Anti-Cigarette Ad

         This surgeon general anti-cigarette ad represents the change in public opinion when it comes to cigarettes.  The two cowboys are heading into the sunset, an obvious representation for cigarettes.  For the decades of the fifties and sixties, cowboys were often pictured in each cigarette company’s ads because they were seen as manly and tough.  This ad supposedly shows two of these cowboys, who miss their lungs because of the years of smoking.  The obvious color contrast gets the message of the advertisement across.  In the huge white letters, the cowboys complain about the effects of their years of smoking.  The two men are mere shadows, with no defined featured other than an outline of them with a cowboy hat on top.  The men are just a shadow of what they once were because of their smoking habit. The surgeon general’s office still uses their usual label at the bottom left of the ad, but it is small so as to not take away from the general effect of the scenic sunset and the two cowboys.  The literal embodiment of “riding off into the sunset” of course represents death, one of the possible effects of too much cigarette smoking.  It is a key for the advertisement to take what people used to associate with cigarettes and change it completely.  By using the common cigarette company symbol of the cowboys, the surgeon general places doubt into the minds of older smokers, who had once seen these same cowboys with smiles on their faces and cigarettes in their mouths.