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In our culture, a certain forbidden quality is associated with the whole idea of smells and smelling. At the same time, we are constantly confronted with olfactory provocation.
This general cultural ambivalence toward smelling is in many ways reminiscent of the behavior of a person with a dirt phobia. He is so preoccupied with avoiding dirt that he is everlastingly searching it out in order to evade it. In effect, he always seeks what he professes to despise the most, and out of this circular pattern he manages to satisfy both his unconscious and his conscious striving.
It may well be that this is precisely what we as a culture are doing with smells. We live in a deodorized and reodorized culture. Whole new industries have come into being by exploiting our conflicts and our confusions concerning smells. While on the one hand, these arbiters of olfaction supply us with devices for eliminating smells of all varieties ranging from mildly unpleasant to disgusting, another segment of this industry concentrates on substituting one odor for another—assuming, apparently, that there is an absolute point of reference to indicate which smells must go and which are acceptable replacements. Still another segment among the merchants of smell devotes itself to producing smells that can be merchandised, ranging from clean and wholesome odors to exotically stimulating and exciting ones.
In truth, smell is omnipresent in our culture. Hardly an hour of radio or television transpires without mention of it, and it pervades the advertising columns of our mass magazines. It would be hard