SAY IT AIN’T COOL, JOE : All of the ‘Where There’s Smoke, There’s Self-Respect’ Ads Could Break the Camel’s Back
Boy, oh boy, there’s Joe, sportin’ those Polaroid peepers, looking rakishly Mediterranean with hot babes and hotter cars. His hair looks like Moammar Kadafi’s. The tuxedoed dome-nose has all the sleek arrogance of a shah exiled to Malibu.
I like Joe Camel. And I don’t smoke. Not out of the closet anyway. And Camels? Never. But . . .
In Afro-American street parlance, Joe the Camel is a player. Life is a game and he’s winning it. He runs in the fast lane. And he’s about as gangsterish as it comes. The cat--er, dromedary--is too cool Old School. (Consult your Digital Underground on TNT Recordings.)
If I didn’t know better, I’d say Joe was patterned after one of my father’s old cronies. Doc was the original “crip,” meaning physically challenged. But that didn’t stop any action. He hustled his way around South-Central with one crutch on his best days, a wheelchair on his worst. According to his own legend, he had lost one leg in World War II, but rumor was that he’d sacrificed the gam in some unsavory back-alley adventure.
In spite of his cop-and-blow existence, Doc always sported highly polished wingtip kicks, though one shoe was always curiously devoid of mass. As Mama would say, he was “sharp as a tack.” And generous. One of his philanthropic pleasures was formal-dress tea parties, where he gave us munchkins a crash course on etiquette, Perle Mesta-style. He paid polite attention to me and charmed my little socks off--the adult who takes a child seriously is always an attraction.
Doc smoked. He carried the first gold cigarette case I ever saw. It was impressive to watch him slip it from the pocket of his pin-striped vest. Thing about Doc was that, no matter how vulnerable he might’ve been, he was not to be pitied or messed with. A gat was concealed in the creases of his threads.
And therein lies the appeal of Joe Camel as a clever selling gizmo and tobacco kingpin’s dream.
Underneath Joe’s Cheshire cat-smug macho is a deeper message. Joe’s not just another lung-collapse peddler. He’s a self-respect maven. In rural bottoms and urban ghettos nationwide, rife with runaways and bored, unemployed youth, there’s a serious shortage of self-esteem. Like Doc or Joe, you can fire up a coffin nail for instant attitude, the easiest way to strike a pose.
Face it. Joe Camel has lifestyle appeal. He’s rich and he’s infamous. And he runs with the pack. There’s Joe the suave, white-on-white betuxed academic. If you ain’t got it, you can fake his “smooth philosophy” by lighting up. Or you can rack ‘em up for Pool Shark Joe cuz he’s about to run the table.
In his stingy fedora, Hard Pack Joe and his Wide cousins have all the Hollywood charisma of William Bendix breathing down Robert Mitchum’s neck in “The Big Steal” or Brando in “The Godfather.”
Beachcomber Joe has done his share of Venice Beach schmoozing, no doubt sipping Long Island iced tea on the volleyball court. Calypso Joe opens the doors of Club Camel on some tiny Caribbean isle where the cane grows tall and the money laundering is easy.
Joe’s crimey, Eddie Camel, was a bead-wearing, apple-capped, paintbrush-totin’, long-haired flower child in the ‘60s. But today he’s a loose-lipped, slack-collared, tam-topped, neo-bebop jazz drummer. Bustah (note the idiomatic black spelling) Camel undergoes a similar transformation, and only his electric guitar remains the same.
I can’t resist poking fun at ol’ Joe. But underneath the fun, the birth of his cool is linked to the birth of survival strategies that have allowed the black male to withstand the relentlessness of racism. It is the cool personified by Malcolm X, Miles Davis, Willie Brown and Ice Cube. To be cool is to be laid-back black.
But Joe Camel is offensive. Not only because cigarettes can be addictive and debilitating but because, at root, old Joe’s shtick is plain-and-simple racist. He’s a composite of little-understood cultural traits designed to sucker in youngsters, especially black children. And that ain’t cool.
You dig?
