Smokey is the bandit

Caving to pressure from advocacy groups, Walt Disney Company has announced that they will no longer depict smoking in their films. The company will also attempt to discourage on-screen smoking from their Touchstone Pictures and Miramax brands.

"This is good for the perception of Disney, but the primary reason is that cigarette smoking is a hazard and we should avoid depicting it in movies and on television," Robert A. Iger, Disney's chief executive, said.

Disney definitely knows just how dangerous cigarette smoking is. The company's founder, Walt Disney, was a chain smoker who died of lung cancer in 1966 (and then was cryogenically frozen, but that's a whole different story).

On-screen smoking has been a hot button issue for sometime now. This spring, attorneys general from 32 different states put pressure on the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to give films that contain smoking an R rating, unless the smoking is "historically accurate" or unless the consequences of smoking are shown. While the MPAA didn't go for the automatic R rating, they did say that they would consider smoking as a factor when rating films.

Now, I am not a smoker. In fact, I find smoking to be disgusting. When I used to work as a bouncer in my father's bar, I would come home smelling like an ashtray. The place was usually so cloudy with cigarette smoke that my eyes would be burning by the end of the night and the next morning I would wake up coughing.

But I believe very strongly in personal choice. Smoking is still legal in the country. Even though many states now ban smoking in bars and smokers are basically treated like second-class citizens, it is still legal for smokers to light up and inhale that sweet, sweet cancer into their lungs. I also believe that if a filmmaker wants to depict smoking in his/her film, he/she should have the right to do that without having to turn the movie into a glorified public service announcement.

I'm also a little confused by the MPAA's guidelines for rating smoking scenes. How will they decide what counts as being historically accurate? If I want to make a movie set in the year 2007 and I have a scene where some friends are standing around outside a bar lighting up a cigarette, can't I argue that the scene is historically accurate? In the year 2007, people do smoke cigarettes outside of bars, so my movie would be accurately depicting that time period.

The argument that anti-smoking advocacy groups make is that smoking in films encourages children to smoke. According to the American Legacy Foundation, smoking is depicted in 90 percent of all films, with 75 percent of movies rated G, PG or PG-13 featuring tobacco use. And, according to the Entertainment Industry Foundation's Hollywood Unfiltered campaign "children with the highest exposure to smoking in movies are three times more likely to start smoking than those with the least exposure."

I'm not sure where Hollywood Unfiltered got that stat from (in related news, 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot). The page of their website that contains that stat offered no annotation, so it's dangerous to assume this comes from a legitimate and reliable source. But, even if we assume the stat is correct, I still have trouble signing off on the whole "movies brainwash kids into doing things they normally wouldn't" argument.

Over the years, millions of children have watched 101 Dalmations. If Hollywood Unfiltered is to be believed, then all of those children are three times more likely to smoke than children who haven't seen the film because kids are sheep and they copy everything they see on TV or on a movie screen. Yet, how many teenagers have you seen walking around with salt and pepper hair, smoking their cigarettes out of a long red cigarette holder while trying to make clothing out of puppies?

I'm not saying that movies with smoking scenes aren't a contributing factor to youth smoking. Smoking in movies can make a villain seem more evil or a hero seem cooler. And there is a good chance that seeing movie characters smoke might make children want to smoke too.

But, I don't think that it is the main reason that kids get hooked on cigarettes. The simple fact is - smoking looks cool. In the words of BR from the wonderfully underrated movie, Thank You For Smoking, "We don't sell Tic Tacs for Christ's sake. We sell cigarettes. And they're cool and available and addictive. The job is almost done for us!" Whether children are exposed to smoking scenes on television or just see their friends doing it, it is going to seem edgy and exciting to them.

But, that's okay. What people seem to forget is that it's not Hollywood's job to raise your children. Parents should know what movies their kids are watching and if the movie contains something they find objectable - like gratuitous smoking scenes, then the parents have a right to prevent their kids from watching it. But, as an adult, I also have a right to watch movies that glorify smoking and the MPAA and organizations like Hollywood Unfiltered shouldn't be allowed to pressure filmmakers to take smoking scenes out.

It's not the 1950s anymore. Everyone knows the dangers of smoking. These days, no one who starts smoking can make the argument that the tobacco companies lied to them about how toxic cigarette smoking really is. It's up to parents to get that message across to their children and to keep them from smoking (because lord knows those ridiculous Truth advertisements on television aren't working).

I will never forget the day my brother thought I was smoking in the woods with some of my friends. He jacked me up against the wall and threatened to beat the ever-loving shit out of me if he ever found out that I was smoking. While his methods were definitely a bit extreme and I wouldn't recommend them to any parents out there, I will say that his threat had much more of an impact on me than when I saw Carface smoking a cigar in All Dogs Go To Heaven.

Random Thought of the Week:
Anytime my job stresses me out, I just think - at least I'm not the PR guy in charge of promoting I Know Who Killed Me.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He also has some really hot friends. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.