Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines

Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
Weekly: Pick of the Issue
Bimonthly: Ask the Librarians

Submit a question for the next column.

June022008

More Adventures in Advertising

Filed under: Looked Into   Tagged: , ,

Benjamin Chambers writes:

I love The Complete New Yorker, not least because tracking down one item will inevitably set me off on the trails of six other things. And then there are the unexpected surprises. For example, this ad for a Smith Corona word processor, from the October 9, 1989, issue of The New Yorker (click for a larger version):


smith-corona-0508.jpg

Having just spent 10 hours at my computer, I simply had to laugh. Still, hindsight is always 20/20, though come to think of it, by 1989, I had put a heck of a lot of mileage on my Macintosh. Much harder to comprehend is this bizarre ad from the April 18, 1959, issue of TNY (click for larger version):

women_who_dont_sleep.jpg

I should have reproduced it in color, but you can still get a sense of how strange a piece of copywriting it is. I'm always skeptical when people complain about things being "written by committee," but this ad surely was. First, the thinking must have gone, we'll bewitch bored readers with a headline evoking the double vision of the bleary-eyed sleepless; then we'll joke about how many barbiturates they're taking, appeal to their vanity, and then accuse them of wearing shabby PJs. If that won't hook 'em, nothing will!

And, though it's not advertising, I was equally entertained by the Leonard Dove cartoon below, from the May 25, 1935, issue. Only one of his many cartoons for TNY is available at The Cartoon Bank, and unfortunately this is not it. To enjoy a larger version, click here:

fo_c_s_le.jpg

5 comments

Comments

I am ashamed to admit how much time I spend looking at the ads in The Complete New Yorker, how often I Google products or companies I find there to see if they still exist, and how much I wish TNY still ran such a wide array of advertising. (And so, I'm sure, does Conde Nast.) The current ads are so boring compared to the ads of the past--so many are for books and/or in-house promotions.

amiJune 03, 2008

Hi Ami -- Nothing to be ashamed of at all.

Do you have any favorites you want to share? And do you find yourself looking at ads from one period more than any other?

Benjamin ChambersJune 03, 2008

For me it isn't so much particular ads as the way in which the ads chart the interests and obsessions of "the demo" through the ages--a chronicle of upper middle class tastes for every season of the WASP calendar.

Because every magazine is now a niche publication, you rarely see in one place ads in such categories as clothing, food and liquor, household items, luxury goods and their retailers, institutional and image messages, etc. As a history of how marketing has evolved from mass to niche over 80+ years, The Complete New Yorker fascinates. (And the small back-of-the-book ads had their own evolution, from restaurants and shows to gifts and mail-order.)

I have been looking at the early-to-mid 70s lately to relive the reaction to gas crisis 1.0. Lots of small cars (although they were consistently advertised as second or city cars on the East Coast well before that time) and image ads from the likes of Exxon with the exact same rhetoric we get now from Big Oil.

amiJune 04, 2008

Fo'c's'le?

Ben BassJune 17, 2008

Ben, I can't tell if you're asking for a definition, or merely looking at me askance because the word's obscure. In case it's the former, it means the "forecastle" of a sailing ship.

If it's the latter, well, what can I say? I read a lot as a kid. No C.S. Forester, I admit, but I hope to rectify that soon.

Benjamin ChambersJune 17, 2008

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, it may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Thanks for waiting.)

2008 Webby Awards Official Honoree
2009 New Yorker Desk Diaries
Pretty!