Advertising as Myth: A Reevaluation of the Relationship of Cigarette Advertising and Smoking

Abstract

A view of cigarette advertising as myth is given, arguing that advertising has a mythical dimension in the Levi-Straussian sense and that it has two cultural functions, against which any behavioural consequences must be undertstood. Firstly, the mass inculcation of its various advertised themes promoting desireable views of smoking facilitates totemic differentiation among smokers and between smokers and non-smokers. Next, in offering promises about cigarettes and personal identity, advertising mediates cultural contradictions involved in both smoking and in the normal intransigent problems of human life.