Last year, smoking became an action that would lead a film to a higher rating by the MPAA. A year later, the debate is heating up once again. This time around, The Hollywood Reporter posts that the anti-tobacco American Legacy campaign is descending on the U.S. Capitol for an event this Thursday. There's no word on what this event will entail, other than some guests who include Jonathan Klein and Stephenie Foster, but the goal is to get Congress thinking about smoking on film.American Legacy says that 1/3 of all teens start smoking because of the movies, and that "the nearly 14 billion smoking images" they say young people see has contributed to "the nation's 40,000-person tobacco-related death toll."
Okay, I can see the old days where the Rat Pack and every other cool dude and dudette on screen lit up. These days, not so much. When I was in school and university, I knew a LOT of smokers, and each and every one of them started smoking because of their immediate surroundings -- friends and family. Heck, most of them didn't even watch a lot of television or movies. I agree that smoking is a problem, but it seems like the movie industry is getting way too much of the blame -- and I say this as someone who hates smoking, is allergic, and wishes it didn't exist.
I can't help but wonder: With this push to eradicate smoking on film, will old films fall victim at some point? Will their scenes full of the smoky haze of cigs only be allowed to screen on public stations late at night like those soft-core sex flicks?
Does smoking on the big screen bother you?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-06-2008 @ 2:45PM
BondsBabe said...
I'm not a smoker, but I'm not offended by images of smoking on screen. In fact some of my favourite films have smokers as main characters, like Withnail and I. I think it's really silly to ban smoking from movies or giving them a stricter rating because of it.
The smokers I knew starting smoking as children (yeah, one friend started at the age of 10.) because one or both of their parents smoked and the cigarettes were always easy to get. Not a single one smoked because they saw it in a movie.
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5-06-2008 @ 2:46PM
YouFaceTheTick said...
There is only a debate among the nannies who feel the media control how people behave. If this were true, all the boomers raised on ridiculous, happy-dippy crap like Dick Van Dyke would have had separate beds and never fought.
Movies do not shape the world. Someone smoking on screen is irrelevant.
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5-06-2008 @ 2:57PM
pete thomson said...
I like the thrust of your argument Man!!!!
5-06-2008 @ 2:57PM
Lee said...
I was thinking the same. Movies that reflect culture at the time, and fortunately or unfortunately (fortunately), smoking is evermore pushed out of today's social scene. So representing the social scene on film means naturally showing less smoking. Fifty years ago, representing the social scene (as in Bogey up there) meant showing lots of smoking.
Now when I think about smoking on-screen, I automatically think of beautifully lit smoke trails on B&W classics. So smoking screen doesn't bother me, but rather it's a tool to stamp the period.
5-06-2008 @ 2:55PM
pete thomson said...
Wouldnt it be more accurate to say that one third of all teens start smoking because they can afford it!!! Not the movies! Maybe if you put up taxes on cigarettes an didnt have large american tobacco companies lobbying congress to overlook the killing aspect then you wouldnt get the ridiculously right wing MPAA peddling their agenda quite so blatantly. This is just another slide on the greasy censorship pole that already prevents US movies from dealing with adult issues in adult ways. People still smoke on TV, think Mad Men - a return to conservative values if ever there was one, dressed up as 50s nostalgia.More people watch more "crap" TV in America than will ever go to the movies shouldnt you tackle that first. Education and informed adult debate is the answer not being censored by right wing unelected spokespeople with their own pro-family agenda.
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5-06-2008 @ 2:59PM
Lee said...
I am embarrassed by the sheer quantity of grammatical errors and typos up there. Oof. Apologies :)
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5-06-2008 @ 3:09PM
Brandon said...
Once again things are bass akwards. Instead of doing something about smoking in the real world, we attack movies. Maybe most people really are stupid.
Congress has more important things to worry about than smoking in movies right now. It this even warrants their time, it only goes to show what a joke congress is.
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5-06-2008 @ 3:22PM
Sheriff Dewey said...
First: I know very well that smoking is bad for you.
Second: It's a free country - last time I checked.
Yet another assault on our civil liberties in the name of children saving and moral justice. That said - perhaps American Legacy, The MPAA, and the US Govt should start telling filmmakers what to make movies about as well. Here's an idea - we could make American propaganda films all day long! Go USA!
Look, if you want to take smoking out of G & PG movies, be my guest. You start demanding those kinds of compromises from writers and directors of adult-themed movies, then you might as well set up a dictatorship because this whole idea rings of FASCISM to me. I mean, where does it end?
I know it sounds like a ridiculous thing to get so pissed off about - but this is how freedom is stolen - piece by seemingly insignificant piece. Someone gets on their soapbox, scares the crap out of people, and the rest of us suffer as another unjust law is passed into legislation.
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5-06-2008 @ 4:34PM
pete thomson said...
Interesting that the real threat to teenagers is junk food an yet US movies are wall to wall with product placement and fast food advertising - anyone not notice that totally uneccessary Burger King thrust into Tony Starks hand as he fled from the Afghans???? I dont see the MAA banning junk food product placement in movies or endorsing healthier snacks in cinemas rather than the super size bags of fat and sugar and salt!!!! Could that be because of the lobbying power of the big American multi-nationals and all those lucrative sponsorship deals for moulded plastic toys with your child's death meal. Yes I hear you cry freedom of choice but its actually not if it was there would be an alternative - I know its a free(?-providing your not poor) country an you can always say no- but bearing in mind America has the fattest greediest population on the planet it would be an idea to tackle that in movies first. Then you could ban the mysoginy, the homophobia, the jeuvenille attitude towards nudity, the racist stereotyping, the needless violence, the stereotyping of other cultures etc etc
5-06-2008 @ 8:03PM
Kevinc said...
This is what is wrong with America. Parents cannot take responsibility for their brats. Its the advertising, its TV, its the movies. Cry me a river. Your the parent act like it.
No it is your poor parenting.
(btw the Burgerking placement in Ironman was quick and completely understandable. What would you want after 3 months of captivity?!?!? He wanted a drivethru burger on the way to a press conference.)
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5-06-2008 @ 10:24PM
pete thomson said...
I would want a really nice slice of pineapple- or a bath!!!! Understandable ????- Im sure the producers thought so when BK gave them $$$$$$$$$$$s for the privalige !!!
5-06-2008 @ 11:13PM
Ray said...
Maybe they'll just re-edit old films to remove the smoking, like at the end of Thank You For Smoking. God, this is so stupid. Kids start smoking because people they look up to and admire smoke. People like their parents, or 'cool kids'. Unless Hannah Montana starts chain smoking during her concerts, I doubt films have any real influence on childrens' smoking habits.
And 14 BILLION 'smoking images'?!? I call shenanigans.
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5-07-2008 @ 2:04AM
king_zilch said...
"American Legacy says that 1/3 of all teens start smoking because of the movies,"
Citation needed.
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5-07-2008 @ 9:29AM
Monika said...
King Zilch,
All information is taken from the THR link in the first paragraph.
5-09-2008 @ 4:17PM
jpolansky said...
The estimate of one-third is very conservative. Research in the U.S., Germany, Mexico, and New Zealand converges on the conclusion that exposure to tobacco imagery in U.S. films recruits about half of all new adolescent smokers, one-third of whom will eventually die from tobacco-related diseases. The difference between one-third and one-half, in the U.S., amounts to 130,000 more adolescents recruited to smoke (260,000 vs. 390,000) and 40,000 more tobacco deaths.
R-rating future tobacco imagery — i.e., giving producers an incentive to keep it out of movies that would otherwise open with a G/PG/PG-13 rating — will avert some 60,000 tobacco deaths a year in decades to come, in the U.S. alone. (Glantz, 2003)
For a good review paper surveying a decade of population and experimental research on this topic, go to: http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/1127/
Full text of many other research papers and reports can be found at http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/godeeper/the_science.html
5-07-2008 @ 2:22AM
cough said...
If tabaco is such a nuisance for public health, can't you make it illegal, like most drugs?
This is more idiotic than blaming teen delicuency to music or videogames. Hands of Bogart's cigarette!
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5-07-2008 @ 10:35AM
king_zilch said...
Monika,
My point is that I would like to know what orifice American Legacy pulled this factoid out of.
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5-09-2008 @ 3:28PM
jpolansky said...
This isn't about the art of film. It's strictly business.
The U.S. tobacco and film industries have collaborated on marketing since 1927. Tobacco files trace millions of dollars spent to get smoking and brands on screen. Because U.S. movies occupy most screens worldwide, Hollywood films are recruiting new smokers worldwide — 390,000 a year in the U.S. alone.
As for solutions: The rating system isn't censorship; it's run by the studios themselves. And the solutions are forward-looking. No classic films would be re-rated. (Even though films from the Thirties and Forties are full of actors with tobacco company ad contracts brokered by their studios.)
With all the other product placement in film, and the history of tobacco product placement, do you really believe all the smoking is on screen for free? Check out the tobacco industry documents and the peer-reviewed research into the effects on adolescents at http://smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu — a site maintained by the University of California, San Francisco.
You don't have to believe the independent researchers, though. Tobacco companies thought paying off Hollywood was a genius marketing move. All the researchers have done is prove they were right.
The Hollywood Reporter story has a typo, by the way. Tobacco kills more than 400,000 Americans every year, not 40,000. Just a SLIGHT difference...
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