June 3, 2007
Thank You for Smoking Posted by Alexander Burns at 09:00 AM EST Last week Fred Schwarz posted about the Motion Picture Association of America’s new restrictions on the portrayal of smoking on screen. In his post, Mr. Schwarz quoted a National Review article that turns on its head the idea that smoking in films causes smoking off screen by making the habit seem fashionable. Instead, this article argues that “people [smoke] in movies because it’s cool.” I don’t think I totally buy this, or at least I don’t buy that there’s not a connection between behavior in movies and behavior out of them. An often cited example of imitated on-screen behavior is Macaulay Culkin’s arm-pumping victory motion in Home Alone, usually accompanied by a hissed, “Yesss,” which took elementary schools by storm at approximately the same time I was learning to read. If one movie could so quickly popularize this silly action, I don’t see why a similar thing couldn’t happen with the far more ubiquitous cinematic activity of smoking. A second point in Mr. Schwarz's post, and one I find totally convincing, is that the main dramatic function of smoking on screen is to “inject some movement . . . into what otherwise would be a static scene of talking heads: ‘It draws attention inexorably to the smoker and away from whatever mediocre dialogue he or she is forced to say.’” Incidentally, cigarettes, cigars, lighters, and other smoking items are also among the only accessories male characters can carry with them. James Bond could not have disguised a microfilm reader inside a purse. Instead, a cigarette case and lighter had to suffice. Today, admittedly, there are iPods, cell phones, and PDAs as well, options Sean Connery and Roger Moore would never have considered. What will replace smoking, if the MPAA regulations have the desired effect? Mr. Schwarz suggests drinking, rock/paper/scissors, dance motions, or knitting. I’d like to add another option, perhaps slightly more serious, to this list: eating. A popular piece of trivia about the 2001 version of Ocean’s Eleven is that Brad Pitt’s character is constantly eating. According to the Internet Movie Database, “This was because the whole gang (his character in particular) would be so busy that they’d rarely be able to eat.” Accidental though this character choice may have been, it strikes me as appropriate that nervous eating would replace smoking as the American film character’s casual habit of choice. I believe the sentiment was best expressed by Christopher Buckley in his novel Thank You For Smoking, in which his main character is a successful tobacco lobbyist. At one point the lobbyist, Nick Naylor, goes into an ice cream parlor and reflects on the irony that his country judges smoking so harshly while devouring such a decadent (and, might I add, delicious) dessert.
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