If you are watching an international film or television show from any movie industry, chances are that you will see a character smoking a cigarette. Over the last century, smoking has swiftly turned from a social deviance to a norm in popular culture but how did it get to this point?
In the early 20th century, many civil rights movements were in progress and one of the major ones was the women’s right movement. In many countries, women were still not allowed to vote and that was an integral part of these movements, but some women realised that even if they were allowed to vote, they were still limited to a small circle of norms and responsibilities.
As a result, many women began to rebel or defy many of these norms and responsibilities without care through various means such as getting short haircuts, driving without chauffeurs, and smoking. Soon enough, in the 1920s, smoking had become a symbol for revolting against social norms and an expression of independence, so many people began to find it ‘cool’.
This way of smoking to appear or be rebellious appealed to the youth at the time, so they began doing it too. Other than that, smoking is an act adults or parents usually refrain from to protect their health and set a good example for their kids, although many want to smoke. Thus, younger people considered it cool to be able to smoke, as their parents may have wanted to do it but could not.
In the early 20th century, many smaller studios and independent filmmakers found it difficult to compete against bigger studios with bigger budgets, so studios began to find alternative ways of expanding their budgets. One of such ways was allowing product placements to be used in television or movies. Product placement is when a business pays for its products to be featured on the big or small screen by paying for them – a method of advertising. Cigarette companies, at the time, had their advertising avenues restricted as many new advertising laws were introduced to ban false or scientifically incorrect advertising.
Consequently, cigarette businesses saw an opportunity in advertising in films or television through product placement to maintain the customer awareness of cigarette. Once, bigger studios saw that small studios were using cigarette product placements, bigger studios joined in the pursuit for greater budgets and began to allow cigarette product placements as well.
This saw many movie and television industries heavily include smoking as part of their content and screenplays. However, in the latter part of the 20th century, product placements of cigarette in television and movies slowly began to be banned starting with a ban in France and later the US. Despite this, cigarette companies wanted to maintain the image of smoking in society, so they continued paying filmmakers and studios to include smoking in their screenplays but without direct product placement meaning no need to show a brand. Hence, even today television shows and movies continue to show large incidences of smoking.
A character smoking on screen heavily appealed to the youth and many other social groups including women during the 20th century so by having smoking on screen, the character on screen could look cool and glamorous. Also, since smoking was on the rise in the 20th century, smoking on screen was a way for characters to be more realistic and understandable to smokers. This is important because if a character looks cool because of smoking, audiences begin associating the actors with smoking and the coolness they receive from it. Therefore, the status and popularity of actors also soars.
A good example of this would be Clint Eastwood in the Dollars Trilogy whereby Eastwood’s poncho and often lighting up of a cigar combined to make him look fashionable. The style that Eastwood carried in the final movie of the trilogy and his most famous one The Good, The Bad And The Ugly consisted of his green poncho and smoking a cigar, and if you removed either of them, the case can be made that he would not have looked as attractive as he did. Movie industries want actors to be glorified so that they can become superstars that attract big numbers at the box office. Plus, many actors in the 20th century were already smokers and would often take a cigarette break or smoke offscreen, so smoking onscreen was not a problem for them.
Research done by the US CDC has shown that smoking on screen makes smoking more acceptable/desirable within society and increases chances of smoking initiation, as smoking on screen accounts for 37% of all smoking initiations in US. According to US Surgeon General’s Report of 2018, 5.6 million youth alive today will die from tobacco-caused diseases due to influence by smoking in movies or television, and if movies which include smoking can be given an R-rating, the number of teen smokers can be reduced by approximately 20%. This could mean more than a million lives can be saved if smoking is heavily discouraged.
Besides that, smoking in movies or television is often associated with other actions such as alcohol drinking or sex which are viewed in positive light. However, nicotine in cigarettes has been found to significantly reduce sex drives of both men and women, and among men can cause erectile dysfunction. The rise of smoking is, as a result, associated with the increased cases of erectile dysfunction in many countries. Moreover, since characters on screen often smoke a cigarette and drink at same time, the youth find this to be appealing and practice it too. Yet, smoking and drinking at the same time is a lot more dangerous, as it can significantly increase the risk of throat and lung cancer, as well as various other diseases linked to the respiratory system.
Anti-smoking and health campaigns over the last century have advocated for complete ban of smoking on screen and although that has not happened yet in any country, smoking is heavily discouraged within movies. Smoking incidents on screen have slowly dropped, while health warnings before and after movies regarding smoking or drinking have been introduced. In fact, in many countries like India and Pakistan when a character smokes on screen, a health advisory message is displayed stating that smoking is bad, or the actor discourages it. If a cigarette brand is shown on screen, it is censored or blurred out.
Additionally, the proportion of actors that smoke have also reduced, and many actors now publicly advocate anti-smoking campaigns and heavily discourage smoking even though they may smoke on screen. Previously, the film and television industry would use normal cigarettes for smoking on screen but due to adverse health effects of it, safer herbal cigarettes are now used for actors who must smoke on screen.
Despite this, the fact remains that smoking is still a major part of movies and television, and the industry seems reluctant to let it go. The only way for smoking to be removed in movies that influence the youth may be to give all movies or TV shows that include smoking, an R-rating. An R-rating would heavily discourage filmmakers from including smoking in films as it takes away a major chunk of their audience and hence potential revenues or box office sales. As campaigning against smoking continues in the 21st century, smoking on screen may very well become non-existent soon.
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