.:: The StrongBrain Collective ::.

I just returned from a double dip: Terminator 3 and Pirates of the Carribean. Granted, I only payed for one of those movies so my moral high ground is seemingly suspect. However, I saw this new advertisement to get people to quit tobacco and I was so appalled I almost complained. I say almost because I'm rather shy and tend to avoid verbal confrontations whenever feasible, hence my sanctuary in strongbrain.org.

Anyway, go visit www.thetruth.com and click on the "drop dead day" spot.

Here's my issue with the advertisement. First of all, and this is a bit of an aside, you're all but forced to watch it. Some diabolical, yet genius, marketing bastion said one say in a corporate meeting, "Let's put commercials before movies! You can't flip a channel. You can't converse because it is dark and scary and against the code of film-going. And best yet, you can't look away. What are you gonna do? Look at the little red lights guiding you to the bathroom or to the coke servers they shamelessly plug? Hell no, they want to be entertained! Mwoo hahahhahahaha! We've got those suckers! Mwoo hahahahahhhahaha!"

Usually, to counteract the MAN, I'll wear a baseball cap to the movies and pull it over my eyes until the movie begins. Sure I'm a spectacle, but at least I'm sending a big fat "fuck you, i won't watch what you show me" to the advertising execs. And yes, I customarily go the movies alone.

So, it was during my second illegally entered movie cavern that I happened upon this advertisement that was just beginning. Looking up at the screen, I was hooked immediately. I saw a bunch of people walking across a bridge in white t-shirts. I had no idea we were still in commercial-ville and didn't look away. I thought perhaps it was a preview for some Eminem spot, or something.

Instead, I saw these people completely unexpectedly collapse and die. In front of a large, building with helicoptors and news cameras filming it. And immediately I thought of that day on September 11, 2001 when my grandfather woke me from a splendid booze-induced slumber and told me "something really bad is happening".

I cringe, and shivers of tangible pain scream up and down and around my spine every time I see those twin buildings or those planes or that smoke or that debris or those at-last somber newscasters or the count of dead or even the mention of that day. This commercial was just too near a reminder.

Sad faces staring at a tall building. The commercial filmed in the style of news coverage. Deep, throaty sound effects, almost like an airplane rumble. Close ups of dead faces, their bodies collapsed and contorted in all conceivable positions, against cars. Women. Men. Blacks. Whites. Latinos. Everyone.

I dunno. I understand their message. Tobacco kills. Guess what? Everyone knows this already, so coming up with commercials that cross the line of shock value is not going to make a significant dent in tobacco-related deaths. There were people in the theater laughing. Just as they laughed at the "Any Questions" campaign. Just as they'll laugh at the next installment of "how far can we go to instill the knowledge that tobacco kills, perhaps an actual dead person with family in their first stages of grieving?"

I was fine with thetruth.com's advertisements full of statistics that indeed took me aback. I was fine with that lady who had to talk out of her throat. But I'm not fine with a commerical that draws such close and obvious comparisons to the most painful didn't-actually-happen-to-me related chapter in my life. I don't want to see dead people. Fuck you, anti-tobacco lobbyists, for making me watch dead people and relive those painful memories of that horrible day and weeks to follow. Why don't you "drop dead"? Tell you what. I'm going to buy my first-ever pack of cigarettes right now so that in the slight hope that you'll be watching the cig sales at that particular moment, you'll see a spike in purchases and realize that this new campaign is fruitless and pull the ridiculous advertisement.

Stupid tobacco. Stupid movie commercials. Stupid 19 assface hijackers.