, which protects the atmosphere of their home; and Susie will sit on the arm of Papa's chair and fondly compare their Holeproofs.

Later, when Susie's bright young man, dressed in a nobby Kuppenheimer suit, comes to win her heart with a box of Huyler's, Mama whom Papa still adores because her complexion is youthified with Pompeiian, will take Marian and little Jack upstairs and show her maternal tenderness by teaching them how to make Colgate's Dental Cream lie flat on a Pro-phy-lac-tic. They learn gladly, for they love Mama and wear garters and union suits just like hers.

Even more remarkable than the family devotion of these people is their supreme capability. They never do anything without brilliant success. Papa can, whenever he feels the inclination, build a launch, or become a magnetic speaker, or earn eighty dollars a week in his spare time, or evolve a thriving chicken farm from two eggs. When he goes fishing, you see him in the act of reeling in a six-pound trout; when he goes duck hunting, you see him casually bringing down a bird with each barrel; and when he plays billiards, you see him, in a backhand position and a Donchester shirt, executing a shot that would make the reputation of even a professional.

Look at him now, seated at his desk in his office, directing a great business, without the least worry or effort. See the respect on his employes' faces! At this very moment he is concluding a deal that involves millions. And yet how calm he is! All because he wears B. V. D.'s.

In short, the race of endorsers, produced by the eugenics of advertising, is not subject to the ills that ordinary flesh is heir to. They are the heroes of the present age, deified, like Greek Orion, in the realms of "space"—long-legged, serene, divinely handsome. We, poor mortals, humbly try to imitate them, and lay our wealth at their shrines, as did the Ancients at the altars of their gods. Our Ceres is Aunt Jemima; our Mercury is Phoebe Snow; our Adonis is the Arrow Collar youth; our Venus is the Physical Culture lady; and our Romulus and Remus are the Gold Dust Twins.

Le plus grand tournoyeur sud-patte.