As far as I know, you are an alien bent on the destruction of the human race. But that’s just as far as I know. I have no evidence that you are an alien, and you have no evidence that the PIRG made up its statistics.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I say we presume they’re telling the truth.
But that’s not happening, since smoking is NOT one of the factors that gets a film an R rating. That’s one of the things the PIRG is trying to change.
No, but we have reasonable grounds for suspicion, which should warrant investigation.
Like, say Anchorman, last weekend’s number one movie? Filled end to end with sensual, glamorized depictions of smoking, most prominently by Christina Applegate and Vince Vaughn.
Oops. Misinterpreted your point about the ratings. But the incentive to get a PG rating is nothing new, and certainly not something that magically sprang up in the two years following the tobacco settlement. That incentive was there before and after the settlement, and therefore cannot explain the spike in smoking depictions in PG-13 movies in the two years following the settlement.
I tried googling “product placement cigarettes” and turned up this article, which discusses the tobacco industry’s product placement efforts in movies made prior to the tobacco settlement, and also documents the tobacco industry representatives lying to conceal same. The article raises some of the same questions which are on my mind (and which occurred to me before I read the article – so I’m not the only one noticing the trend).
But Anchorman takes place in the 1970s. It is perfectly appropriate for those characters to smoke. In fact, it would be odd if they didn’t. Also, I think there is a lot more pressure in the past few years to get a PG-13 rating. I don’t recall any movie producer fighting an R-rating before 1998.
It is true that you have no evidence that I’m not an alien. Why would that matter? As I said, the PIRGs are not a reliable source of information. They have made unfounded assertions in literature they’ve given me. They have taken credit for laws that were passed without their help. They pay their employees a straight 40% commission off the funds they raise, and then claim that those activities are “education” when they publish their financial statements.
I’m not insisting that they must be lying. I just need to see the data from their study before I believe a word of it.
BTW, product placement is not always compensated. In the current issue of Newsweek, in the cover story on iPods:
We have an upcoming election with voiced fears of voter abuse
We have a health-care system with serious flaws
I agree 100% Let’s take to the barricades and demand that congress drop all of the above and concentrate on serious matters…like whether more people are smoking in movies.
Sheesh…wanna see some smokin’? Watch most movies made in the thirties and forties.
“Bad news, Fred…You’ve been shot through both lungs. Here…puff on this. You’ll feel better.”
Let’s call call Ted Turner and see if he has the technology to pixilate all tobacco products and lit cigarettes in films.
If they can airbrush out Robert Johnson’s & Jackson Pollack’s cigarettes on USPS commemorative stamps, James Dean’s Camel on full page magazine ads and FDR’s trademark cigarette holder in images at his Presidential library, why not do it in films. It’ll set the right example to children and will remove the possible collusion between the hevil tobacco companies and greedy Hollywood studios.
(Hijack: The term ‘smoke nazi’ is alleged to be almost 70 years old).
It’d be one thing if I were attacking smokers. I’m not. I am simply questioning whether the tobacco industry is violating the terms of its settlement (which it entered into to avoid a legislative solution). Seems to me that Congress should be pretty interested in whether the tobacco execs are reneging on their deal.
(So why are smokers so defensive of big tobacco, anyway? Do you yearn for a world where everyone smokes?)
As JohnBckWLD pointed out, it’s the memory hole approach to smoking that annoys me. After all, over 20% of the adult population smokes. If movies are showing 20% of their characters smoking, I haven’t seen it. I don’t know if the characters who smoke look “cool” or not. To me, they just look like they smoke. I remember reading The Lovely Bones recently, and was disappointed that The plot of entire second half of the book is predicated on the mother having to leave the hospital to smoke. This is, of course, absurd. Even in the ICU, in the 1970s, visitors could smoke at the nurses’ station. There was also the waiting rooms and the cafeteria. If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I would wonder if perhaps removing all evidence that people smoked is a way of avoiding uncomfortable questions about secondhand smoke Like "How many non-smoking bank tellers developed emphysema before 1985?
