MARLBORO COUNTRY, 1975: On Mechandising Machoism & Murder

	Welcome to where the flavor is –
	The flavor of fresh, menthol Viet Cong
	and premium Virginia tobacco blended with flaming napalm.

	Breathe deeply and enjoy the fragrance ah
	polyester body bags 'n
	villages blasted off any map.

	Taste the excitement of Marlboro Country –
	a place where new things happen fast.

	If you're a man who enjoys excitement
	with a hunger dying ta be satisfied
	join the army and shoot away –
	we offer you a blast day after fuckin' day!

	Bored with life?
	Take a puff!
	Smoke this crap 'n soon enuff
	you'll be tooting 'yankee doodle'
	while yer machine gun chants 'tut-tut-tut!'


Terri: (with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief) What disturbs me most about this poem 
       is the sheer, calculated level of uncaring. It takes the language of a cozy afternoon 
       smoke and wraps it around the stench of napalm.

Kris:  (with a clinical, detached gaze) Satire is often an insulation from pain. 
       Perhaps the author was using a jagged, ugly humor  to keep from being swallowed whole 
       by a harsh horror. If you don't laugh at the absurdity of marketing death, it might 
       be difficult to stop screaming.

Sam:   (with a faint, cynical smile) To smile at smile at death itself – is that not brave?
       But look at the bravado of it all. To stare into the abyss, to smile at death while 
       machine guns 'chant' - doesn't that represent something undeniably heroic?

Tim:   (sighing wearily) Perhaps, but at times I wonder if the author doesn't secretly 
       admire the very thing he's criticizing. There’s a pulse in these lines—a frantic, 
       adrenaline-fueled energy—that makes me fear he's half-in-love with the 'blast' 
       even as he mocks the 'crap' they're selling. The heroism of nihilism is not 
       actually heroic! A braver thing is to affirm things that are fragile, things
       that can be easily destroyed, things that can bleed.


=================================================================================
from _AmeriSong: Poetry, Art, & Dialogs about Amerika_ by T Newfields
SUMMARY:  Some thoughts about Viet Nam War rhetoric, nihilism, and hyper-hormoned macho violence.
KEYWORDS: subvertising, anti-war poetry, Marlboro mentality, American aggression,
anti-war satire, Marlboro Man iconography, the commodification of violence, subversive poetics, 
Vietnam War countercultures, toxic masculinity, military-industrial propaganda, 
nihilism and heroism, gallows humor, psychological desensitization, consumerist machismo

Author: T Newfields [Nitta Hirou / Huáng Yuèwǔ] (b. 1955)
Begun: 1985 in Nagoya, Japan / Finished: 2026 in Shizuoka, Japan
Creative Commons License: Attribution. {{CC-BY-4.0}} Granted

Disclosure: This piece was partially generated using AI tools for styling and ideation; 
            human editing was then applied.

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