Harvard Do-Gooders Pressure Hollywood To Stub Out Movie Smoking
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Family Films, Movie Marketing, Politics
When it comes to smoking in the movies, it looks like the butt might stop here. Harvard's School of Public Health is the latest organization to join in urging Hollywood studios to stamp out cigarette smoking in movies seen by young people. Executives from the major studios, NATO, the Director's Guild of America, the Screen Actor's Guild and NBC recently joined academics from Harvard and Johns Hopkins in meeting with the MPAA to discuss the issue. Smoking in movies has stirred up controversy for years -- a similar meeting was held back in 1999, but not much came of it. Anti-smoking groups want restrictions on smoking to be incorporated into the ratings system. Jay A. Winsten, Harvard School of Public Health associate dean, and director for the school's Center for Health Communication says: "What's needed is a movie ratings policy that creates an incentive for filmmakers to consider, and worry about, the depiction of smoking as a factor in the determination of a film's rating ... the goal should be the elimination (with rare exceptions) of smoking from youth-rated films."
The folks at Harvard presented statistics from a study where they found that 66% of the top-50 grossing films over a 12 month period (spanning 2004 and 2005) contained depictions of smoking. And 68% of PG-13 films over that time showed characters taking a puff. That broke down to 12.8 incidents of smoking per hour of running time -- the highest in a decade -- for the top-50 pics, and 14.2 depictions per hour of running time for the PG-13 movies. R-rated films over the same time period averaged 20.4 depictions per hour. Harvard School of Public Health dean Barry Bloom urged Tinseltown honchos to "take substantive and effective action to eliminate the depiction of tobacco smoking from films accessible to children and youths, and take leadership and credit for doing so. Don't ignore the issue or put a fig leaf on it, like a descriptor on DVDs. That would be the equivalent of the tobacco industry cynically putting smoking warnings on cigarette packages."
The Harvard speakers find depictions of smoking to be even more detrimental to our children than the other issues that ratings already cover. "No one has died from hearing the f-word," said Bloom. "But 438,000 people in U.S., and five million worldwide, die each year from tobacco-related illness. We appreciate that movies are expensive, complex and demanding to make. If you are honest I think you will admit that most smoking in movies is both unnecessary and cliched, and serves to make smoking socially acceptable to kids."
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-04-2007 @ 1:13AM
Gilbert Davis said...
What a great idea. After the tobacco police are successful in censoring movies so as to remove tobacco users and tobacco references from movies they can go back in time and digitally remove every cigarette, cigar and pipe from every character in every movie. Maybe we can somebody like Winston Smith to do the job. Then seeing the success of the tobacco police, the saturated fat police can get in line to lobby for an end to hamburgers and other fatty foods in movies. And let's not forget the alcohol police, or the illegal drug police, then the cursing police get a shot. Since the rational is that children and people in general shouldn't see anything that can be seen as cool or something they might want to copy, you know, no more action movies since kids can see that stuff and might want to drive cars too fast or off of buildings and such. No movies with violence cause you know. Same deal.
Now that we've gotten rid of all that bad stuff lets head over to the things that offend somebody or the other. I know some folks are offended when some other folks wear white after Labor Day. Or is it before Labor Day? I forget, doesn't matter, nobody can wear white in the movies anymore. Boobies, everyone is offended by boobies, let's have no more of those please. Lipstick, oh yes, the devils playground right there. A gateway drug to other offensive things. The list will go on and on. We'll have to go right on past Bollywood style movies and end up with every movie being two male people wearing Burkas and reading Soviet Union style farm reports. I hate the PC police.
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4-04-2007 @ 9:22AM
John said...
Yeah, what Gilbert said..
Don't forget, we have to take all attractive people out of films too, they might cause someone to have lustful thoughts..and might be the stepping stone they needed to premarital sex..
from now on studios should only hire, average to ugly people...
Socks offend me. Can we get something done about socks?
The Aliens in the Predator movie I watched we're a bit frightening..can we get "friendlier" aliens?
No Guns in movies either...bad guys take on good guys with entertaining banter..they talk each other into submission. (making sure not to drop any language bombs)
rediculous really.
soon going to the movies will resemble that Apple Commercial from the 80's.
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4-04-2007 @ 2:35PM
Kevin said...
Fantastic comments fella's. Thats exactly what they said..."We're offended by smoking, so get rid of it because I don't like it". I love the people that judge the opinion before hearing out the argument. Now, if you had actually read the argument, you would have seen that this is a HEALTH issue. Over 400,000 people every year from cigarette smoking. In films smoking is often portrayed as something that the "cool" guys do, especially in movies that target children. What I mean by that is that films that show images of smoking that are likely to be seen by children do not also show the its negative consequences. There are films that address these issues, but these are far more likely to be adult oriented. This is a problem because smoking is then demonstrated as merely an act with no impact besides making you attractive and cool when observed by children. This SHOULD be addressed. I don't know if censoring all acts of smoking is the answer, but certainly examining different ways of A)portraying smoking, and B)finding other ways to demonstrate a characters inherent "coolness" is a good thing. Censoring will always have a negative connotation, and deservedly so, but we can find responsible ways of depicting smoking that maintain a high degree of artistic and creative integrity.
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4-04-2007 @ 5:43PM
Jonathan Polansky said...
Have to second Kevin on this one. The tobacco companies have been shoving smokes at movie stars since the 1930s. After cigarette commercials were banned in 1970, the tobacco copmpanies started systematically investing millions in Big Screen product placement, branded and unbranded. There's still no rule against offshore tobacco affiliates (bigger and richer than the domestic companies) corrupting the globalized film industry. This is about the "business," not the "show," in show business.
It's funny how those who bring up fallacious slippery slope arguments are the first to jump on their Flexible Flyers and skid down a mound of bacon grease. Nobody's talking about prying a cheesburger from your cold, dead hand, or "going back in time" to erase smoking from classic films.
What I'd like to know is which studio(s) torpedoed a tobacco rating announcement at ShoWest on March 13. Big embarrassment for the MPAA, and it means the studios are without an effective plan to reduce hooking kids — more than a year after promising one to the state Attorneys General.
Is it time for the parent companies to step in? Evidently, the film industry is either too fractious or too compromised to respond to this public health emergency. Meanwhile, the tobacco companies are reaping a reported $4.1 billion a year in tobacco sales revenue (npv) from Hollywood's 100-minute commercials for nicotine addiction and carbon monoxide.
It's so like the pastel-colored petting zoo that is the U.S. film industry to leave that kind of money sitting on the table, I won't even speculate why studios might want to leave channels from tobacco companies to production companies wide open.
Well, yes I will. The best guess I've heard is that a number of studios want to get this ugly issue behind them, but suspect that other studios would find a way to keep greenlighting tobacco-subsidized productions (guaranteed gross points, or whatever Big Tobacco is doing), so nobody will swear off tobacco subsidies first, regardless of the PR coup it would be.
"Drop it." "No, you drop it." "No, YOU drop it."
The suspense is killing.
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4-05-2007 @ 3:07AM
Gilbert Davis said...
Kevin, yes indeed, I love it myself when someone determines that I haven't read the article and proceeds from that position. The thin wedge, the slippery slope and censorship are part of the same argument. If you let the cigarette police make that argument then you open it up for the cheeseburger police and so on. Everyone's issue is reasonable and of course it's for the children. Having opened up the can of worms, having allowed one interest group to impose censorship then it follows from there that other 'for the children' health interests will clamor for their issue. They already are. From there, having allowed censorship then censorship becomes reasonable and offended groups will want offending things censored. And yes, I do know that the cigarettes are a 'health issue' which will make it exactly the same argument as the cheeseburger issue. Also a health issue. And I don't care. If you are a parent then you have the responsibility to teach your children and not hope that society does your parenting for you.
And Polansky, um, by saying an argument is 'fallacious' does not make it so. You made the statement, I assume it must be your opinion but it's not a fact. Colorful and confusing greasy imagery aside. In fact, the food police are busy at work telling you not to eat chinese food because of salt, no McDonalds because of fat and there have been attempts to bring lawsuits against McDonalds et all for the harm their products do to people. And I do recall Turner Broadcasting removing smoking from classic cartoons and you can google away to find the examples. That seems to be going back in time to remove smoking. Sorry to kill your buzz with facts.
And you know, product placement has been a fact of life forever. And smoking is legal. Shock horror I know but there it is. Freedom of speech however, commercial speech is not free and so the government can and does regulate the advertising (speech) that the tobacco companies can engage in. Not every form of speech/advertising by the tobacco companies is outlawed. They are still lawful companies selling a legal product. I know it's upsetting to you but look on the bright side from your point of view, cigarettes are almost halfway illegal now. Sadly though, trans fats are illegal in New York and San Francisco now. No cheeseburger for you with your cigarette, except no smoking either. I don't think you're allowed to ride your Flexible Flyer either, you could hurt yourself.
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