Better Living Through Chemistry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The phrase "Better Living Through Chemistry" is a variant of a DuPont advertising slogan, "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry." DuPont adopted it in 1935 and was their slogan until the 1982 when the "Through Chemistry" bit was dropped; in 1999 it was replaced by "The miracles of science".
This phrase became popular as culture shifted from mod to hippie in the later half of the 1960s. Protesters would show up for a rally, perhaps to protest a chemical plant, wearing DuPont propaganda buttons, which bore this slogan.
Protests in the 1960s didn't all revolve around the Vietnam War; Dow Chemical and DuPont were common targets, as people disliked the "artificiality" they represented.
The phrase "Better Living Through Chemistry" was used on products that were not affiliated with DuPont to circumvent trademark infringement. This transmutation is now more commonly used than the original. This statement is used for commentary on several different topics, from the promotion of illegal drugs, to the praise of chemicals and plastics, to the criticism of the same, sarcastically.
This phrase is sometimes associated with Aldous Huxley's book Brave New World, though it does not actually appear in the text of the book.
[edit] Use in music
- Album title from 1996 by Fatboy Slim.
- Song on the 2000 album R by Queens of the Stone Age.
- Song on the 2005 album Planets by Adema
[edit] Parodies and take-offs
- US cable television station Nickelodeon used the slogan "Better living through television" for their adult-oriented Nick at Nite programming during the 1990s.
- Better Living Through Chemistry is the name of the recreational drug related forum on textfile and BBS website totse.com.
- "Better Living Through Chemistry" is the name of a mission in the computer game Evil Genius
- Don DeLillo appropriated the slogan "Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry" as the title for Part 5 of his 1997 novel Underworld.
