A reminder of the eternal tension between art and prudence arrived last week with news that the MPAA ratings board would start paying more attention to smoking in movies (onscreen, that is, although I believe I can recall a time when folks smoked inside theaters, at least in the balcony.) Though a pressure group exhorted the ratings association to put films containing instances of smoking automatically in the “R” category, the MPAA will simply include smoking along with drug, alcohol use, sex, language and violence as an element it will consider in rating a film. If a movie seems to glamorize smoking, that could affect its rating.
How things have changed–watching many films of Hollywood’s studio era from the 1930s through the 1940s, smoking was a standard activity by characters and even an aesthetic ingredient as curling white strands of cigarette smoke filled the space around characters. Smoking is a classic example of the hall-of-mirrors phenomenon of art reflecting life which reflected art in a cycle whose beginnings were hard to trace. But as smoking’s health hazards became widely known (and stars like Humphrey Bogart died of lung disease), the number of people smoking declined as prohibitions in public places grew, in some instances to puritanical levels. As a vice, smoking’s singular effect of drifting from its source over to others is a reflection of its pervasiveness–smoke doesn’t just affect the smoker, it gets in the irritates the eyes, noses and attitudes of others. It is a sensory metaphor for any bad behavior’s noxious ripple effect.
And in movies, it’s a reminder of what filmmakers only selectively perceive: that what impressionable people, i.e., youth, see onscreen models social behavior. When you see smoking in a mainstream film these days, you are likely to see someone comment about its health effects. Two recent films, Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls, and Stranger Than Fiction, both make their messages clear. In the former, a grandmother is unable to continue caring for the titular characters because of her ill health and then we see a close-up of her cigarette-butt laden ashtray. In Stranger, Emma Thompson’s creatively blocked novelist smokes continuously and wards off her assistant’s attempts to get her started on a nicotine patch. No bad role-modeling in these films. But it’s still possible to imagine stories where characters smoke, but aren’t necessarily glamorous but simply true to real-life people that don’t warrant an R-rating. As someone said, “context” matters.
I remember all the best movies (and TV shows) from the “Smoking-is-Cool” era. (My fave is when I think it was Bill Holden was on an episode of “I Love Lucy”. Lucy dons this fake nose to keep Mr. Holden from recognizing her after an embarrassing meeting at the Brown Derby. So Bill Holden goes to light Lucy’s cigarette, and set’s her fake schnoz ablaze! I laughed so hard I cried!)
You also forgot the recent “Smoking Kills” campaign of Ghost Rider. Remember Johnny’s dad and the Emphyzema (Or was it lung cancer?) and the pack of cigs in his old man’s pocket that caused the fatal illness?
My grandmother smokes. My father smokes. My mother smokes. Well, lets’ just say smoking doesn’t just run in my family, it gallops. And while I would never EVER do it myself, seeing them smoke doesn’t offend me. (Oh, smelling it might, but seeing it doesn’t.)
How they could get away with an almost pornorgaphic PG-Rated X-Men 3 and think nothing of it, but start flying off the handle because someone’s smoking, I’ll never know. Each day, the world makes a little less sense.
Comment by Ashley — May 15, 2007 @ 5:47 pm |