"Got a Light?" Advertising, Cigarettes, and the Creation of Imagined Communities in Interwar America

This paper will look at the cigarette ad campaigns during the inter-war years of the 1920s and 30s. It will consider the ways in which the ads reflected Er Calkin's suggestions that products be marketed so as to fulfill issues of personal inadequacy. The presentation will also consider how cigarette ads created an imagine community for their users, and the traits the ads suggest this community represented.