Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1994-01-12, Page 5f Arthur Black THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12,1994. PAGE 5. This lady needs a hobby I'm sitting here with a tin can of X-rated soup noodles in my hand. The label reads "Libby's Zoodies! Noodle animals in tomato sauce." I haven't opened the can yet, but the label assures me it's chock full of slimy little pasta kangaroos, lions, zebras, gorillas and bears - the better to get the wee ones to eat their lunch, right? Not according to a 42-year-old mother in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. She says the Zoodies can is the grocery store equivalent of the Penthouse Centrefold. It's gross. It's perverted. It's pornographic. The hawk-eyed Glace Bay housewife insists that when she turns the can upside down she can clearly see male genitalia on the elephant on the label — and also in a palm tree in the background. I say that anybody who spends their leisure time turning cans of noodles upside down looking for genitalia in elephants and palm trees is a citizen in serious need of a hobby, but let that pass. She swears it's there. "If I want to see soft-core pornography" sniffs the housewife, "I think I can go to an adult bookstore and get it." Easy for her to say, she's probably rich. Have you priced the merchandise at the adult International Scene Z.1By Raymond Canon Glances forward and backward I am sure that, a few years down the line, many Canadians will look back at 1993 without too much nostalgia. The rate of unemployment stayed high, with little indication that it was going to come down much in 1994; the cold war may be only a memory but peace has not exactly broken out, nor is it likely to in the near future as long as we have such places as Yugoslavia, Somalia and a score of other places which may be more than just names on a map in the next few years. However, what I would like to do as we get used to the idea of 1994 is to provide a few thoughts of what you might tell your grandchildren some day and let me assure you that, when you are old enough to have such delightful members of the family, you will undoubtedly be prepared to tell them any number of things. For openers you can assure them that you were part of the Second Industrial Revolution. In case your history is a bit weak, the first one started about 1750 with the arrival of assembly line manufacturing and continued on most of the 19th century. What we are seeing right now is nothing more than a revolution where industries are becoming less labour intensive and more prone to investing capital, thanks to all the advances being made in the communications and educational fields. Don't be too hard on the companies; more and more they are being asked to compete in an international market and they have to carry out this change the only way they know how; that is, if they want to survive. In such countries as the United States, bookstores lately? Outrageous! A can of Zoodies is a lot cheaper. Needless to say, as soon as I heard of the controversy, I streaked to my corner store, .bought a can of the unexpurgated noodles, asked to have them wrapped in plain brown paper and galloped back to my house to be corrupted. I've been looking for the naughty bits ever since. What we have here is not an expose of Adults Only Pasta, it's a resurgence of one of the great crazes of the late 20th century: subliminal sex in advertising. It all started more than 20 years ago when a professor at the University of Western Ontario by the name of Wilson Bryan Key, gained international fame. Key claimed that advertisers were secretly brainwashing us by inserting smutty pictures in their work to make us buy their products. Key asserted that every Ritz cracker had the word sex embedded on it 22 times on each side. He discerned bare-breasted maidens in the ice cubes of liquor advertisements and wrote that once at a fast food restaurant he'd felt compelled to order fried clams, even though he doesn't like them. While mopping clam juice off his chin, Key says he looked down and discovered the reason for his clam mania - his place mat showed a picture of fried clams, but if you looked really, really, closely, you could see an orgy going on with images of oral sex and bestiality with a donkey. Canada, France, Switzerland and Germany, the emphasis is going to be more and more on acquired skills; there will be comparatively little room for unskilled labour. In this respect Mexico is in the news right now; tomorrow it may be China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India or Pakistan. Gone, too, is the life-time job. Students in nly classes are being warned that they may change professions five to seven times during their lifetime. In short, change and rapid at that, is with us for the foreseeable future. There is little doubt that too many cities are getting too big. Look for a decentralization to smaller communities. There is no doubt that a small company will feel more at home in the 21st century in such a town as yours than it was in the 1990s. With such things as fax machines, conference calls, etc., I travel much less than I used to when I conduct business. Thank goodness for that. We should have more leisure time. Trade liberalization has much farther to go than just NAFTA. Look what the Europeans are doing in the realm of their Common Market. They are a decade or two ahead of us in that respect and already discussions are being held about a common currency. Can you imagine what it would be like in North America if the three countries used a common monetary system? Think about it! Is nothing going to be the same? Well, we might come to realize that we need, more than ever, a stronger sense of spiritual values to see us through all this change. Perhaps religious belief will make something of a comeback. The emphasis of late has been on the cult of the individual; we have, as a result, a plethora of groups all clamouring for attention and for the acceptance of their individuals as the standard for society. Few of these have bothered to work out what is the common denominator for their activity Uh huh. Looney Tunes or not, Key's idea upset a nervous public. Subliminal advertising was banned. Sales of Ritz Crackers and fried clams enjoyed a momentary upsurge. But only momentary. Because subliminal advertising has one annoying flaw: it doesn't work. Our own Canadian Broadcasting Corporation proved it in an experiment back in 1958. The CBC announced that "a subliminal message" would be broadcast across the nation during a specific program. Viewers were even told to be on the alert for it! During the program, the message "telephone now" was flashed 352 times in a 30-minute period. Nobody phoned. On the other hand, in the following weeks the CBC received thousands of letters from viewers insisting they had felt unaccountable urges to get up, go for a walk, get a bottle of beer, go to the bathroom - no one guessed the correct message. Viewers were receptive; the message just wasn't getting through. And that was a straightforward message. How does Mister Key or the Glace Bay housewife figure a hidden drawing of an elephant's wing-wang is going to propel me to buy Libby's Zoodies by the case? I've even got a prize for the reader with die best answer. It's a can of Libby's Zoodies. Well- palmed, but never opened. and that of the other pressure groups. Anarchy could be right around the comer but it need not be. Concentrating on materialistic growth of the economic nature can be a zero-sum game and hence the need for the development and strengthening of other values. When this century commenced, Great Britain was the dominant nation. Queen Victoria was still alive and the pax britannica was everywhere to be found. As the century winds down to an end, the British predominance has been taken over by the Americans. While the Americans are still Number One, their lead is being threatened. Perhaps the next century will see the ascendency of the Asiatic nations. Certainly there is nothing in history that demonstrates that any one nation will rise to me top once and for all. I have heard it expressed in Europe, North America and elsewhere that our children are facing an uncertain future. My reply is to ask if any future, either for this generation, or for my generation or any other for that matter, has been anything but uncertain. The opportunities to move ahead are as ample as they ever are. All we have to do is to recognize and seize them. I cannot end without making a prediction. What will be the next major source of energy? Why hydrogen, of course! That will be scope for another article but I will leave you to see if you can determine why it is a logical choice. Got a beef? Write a letter to the editor. The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Building a marriage to last This past weekend my parents celebrated their 50th anniversary. Watching them with the family and friends they have accumulated over a marriage that spans almost a lifetime, I was struck, as I am when I visit with any couple marking this momentous occasion, at how easy they make a successful marriage appear and how difficult we all know it to be. Statistics today have shown that 50 percent of the marriages will end in divorce, so is it any wonder we look on long marriages with awe. How did they accomplish what so many seem unable to? Few I'm certain enjoyed the type of camaraderie that made them totally compatible with their new roommate right off the bat and most I'm sure have had to cope with life's trials. Their lives weren't charmed, they were simply, I think, a more determined generation. By the time I made my debut into our family my parents were well past the growing pains of adjusting to each other and to parenthood. My 10-year-old sister and eight-year-old brother had broken them in for me. However, my arrival came at about the same time that my father launched his own business which resulted in my mother going out to work to help get things started. In today's world she'd be in good company; 35 years ago, however, there was no support system for a working mother. Like most couples hard work didn't make them rich, it let them survive. In their years together they faced the threat of losing a child to illness and survived the turmoil caused by a troublesome teenager. Now as life seems to move easier they are surprised to look behind themselves and see a long marriage. Why, as the years pass, is this becoming the exception rather than the norm? Has it become too easy to walk away rather than stay and work? No doubt, the ease with which marriages can be ended has made it better for some. Years ago people remained in abusive, unhealthy relationships because it was pretty much their only clear option. I believe that when a marriage has died (and abuse will definitely kill it) it's better for all to move on, but I can't help feeling that maybe we just don't try hard enough anymore. We have become an indulgent society and I think that trait has carried over into the way we view our relationships. We all deserve to be happy but if we expect it to be in a continuous state we're probably setting ourselves up for disappointment. A friend of mine once said she was calling it quits, not because her husband abused her or was unfaithful, not because he kept her barefoot and pregnant, but she said, he just didn't make her happy, anymore. Is that really his responsibility? I remember asking a golden couple once what the secret to their years of happiness was. The man looked surprised at first, then as he and his wife smiled at each other he replied, "Happy? We never really thought about whether or not we were happy. We just knew we weren’t unhappy." A simple enough remark, but I can't help thinking that it's a pretty sensible way to look at it. Couples married for many years seem to have accepted the human flaws they dislike in their spouse and don't use them as an excuse for their own. By learning to cope with disappointment, delighting in the small rewards and renewing themselves in moments of happiness they have built something tc last.