It’s All About Image: Declining American Symbolic Power |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
It’s All About Image: Declining American Symbolic Power
While pundits argue about who had the upper hand during the recent summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, with the inevitable talk of rising and declining powers (the Thucydides Trap), there are much deeper political undercurrents. Marlboro cigarettes, long a symbol of rugged American masculinity, are under attack. The New York Times recently ran an op-ed entitled “How American Cool Dies.” For decades, American influence rested not only on economic and military strength, but on cultural domination — soft power. Today’s contest may no longer be over who rules the world, but who defines it. America may be losing not just geopolitical dominance, but symbolic dominance as well.
Few symbols captured that domination more powerfully than the Marlboro Man. The Marlboro Man ad campaign, launched in the mid-1950s at the height of U.S. post-WWII power, was historic. Before the cowboy-themed ads, Marlboro sold roughly 18 million cigarettes a year. Within two years, sales exploded to about 20 billion cigarettes, a 300% increase.
The iconic cowboy galloping on horseback embodied an entire American mythology. Alone, or with a few fellow cowboys, the Marlboro Man was strong, virile, independent and conquering, all that was the American myth at the time. He projected American power that much of the world admired, and often imitated.
The unraveling of the myth came from several directions. Materially, Philip Morris International (PMI) has already begun retreating from the cigarette era. Its chief executive, Jacek Olczak, even declared that “cigarettes belong in museums” as the company shifted toward alternatives such as vapes. Several famous Marlboro Men later died from smoking-related diseases, turning Marlboro cigarettes into “cowboy killers.” The mythology that once symbolized vitality and masculine confidence increasingly came to symbolize decline........