Screenland
8 5.8.
Above and opening page: Screen grabs from YouTubesaying the same of dads, bridesmaids
and winter Olympians. The manu-
facturer of Halls, one of America’s
best-selling cough-drop brands, went
even more hardcore, creating commer-
cials in which clearly sick workers — a
coughing, saggy-eyed security guard; a
white-lipped supermarket stocker with
a sleeve full of tissues — were dressed
down by a drill-sergeant type: ‘‘You don’t
cough! You don’t show defeat! You don’t
clear that throat! Do you hear me?’’ This
was tough messaging, designed for a
hustle-culture, gig-economy, no-security
world: No matter how sick you are, days
off are for losers. Take the medicine and
get ’er done.
What a diff erence a pandemic makes.
If, since 2020, you’ve caught a Halls ad,
it’s likely to have been a spot titled ‘‘The
Hiker,’’ part of the brand’s ‘‘Live in the
Moment’’ series. This campaign takes
you to a country of still lakes and dense-
ly green mountain trails, tread softly by
people enjoying the pleasures of their soli-
tude. A camera-toting hiker in a nice down
vest reaches a clearing of ferns. A kayak-
er with a man bun surveys the horizon
from a pristine dock. A sculptor in a knit
beanie carves wood outside an impossiblyexpensive-looking home somewhere in
hipster Neverland. One woman does yoga
in a sylvan breezeway; another plays the
drums in a spacious studio with branches
lapping at the windows. In this land of
plentiful, oxygenating trees, everyone is
alone, and people cough into the crook
of an elbow anyway. Nobody appears to
have a job, but everyone has a serious pas-
sion to be pursued — one so elevated that
being interrupted by a pedestrian cough
might cost them an opportunity to touch
the sacred. So they take their Halls, close
their eyes and breathe the rarefi ed air of
conspicuous self-care amid immaculatePhoto illustration by Najeebah Al-Ghadban‘You don’t cough!
You don’t show
defeat! You
don’t clear that
throat!’