From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Smoking as Sociology
A French museum pays homage to tobacco.
Intoxicate me, my cigarette
And give me a scornful air,
I want to stay cold and silent
While hearing sweet confessions.
PARIS--These lyrics from Lucianne Boyer's 1930 song "Dans la Fumée" demonstrate not only the psychological power of the cigarette, but also its role as a cultural icon. A poster featuring Madame Boyer's troubled visage can be found in one of this city's quirkier museums, the six-year-old Musée du Fumeur. Actually a storefront with a couple of tiny rooms in the back, the 650-square-foot space was formerly a butcher shop--which you'll be reminded of as you breathe in wafts of roasting chicken from the store nearby. Ironically, you won't be graced with the aroma of cigarette smoke until you step outdoors.
Since the Museum of Smoking is in the untouristy 11th arrondisement, at least you won't have to battle throngs of tourists pushing and shoving their way to the entrance. And one can be amused--even fascinated--by the collection of artifacts displayed in rooms painted the color of drying tobacco. A series of neatly organized and numbered display cases contains novelties like a 25-sylis note from the Republic of Guinea depicting a rather perturbed looking man smoking a peace pipe.
The current exhibition, "Caricatures de Fumeurs," which runs through the end of the year, features pen-and-ink drawings from the 17th century to the present. The often humorous artwork shows individuals from all walks of life--students, casino devotees, artists and even children--inhaling and exhaling as they go about their day.
Focusing on all these images of Europeans' puffed-out cheeks, it's easy to forget that smoking is an American invention. As Michka, a co-founder of the museum, likes to say, it was the Native Americans who actually first smoked tobacco--an endeavor that didn't really become a hit in Europe until more than a century after Columbus brought the stuff to these shores. The idea of ingesting smoke was originally a hard sell.
"Hell," says Michka, "was very much on people's minds. So when they saw someone taking something burning at the end to their mouth and blowing smoke, it really seemed to be for them a picture of hell." Eventually, the odd practice caught on, and within a couple of centuries a huge smoke ring enveloped the world along with a burgeoning smoking "culture."
Throughout the museum you'll find various tools of the trade: a scale, bronze and heather pipes, hookahs from the Middle East and the Orient, "le bong" from Southeast Asia, as well as a sculpture of a hollowed-out head for storing loose tobacco.
The "art" of smoking, though, is best demonstrated by a collection of Frédéric Dagain's tobacco-leaf paintings. But perhaps more compelling than the unique canvases are the words that accompany each of the artist's "Divinités Mayas" (Mayan Gods). Surrounding the multihued image of Mictlantecihtl, for example, are the words "Mictlantecihtl, you smoke and you smile. You are the god of death. Take good care of our bodies." More on this later.
Meanwhile, across the corridor you'll see the real deal--huge caramel-colored leaves drying in a makeshift sechoir, or "dryer." "I love the smell," Michka says with a chuckle as we walk by. But tabac is not the only smell Michka appreciates. A few feet away, you'll see a mint sheet of Canadian stamps with a portrait of a young Michka superimposed over a marijuana leaf. (Remember, this is the museum of smoking--not just tobacco.) Surprisingly, Michka, who prefers the single appellation (it's more "convenient," she says), is not a cigarette smoker. After smoking a few menthols as a teenager, she never lit one again.
"Many times I've had this feeling that the fact that I am not a cigarette smoker has given me a kind of virginity in relation to tobacco, and so it's easier for me to have a bit of objectivity."
"Objectivity," however, is perhaps too simple a concept to reflect Michka's attitude toward cigarette smoking. For unlike someone who might simply acknowledge the realities of both smokers and nonsmokers, Michka approaches the topic with an anthropologist's (not apologist's) sensibility--a perspective cultivated no doubt by her unique life path.
Born in 1944 in the South of France, Michka came to Paris with her family as a 1 1/2-year-old, right after the war. But, as she tells me in accented but nearly flawless English, she has "grown a North American root." After living three years in England with an "Irishman"--she taught French--the duo wanted to head to New Guinea, but at that time female teachers were not accepted. So the couple ended up in a remote part of British Columbia, living on a boat "built from scratch" that they eventually sailed back to Europe. It was the early 1970s, and Michka started writing for sailing magazines. Also at that time she and her lovemate bought some land near the sleepy town of Grand Forks.
Her next phase of life had her living with a French writer (for 24 years), alternating between France and Grand Forks. She, too, began churning out books, starting in 1978 with a text exploring the virtues of marijuana. Another delved into spirulina, the dietary supplement made from algae.
In fact, it was her foray, while in her 30s, into edible as well as smokable plants that ultimately led Michka to tobacco. "Plants are the big love of my life. Tobacco, as far as I'm concerned, is foremost a plant. Smoking comes second," she says.
Above all, Michka is most concerned with how tobacco intersects with different cultures. "One thing that fascinated me was to discover the chasm between how we in the West see tobacco and how it is perceived in the culture, say, of Peru or Colombia. There tobacco is used by medicine men, tabaceros, to cure people."
So what about the thousands of people who die every year from cigarette smoking? Michka cavalierly attributes that to a combination of factors. "One thing I think is for sure is that if you eat food that is too rich combined with a sedentary life with a lot of stress--and add tobacco smoke on top of that--then you'll be in a bad way."
But it's not really the health implications that have caused Michka to avoid what she calls the "fast food" of tobacco--i.e., cigarettes. As she likes to note, those who smoke pipes and cigars have a different relationship with tobacco. "I think there's such an introspective quality about the pipe," she says. "It was Einstein who said that before you answer a question, always light a pipe. That really says something about the potential for it to help you connect with your creativity." Michka herself prefers a good cigar "occasionally," which she sees as a "noble way to experience tobacco."
It is with this mindset that Michka created the museum. The other co-founder--another first-namer, Tigrane--is also not a cigarette smoker. And while neither takes an official stand on the tobacco controversy, the museum's bookstore has no shortage of pamphlets on how to stop, the dangers of secondhand smoke and similarly themed books (albeit, along with pipes and rolling papers). There's even a nonprofit association allied with the museum dedicated to smoking prevention.
As for France's coming antismoking law (which extends the current ban in public places to cafés and restaurants and is now just six months away), Michka would prefer things to stay as they are.
In fact, when it comes to government regulation, she is unwavering. "I'm flabbergasted to see the extent this tobacco prohibition has gone to already, and I'm really curious to see how far it's going to go before rebellion starts rising--not just in France but everywhere in Europe if not elsewhere."
Just how the new law will affect the museum is hard to say. But for those like Michka who view smoking from a sociological perspective, the museum will no doubt fill a gap sure to open when the smoke spigot shuts off next year.
"It seems so extreme; it's like that phrase, 'throwing out the baby with the bath water.' With a bit of luck, the museum is saving the baby--which is all the art forms that have developed with smoking--and so there's still a place where they can be remembered and shown."
Mr. Cooper, a frequent contributor to the Leisure & Arts page, lived in Paris this spring.
