Life & Style | Health
Screen smokers die hard
Saturday is World No Tabacco Day, yet in many Hollywood features, those on-screen kisses, probably still taste like ashtrays.
- By Johannes de Villiers, Pages Editor
- Published: 00:10 May 29, 2008
Something is missing, you might have thought while watching the recent Live Free or Die Hard, instalment number four of Bruce Willis's macho cop series.
Sure enough, Willis was still there, sweating into his shirt, talking tough, finding his way through brick walls.
Yet something was not the same.
That subtle difference was one few viewers might have put their thumb on, but it was enough to earn Live Free or Die Hard recognition as a lifesaver (literally, in a sense) by a US based activist group Smoke Free Movies.
"This year our annual ‘Thumbs Up' award went to Live free or Die Hard,'' says Kori Titus, director of Smoke Free Movies. "The movie was selected because in the previous two Die Hard movies, John Mcclean [Willis's character] smoked and in this one he didn't. The youth expected to find it and they didn't. Bruce Willis also made a statement that he realized that this character was a role model and he didn't want to set a bad example for kids.''
These awards are important, says Titus, in a world where on-screen smoking is prevalent and on the increase.
NICOTENE-FREE FLICKS?
It's easy to feel ambivalent about organisations like Smoke Free Movies. Even if you grudgingly admit that they are doing good work, it still seems to be in a spoil-sport kinda way.
Could there really be harm in such iconic movie images as Sharon Stone's Basic Instinct vixen throwing predatory glances while smoke whirls, Smaug-like, from her face? Would we rather have a Dirty Harry who did not smoke?
The figures suggest yes.
A study published in medical journal The Lancet in 2003 suggests that teenagers who had never had a puff are up to three times as likely to light up after they have watched screen characters do it.
According to the researchers, who made 2,600 kids between the ages of 10 and 14 sit through 50 movies selected for smoking content, as much as 52 per cent of teenagers who reached for their first puff did so because of the influence of movies.
SMOKE ON THE RISE
This while a 2004 study in the American Journal of Public Health shows smoking on the silver screen has increased since the early 1990s, in spite of a real-world decrease in the relative number of smokers.
Researchers studied a selection of movies released between the 1950s, when films like Jailhouse Rock and Rio Bravo featured virtually non-stop smoking, and 2002. They found that "smoking incidents'' (which could include something as subtle as an ashtray) per movies had declined steadily from 1950 to 1980. Thereafter the frequency picked up again, returning to the 1950s level by 2000.
"The data reveals that the assumption that smoking was more widespread in ‘classic' movies, at least from the 1950s, than it was in subsequent decades is not correct,'' wrote the authors. "Particularly with the long shelf life that movies gain through television rebroadcast, videotape, and DVD, the pro-tobacco influence of the high smoking levels in recent movies will continue to be a pro-tobacco influence on teenagers for years to come unless remedial action is taken.''
PARENTING STRATEGIES
A strategy that Titus does not recommend is reverse role modeling, making the bad guys in movies smoke in an attempt to create negative associations .
"We track good guy/bad guy in our ratings — often the characters are neither good nor bad. The other issue is that some of the bad guy characteristics are attractive to teens. The first that comes to mind is rebellion, another is being edgy.''
Their ideal solution, says Smoke Free Movies, is to persuade movie authorities to rate movies with smoking content as harmful, similar to films that contain violence or explicit love scenes.
"As parents we need to be proactive. Find out about the smoking content in a film [they post reviews on www.scenesmoking.org/. Try to protect your children from these images. And when they are exposed to them, make sure you discuss what these images mean with your children.''
Their concerns also includes celebrities being photographed by paparazzi while puffing away in public — Kate Hudson lifting her cigarette with one hand while clutching a packet of Marlboro in the other, Sean Penn lighting up recently at Cannes.
"We have talked to publicists who advise their clients to ‘muddy up' their image — and one quick way to do that is to be photographed with a cigarette.''
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