And the great smoking debate rages on… Time magazine has an interesting article about Hollywood’s love affair with the cancer stick, and the efforts of various anti-smoking agencies to have it abolished entirely from the movies. I don’t know about all of you, but seeing someone like Johnny Depp puff and pull on a cigarette in a movie, is not the most unappealing sight, and I can see how people can be swayed by an image like that. Smoking in the movies is better advertising for the tobacco companies than their money can ever buy, and it must infuriate anti-smoking lobbyists to see all their hard work countered because a director feels it essential for his star to have a cigarette in his hand.
Here’s an alarming fact from the article:
Today cigarettes are more common onscreen than at any other time since midcentury: 75% of all Hollywood films–including 36% of those rated G or PG–show tobacco use, according to a 2006 survey by the University of California, San Francisco.
I don’t know. With more and more cities all but banning smoking, it wouldn’t shock me to see cigarettes one day abolished from movies entirely. But would that take away from the artistic integrity of some films? What do you guys think? Read the rest of the article HERE and form an opinion.
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