When Cans Got The Lip

It’s the tiniest details that can briefly derail the attention of any theatergoer. Last week, I attended two different shows set in the late ‘70’s/ early ‘80’s: True West with Spiral Theatre and Ralph Pape’s Say Goodnight, Gracie with the Boulevard. Both shows were reasonably meticulous about making certain that the fashions onstage represented the era they came from. Both, however, featured cans—beer cans in True West and cans of Tab in the Boulevard show . . . in both circumstances, there was something distinctly out of synch with the era: the cans in question had lips. For some reason, my focus on everything else in the play briefly faded out as I looked at the lips on the cans of soda and beer respectively. In the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s—cans did not have lips. It’s hard to describe how an entirely superficial detail like this could become such a distraction for shows that were—in every other way—pretty good.

I was a young child in the late ‘70’s/ early ‘80’s, but I distinctly remember the circumference of the circle formed by the top of a can of soda was identical to the circumference of the body of the can. At some point in the mid to late 1980’s, someone somewhere had decided that this was uncomfortable, obscene or just plain wrong and promptly marketed a new style of beverage can, presumably meant to give some sort of comfort to the lower lip. The tops of the new cans were slightly smaller than the rest of the can, allowing for a slight, curved indentation near the top of the can that looked kind of cool and vaguely futuristic at the time. I imagined that there was some kind of high-tech enginering involved in the new can design. Somewhere along the line, the new look became universal. I’m not sure when it happened.* At some point everyone woke-up and the iconic American can had always looked the way it does . . . weird. . .



You’re always learning something new about yourself: Somehow there’s a part of me that feels nostalgic about the distinct design of older beverage cans . . .



*The internet research I did failed to turn up any details about that particular event in the long and winding history of the aluminum can. The research did, however, turn-up the rather odd fact that, in the past ten years or so, the wall of an aluminum can has been cut in half. The can you’re drinking out of today is made of aluminum that is about half as thin as the can you were drinking out of ten years ago. And you probably didn’t even notice. If you don’t think this is subtly somewhat inexplicably sinister, you have no soul.)

Russ Bickerstaff has been writing for VITAL since 2003, when the world probably made slightly more sense. He co-manages an apartment complex with his beautiful wife Carrie, a poet for an insurance company with whom he hopes to eventually move to the suburbs to raise some little insurance poet-critics. There must be decent paying work around here somewhere...