What would an addict prefer? Stale cigarettes or no cigarettes?
Anyway, people smoke in real life, so there should be people smoking in fiction as well. It doesn’t need to be glamorized or anything (and it certainly wasn’t on the most recent Walking Dead, with one character hacking up blood into a hanky while smoking and mentioning that smoking already had killed her) but it shouldn’t be completely vanished and pretended to not exist.
Not to get shot in the face with a .303 round from a pretty damn decent distance away after sunset? I thought that was something they taught in basic like “keep your ass down! There’s always some joker around whose more than happy to shoot it off.”
Can be done in one, can be done with very little chance of muzzle flash, and any “goodies” dropped or not carried away can be picked up days later. Yeah, I know. Just a TV show.
Still…
Smoking kills. 
http://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1877&context=mlr
And since I know you put this in the PIT simply to make cheap personal shots like that, I’ll bow out. You want to actually discuss this like a rational person, here is the thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19182234#post19182234
Aw, don’t go away all butthurt. Just take a few slow deep breaths through your mouth. In and out. Mouth breathe. Mouth breathe.
I didn’t get past the 1999 date on the top of the first page.
Your cite is almost old enough to buy cigarettes.
I don’t think this holds. If the smoking serves no purpose to the story being told, it shouldn’t be there. People go to the bathroom in real life, but we don’t necessarily show that–only if there’s a reason in the story.
Plus there’s just the fact that commercial fiction is beholden to an audience. If the audience doesn’t want to see smoking, then you don’t show it.
There’s just no inherent need for fiction to mirror real life.
Actors like to smoke because it gives them lots of stuff to do in the scene in addition to just reciting lines. It’s a way for them to express character.
I’m reminded of a scene in White Bird in a Blizzard with Thomas Jane and Shailene Woodley lounging in bed after sex. He lights up a cigarette, and on the commentary track Gregg Araki (the director) and Shailene Woodley discuss it. Araki felt it was way too cliche to smoke after sex, but Jane really pressed for it and got him to do a take or two with him smoking.
They were both chuckling about “all the business” Jane was doing smoking the cigarette, and Araki was glad Jane pushed for it because it added greatly to the scene.
Here’s a is a screen capture of that scene. Smoking helps prevent it from being too static by adding texture and motion. (You can’t see the cigarette in the picture, or maybe he hasn’t lit it yet. The scene is pretty long.)
There’s no reason streets need to be wet in movies either, but it’s more visually interesting and typically it adds to the movie. Similar for smoking.
Yeah, that’s all well and good, but couldn’t they accomplish the same thing by eating a kale salad?
“Kale salad” doesn’t quite say “I’m the Devil and I’ll do what I want.” Kale salad says, oh good gods, what does kale salad say? “I’m a rebel vegetarian.” Actually, I got nothing on kale salad.
Y’know, depicting =/= advocating.
But it has been a longstanding point of pressure on mass media that it’s should not portray any number of “bad” things.
Humphrey Bogart wouldn’t be the same without a cigarette.
I never smoked cigarettes, but man did Bogart make it look cool.
You mean the actor who died at 57 after a long battle against esophageal cancer?
Not necessarily the example I’d pick.
Many actors are heavy smokers, and will say “I’ve decided my character smokes” so they can smoke continuously on the set. They are very adept at providing pseudo-artistic justifications like “art should mirror life, and people smoke in real life,” but the truth is that they just can’t bear to go 15 minutes without a cigarette.
I’m speaking from experience; I’m an actor and I do a lot of regional theater. I used to live in the Chicago area, and when Illinois banned smoking in public buildings it caused a revolt in the city’s theatrical community. Many actors vowed to defy the law, or quit acting entirely if they weren’t allowed to light up on stage. Eventually they backed down and everyone adjusted, but you can still see actors dashing outside for frequent smoke breaks at every Chicago theater, even in subfreezing weather.
To say nothing of the oodles of moolah Fox made off Big Meth out of Breaking Bad
There’s an Arthur C. Clarke novel (I forget which one) in which he mentions old movies being digitally altered to remove smoking, because people in the future find smoking so disgusting and repulsive. I doubt that will ever happen (at least not in our lifetimes), but it seems more plausible now than it did back when he wrote it.
Funny, I was wondering to myself earlier how much this played into it.
But there’s also the “we need to be edgy factor”. For quite some time, you just didn’t show people smoking on TV unless it was to demonstrate a bad habit (like what’s-his-name in Friends). But then everyone had to be edgy-- heroes with a dark side, having main characters killed off (OMG!!!) and… smoking. It was such a big deal how much smoking and drinking went on in Mad Men, and who doesn’t want a little of the Mad Men cachet? The pendulum swung one way, and now it swings another.
Regardless, the dude looked cool smoking.
Bogart was a cool fella, he would have looked cool doing anything.
Thing is, he would have looked cool for way longer without.
You don’t have to intentionally advocate something to make it seem cool and influence people—particularly teenagers—to start doing it. You don’t even have to have a hero doing it. Villains are often pretty cool too.
Less cool without the squint, though.