Seeing Through the "Smokescreen": Smoking in the Movies

The Academy Award winning movie “Avatar” is the top earning movie worldwide, with total earnings of $1.84 billion. Perhaps you were among the more than 25 million people who saw it? You might have even seen it with your kids – it is, after all, a 3-D animated film.

While Avatar received rave reviews, not all were positive. A number of critics picked up on something that might have only registered at a subconscious level for the viewer: smoking.

Sigourney Weaver’s character, Dr. Grace Augustine, a hardened but likable scientist, smokes on several occasions in the movie and even has scripted lines about her smoking behavior. While this may seem like a harmless part of her character development - as argued by Director James Cameron¹, research suggests that the implications of smoking in the movies are far greater – especially for kids and adolescents.

Smoking is still the number one cause of death and disease in the U.S. today and most adults who smoke started as adolescents². A study published last month in the Journal of Health Communication³ is the most recent in a series of studies about the effects of smoking in the movies on adolescents. The study used a series of telephone interviews, conducted with 6,522 adolescents (age 10 to 14 at the start of the study) every eight months over the course of two years. Adolescents were asked about their personality traits, smoking behavior, and media exposure, including being asked to report at each call whether or not they had seen any of 50 different randomly selected movies. Researchers were able to estimate how much each adolescent had been exposed to smoking in the movies by analyzing the number of times smoking was depicted in each movie.

Findings from the study suggest that adolescents who see a lot of movies that depict smoking are more likely to start smoking at an earlier age compared to those who have no or little exposure to movies depicting smoking.  However, the study found that smoking in the movies was not related to an increase in overall smoking if the adolescent had already started. Other factors like being around people who smoked and having easy access to cigarettes played a stronger role in continued or increased smoking behavior. In other words, seeing smoking in the movies seems to set in motion smoking behavior in adolescents, which is then maintained or increased by other social factors.

Why Does It Matter if Adolescents start Smoking Earlier?

Children and adolescents make up the majority of new smokers today. The earlier adolescents start smoking, the more likely they are to become heavy smokers and the more challenging it will be for them to quit⁴. They are also at increased risk for lung cancer, serious respiratory problems, depression and anxiety⁵. The tobacco industry knows that promoting smoking among youth is one of the best ways to sustain the population of smokers⁶ and the industry has a long history of promoting tobacco products through movies⁷.

What Can We Do About It?

These findings suggest that intervening to prevent early adolescent initiation is key, and that lowering exposure to movies that depict smoking may help to do that. So what can you do?

As a parent, you can start by selecting films to see with your children that don’t depict smoking. You can also be more aware of the messaging that is present in films that you do watch with your kids. Finally, you can talk to them early and often about the dangers of smoking.

But you don’t have to stop there - you can also be an activist for the issue and help promote solutions to protect all adolescents, not just your own children or friends, from additional exposure to smoking in the movies. Communities here in the U.S. and internationally have mobilized through a non-profit group called “SceneSmoking” (www.scenesmoking.org) to encourage those concerned about this issue to:

• Write letters to:
• Ask local theaters to increase anti-tobacco messages before and after films that depict tobacco products. At least this will provide adolescents with information and imagery on both sides of the issue.
• Demand that the Motion Picture Association of America assign harsher ratings for films that show smoking. By assigning an “R” rating to films that show smoking, the behavior does not have to censored, but children and adolescents are protected.
• Ask studios themselves for more transparency in product placement. Often, studios receive large amounts of money to show smoking behavior or even a particular brand of cigarettes. They should be required to disclose this; making the public aware that it is effectively an advertisement within the film.
• Engage your own kids, neighbors and friends in the issue and empower them to educate their peers. By getting adolescents involved in the issue and raising awareness, they become conscious of what they are seeing. They can advocate for changes in the rating system and even create their own rating system.

What’s the Counter Argument?

While individuals from the film industry and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) acknowledge the dangers of smoking, they argue that film is about depicting the real world and we shouldn’t have to censor or “dumb down” reality. They also point out that violence is arguably more concerning and should be addressed first and foremost.

Ethically, the primary concern among opponents of regulating smoking in the movies is censorship. However, Dr. Stanton Glantz, the Director of the University of California, San Francisco “Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education” is quick to point out that the current movement is not asking for censorship. Dr. Glantz says that, at the very least, integrating smoking into the MPAA rating system is important because “it allows producers to still be free to depict smoking if it is necessary for the art of the film, but to do it in such a way that isn’t going to cause hundreds of thousands of kids a year to start smoking.”

Author Biography: Gillian Schauer is passionate about protecting kids from the harms of tobacco and helping adults to quit. She has worked in cancer prevention and tobacco control for nine years and is now a doctoral student at Emory University.  

1: Cieply, M. James Cameron Responds to Critics of Smoking in “Avatar”, The New York Times, January 3, 2010.

2: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000. Healthy People 2010: Understanding and Improving Health. Accessed 2011 from: http://www.feddesk.com/freehandbooks/121505-1.pdf.

3:Dal Cin, S., Stoolmiller, M., & Sargent, J.D. (2011). When Movies Matter: Exposure to Smoking in Movies and Changes in Smoking Behavior. Journal of Health Communication, e-pub ahead of print: DOI:10.1080/10810730.2011.585697

4: Chen, J. & Millar, W. (1998). Age of smoking initiation: Implications for quitting. Health Reports, 9, 39-46.

5: CDC. The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2004. [Accessed 2011 from: www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/2004/index.htm].

6: R.J. Reynolds. Report:The Importance of Younger Adults. 1984. Source: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ eyn18c00, Bates:503418151/8156.

7: Glanz SA. Smoking in movies: a major problem and a real solution. Lancet 2003; 362: 258-259.