Do smoking scenes in movies really affect youth?
One of the entertainment industry’s touchiest issues is the depiction of smoking in movies that reach the young.
The debate:
Dr. James A. Sargent of the Dartmouth Medical School says there is a connection between adolescent exposure to smoking in movies and addiction to tobacco.
Dr. Deborah Glik, director of the Health and Media Research Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the connection appeared strongest among those who were already predisposed by other factors to smoke.
Anti-smoking campaigners:
The Rev. Michael Crosby, who coordinates antismoking efforts for the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, has been pressing the studios on the issue via shareholder resolutions and executive meetings for the last decade.
Michael Passoff, associate director of As You Sow, a socially responsible investment group based in San Francisco which has pressed studio owners on the smoking issue, says “In about five years, they’ll live up to promises they’re making now.”
What the biggest studios are doing:
General Electric, corporate parent of Universal Pictures: “no smoking incidents should appear in any youth-rated film,” with few exceptions.
Time Warner: “strongly discourages” smoking in youth films.
Walt Disney Company said it would ban smoking in its Disney-branded movies and would discourage tobacco use in youth-rated movies from its Miramax and Touchstone units.
Sony Pictures Entertainment says it tries to discourage the depiction of tobacco products in youth-oriented films, yet showed tobacco use in all three of its PG-13 rated “Spider-Man” films.
The News Corporation and its 20th Century Fox Film division have rooted out tobacco use for the last three years in youth-oriented films.
Viacom is looking for a solution. “It’s a chilling idea,” said Bill Condon, who wrote and directed “Dreamgirls” for the DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures units of Viacom. “Movies are supposed to reflect reality. You’re taking away a detail that is one of the more defining aspects of a lifestyle.”
Gracie Films’ animated PG-13 rated “Simpsons Movie,” earned a “black lung” rating from the scenesmoking.org Web site, which monitors smoking impressions in movies.
If smoking scenes are totally deleted, some young viewers might turn to entertainment they feel is more authentic. For example, the pilot episode of “quarterlife,” a new series planned for direct distribution on the Web, concludes with a scene of two friends on a cigarette break. And, as Mr. Condon suggested prohibiting tobacco use “may well glamorize smoking again.”
(The New York Times, 10/01/07)
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–Interact
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