Posted on 03/09/2004 2:21:37 PM PST by In_25_words_or_less
LOS ANGELES - If Nicolas Cage (news) lights a cigarette in a movie, Hollywood's ratings board should respond as if he used a profanity, according to authors of a new study that criticizes glamorous images of smoking in movies rated for children under 17.
Nearly 80 percent of movies rated PG-13 feature some form of tobacco use, while 50 percent of G and PG rated films depict smoking, said Stanton Glantz, co-author of the study, which examined 775 U.S. movies over the past five years.
"No one is saying there should never be any smoking in the movies," Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said Tuesday at a press conference at Hollywood High School. "What we're simply asking for is that smoking be treated by Hollywood as seriously as it treats offensive language."
He'd like to see more PG-13 movies that feature smoking — like "Matchstick Men," "Seabiscuit" and the Oscar-winning "Chicago" — get slapped with an R rating.
Since R-rated films typically earn less money because they are not open to most teenagers, Glantz said he hoped such a policy would discourage filmmakers from depicting unnecessary smoking, such as the nicotine-addicted worm aliens in "Men in Black."
The proposal includes an exception for historical figures who actually smoked as part of their public life, Glantz added. "For example, if they wanted to make a movie about Winston Churchill, they could show him with a cigar without triggering an R-rating, but the number of movies where that actually happens is very small."
The study was funded by the charitable foundation The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund and the National Cancer Institute (news - web sites).
Glantz singled out The Walt Disney Co. for smoking in the PG-rated "Holes" and G-rated "102 Dalmatians," Time Warner for its PG "Secondhand Lions" and "What a Girl Wants" and Sony Pictures Entertainment for its PG "Master of Disguise."
The Motion Picture Association of America, which rates films, did not immediately return calls for comment on the study or the ratings proposal.
Maybe if the act itself is portrayed on screen. I'm talking about the mere reference to it.
Let's just make all movies rated R. Except some of the cartoons.
My question to you would be why? And if you answered because of their % of the whole population, I'd tell you that you were crazy, because most of the people in the movies are beautiful people, and I am pretty sure they represent an even smaller % of the whole population.
As for smoking, when I grew up, smoking was for adults. A lot of adults will smoke in front of kids, but I didn't like to. I didn't like encouraging kids, through my example, to do something that I think is bad to do. I was smoking for many years just because I couldn't stop.
So to me, smoking is a beat scene, man. And if someone wants to say depictions are rated R, ok. Just let folks know if that's the reason it's r. THey have ratings on direct tv that tell you the specific causes for the rating, so you know if it's nudity, or violence, or language, or all of the above. So add smoking. What's the big deal? How about pot smoking? Should that not get an R?
I totally agree.
I would assume the premise is that youth is impressionable, therefore should not be exposed to smoking, violence, offensive language, sexual content, etc. Yet every time I turn on the TV I am exposed to things like the "Madonna-Brittany kiss", Queer-eye for the straight guy, etc. etc. Somehow the leftists think that is acceptable. My solution: I just don't turn on the TV anymore.
Whatever. But I wouldn't advertise it on FR.
Some other poster replied to me that he would rather go to France. Are you against him being informed?
I'd be fascinated to hear "San Francisco" Glantz's views on gay marriage & the health effects of the gay lifestyle, wouldn't you? ;-)
Only if there is money in it for him.......Glantz once told a group of anti-smoker activists that being an anti-smoker activists lets people like him keep paying his mortgage.
Besides conservatism/Republicanism, smoking is the only of Mencken's hobgoblins they have left with which to menace the populace.
Yes. I'd like to hear the explanation as to how they are "totally different issues."
Did you guys see this one?
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