Smoking out the agenda

[Mike Gange]

By Mike Gange

 

When I was in grade 4, I made a decision that has shaped my whole life. Of course I didn’t know it at the time. But, I can remember that moment, forty-some years later, to this day.

 

My father was in the Air Force, so we moved all over Canada and Europe. The incident I can clearly recall happened when we were living in Germany.  We had an upstairs flat, and our balcony overlooked the balcony of the flat below, which was rented by a young airman, his wife and two kids, who were younger than me. To me, these men all exuded an air of confidence, of people who worked at jobs that were both challenging and satisfying. They were all long, lean, fit, and good at what they did. In the 1960’s, the military had a long line of candidates who had volunteered to serve in Germany, so there was no question the best and brightest would have been selected.

 

One evening, the family below me had a party on their balcony. I happened to look over the balcony and saw two or three of these airmen and their glamorous wives, all smoking cigarettes.

 

With one puff, they lost their veneer of confidence and attractiveness. With one long drag on their cigarettes, they went from looking like the picture of health and happiness to slaves to an addiction.

 

I remember thinking, “I am NEVER going to smoke.”

 

I bring this agenda to my classroom. I don’t even make it hidden. I tell the kids I teach that I don’t want them to smoke. I tell them the negative aspects of cigarettes, and the contents of tobacco, that includes rat poison and formaldehyde. I don’t harp on it every day of course, but I include a section on cigarettes in the unit I teach on Public Service Announcements. And I do show the kids a video from Youtube, where Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble go out back for a smoke, and say the line. “Winston’s taste good, like a cigarette should.”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTYG2UimZTk

 

That video always provokes an interesting discussion, and shows the idea of product placement.

 

Recently, one of the media education groups sent me the following, showing that somewhere in our society, someone still considers smoking to be glamorous and attractive. Given that most of the movie-going public are teenagers, we need to wonder whether the tobacco industry is using an unfair advantage to further their agenda.

 

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Academy Award nominations, announced January 24, offer a snapshot of Hollywood and smoking. Main points:

MAJORITY OF OSCAR® NOMINATED MOVIES INCLUDE TOBACCO

• Thirty different feature-length films were nominated in broadest Oscar categories.* We know the tobacco status of 25 of these films. Of these 25 films, twenty (80 percent) include tobacco imagery.

• Of the eighteen Oscar-nominated films youth-rated PG or PG-13 whose tobacco status is known, eleven (61 percent) include tobacco imagery.

• Of the nine Oscar-nominated films rated "R" whose tobacco status is known, 100 percent include tobacco.

• More than half of the nominated films known to include tobacco are youth-rated, PG or PG-13 (55 percent, 11/20).

• Of the eleven youth-rated films with tobacco, only three (27 percent) even carry small-print "smoking" descriptors in their MPAA ratings: Hugo, Midnight in Paris and Rango.

   (For more on these labels, see ad #83 at www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/ourads/index.html.)

MINORITY OF NOMINATED LEAD/SUPPORTING ROLES INCLUDE TOBACCO

• Twenty actors were nominated as Best Actor/Actress in Leading/Supporting Role. We know the tobacco status of 17 of the roles. Of these, five (29 percent, 5/17) included tobacco use.

• Tobacco use was higher among the nominated "Leading" roles (50 percent; 4/8 whose tobacco status is known) and lower among the nominated "Supporting" roles (1/9 known; 11 percent).

COMMENT

Some of the central characters in these films smoke, but it would appear that most do not. If smoking is essential, stand up and take an "R." If smoking is peripheral to the story, why include it at all?

Of course, Oscar nominations are not representative. They're not designed to be. For example, several main characters in The Help smoke, but none of those playing them were nominated for Oscars. Rango, like The Help, had 50+ tobacco incidents and delivered heavy youth-rated tobacco exposure to audiences, but actor-nominations don't reveal that, either. Background or foreground, good guy or bad guy, a lot at once or a little, it's the cumulative exposure that counts.

This snapshot shows that tobacco still plays an oddly persistent role in Hollywood films, even PG-rated animated films. The history of tobacco payola and the continuing harm to kids' health can't be ignored. Unlike the art and craft of film, on-screen smoking is nothing to celebrate.

Actors nominated in smoking roles (known):

The Artist    Jean Dujardin    Best Actor    PG-13
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo    Rooney Mara    Best Actress    R
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy    Gary Oldman    Best Actor    R
Moneyball    Brad Pitt    Best Actor    PG-13
My Week with Marilyn    Kenneth Branagh    Best Supporting    R

Note: Brad Pitt and Kenneth Branagh both portrayed actual people who actually used tobacco: respectively, A's baseball general manager Billy Beane and actor Lawrence Olivier.  This is constitutes one of the two exceptions to the proposed adult ("R" in US) rating. The other is unambiguous depiction of the dire health consequences of tobacco use.

FILMS    RATING    COMPANY    SMOKING?
A Better Life    PG-13    Lionsgate    N/A
A Cat in Paris    NR    Gkids    N/A
A Separation    PG-13    Sony    N/A
Albert Nobbs    R    Liddell    N/A
Anonymous    PG-13    Sony    No
Beginners    R    Comcast    Yes
Bridesmaids    R    Comcast    Yes
Chico & Rita    NR    Hanway    N/A
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close    PG-13    Viacom    No
Harry Potter…Hallows Part 2    PG-13    Time Warner    No
Hugo    PG    Viacom    Yes
Jane Eyre    PG-13    Comcast    Yes
Kung Fu Panda 2    PG    Viacom    No
Margin Call    R    Lionsgate    Yes
Midnight in Paris    PG-13    Sony    Yes
Moneyball    PG-13    Sony    Yes
My Week with Marilyn    R    Weinstein    Yes
Puss in Boots    PG    Viacom    No
Rango    PG    Viacom    Yes
The Artist    PG-13    Weinstein    Yes
The Descendants    PG-13    News Corp.    Yes
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo    R    Sony    Yes
The Help    PG-13    Disney    Yes
The Ides of March    R    Sony    Yes
The Iron Lady    PG-13    Weinstein    Yes
The Tree of Life    PG-13    News Corp.    Yes
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy    R    Comcast    Yes
W.E.    R    Weinstein    Yes
War Horse    PG-13    Disney    Yes
Warrior    PG-13    Lionsgate    Yes

[Frank W. Baker]

Mike, as you know, every advertiser takes advantage of the audience's media ILLITERACY; they don't want young people (or old ones) to know the techniques they use to persuade/influence us. A perfect example, here in the US, is the Super PACs, which have poured millions of dollars into producing slick campaign TV/web commercials for or against a certain candidate. We in media literacy have plenty of good material to work with, don't we?