Life, 1910-08-18 · page 32 of 36
Life — August 18, 1910 — page 32: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily a **subscription advertisement** rather than political satire. Life magazine is promoting yearly subscriptions by satirizing the public's fascination with fortune telling—a popular craze of the early 20th century. The ad's humor relies on **mock-serious hyperbole**: Life claims to have captured an "Infallible Fortune Teller" who uses invented "Radio-Electro-Pneumato photography" to reveal who you'll marry, predict disasters (airplanes falling, divorce in Reno, Nevada), and reveal the fates of friends and family. The **visual decorations**—skulls, dancing figures, tarot-like imagery—reinforce the fortune-telling theme while maintaining a darkly comic tone. The satire targets **gullible readers** susceptible to pseudoscience and supernatural claims, while the ad's tongue-in-cheek tone ("You Would Better Obey This Particular Impulse") acknowledges the absurdity even as it pitches subscriptions. The reference to "Reno, Nevada" alludes to divorce tourism, a contemporary scandal. This is clever marketing disguised as mockery.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
bili lee PLEASE TAKE NOTICE A personal paragraph about YOU will appear in LIFE during the year beginning with the issue of September 1. It will concern YOUR future happiness and YOU cannot afford to miss it. This is how it is: AT ENORMOUS EXPENSE we have secured the only Infallible Fortune Teller now in captivity. This wonderful creature with mys- terious powers will unfold the awful secrets of the future. oe MORE THAN THIS, by the marvellous process of Radio-Electro- coe Pneumato photography, discovered by LIFE’S Infallible Fortune A oan ME the wc Teller and of which he alone possesses the secret, he will show you a y : perfect portrait of the man or woman you are Fated to Marry! It makes no difference whether you are already married or not; you never can tell what a falling aeroplane or Reno, Nevada, may do to your present matrimonial status. BESIDES, there are all your friends and acquaintances and the members of your family, including your ers and your cousins and your maiden aunts. Don’t you want to know what is going to happen to them? And what awful things they are going to bring into the family via matrimony? CONFIDENTIALLY, you will know all about yourself and them- selves if you read LIFE during the year beginning September 1. Also a lot of other things. You don't have to subscribe, you know. Naturally we should like to.-have you. If you should send your name and address with five dollars to cross the palm of LIFE’S Infallible Fortune Teller, it would at least guarantee you a year of LIFE. If you care for your future, You Would Better Obey This Particular Impulse. Names and Remittances may be sent to LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York City. LIFE for a Year, $5.00. Canadian, $5.52. Foreign, $6.04. If you prefer you -can send $1.00 for three months trial subscription. (Canadian, $1.13 ; Foreign, $1.26. Open only to new subscribers ; no subscriptions renewed at this rate. This offer is net.) icbooks.com