Life — June 10, 1920 — page 43: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a **straightforward luxury cigarette advertisement**, not satire or political commentary. The page promotes MURAD brand cigarettes, emphasizing their supposed superiority through several marketing claims: **The pitch:** MURAD contains 100% pure Turkish tobacco—the world's "best" cigarette tobacco—therefore justifying premium pricing over ordinary brands. **The rhetorical strategy:** The ad uses circular logic ("best tobacco is costly; costly tobacco is best") and appeals to class consciousness ("aristocracy of a cigarette") to position the product as a status symbol for discriminating smokers. **Visual elements:** An ornate Turkish-themed decorative emblem and an open cigarette package display the product at 20 cents—likely a higher price point for the era. **Modern context:** This represents mid-20th-century tobacco advertising before health warnings, when such claims were legal and uncontested. The "Judge for yourself—!" tagline invites consumer trial, a common persuasion technique of the period.