Smoking in the Movies
Screenwriters can give characters any number of traits and habits. But do they have a moral responsibility to viewers which should persuade them not to give their characters specific, socially unacceptable habits? Viewers are not blank slates but none of us can help being affected by what we see. I quit smoking several months ago and to this day when I see someone smoking in a movie, it makes me crave a cigarette. It used to be that magazines like People and US airbrushed cigarettes out of the hands of celebrity photos. But no more. Now the public sees Brittney with a smoke, or Lindsay or Mary Kate. An amazing number of healthy-seeming celebrities smoke. These are role models; shouldn't the magazine airbrush the cigarettes back out of the picture? Or should the celebrities not smoke where they can be seen? Where does this slippery slope lead to?
I just recently read an interview with Shia LaBeouf, and the interviewer included that LaBeouf lit up a smoke before answering the next question. Should that detail have been included? If the interviewer had not mentioned the smoking, nobody would ever have known that LaBeouf is a smoker. So why did he or she include it? Journalistic veracity? Or was it irresponsible. Until his picture shows up in a celebrity rag with a blurry cigarette in one hand. Should the interviewer have skipped over this detail? Maybe LaBeouf should have waited on that cigarette in case the writer made a note of it? Which? Neither?
Where is the line between social responsibility and doing our jobs as story-tellers? I am currently ghost-writing a mystery novel with a Texan client who depicted his main character drinking - a lot. I mean - a lot. Maybe it's a Texas thing. I told the writer that we are going to have to show less drinking. Why? Because we want our readers to like this guy, not raise their eyebrows everytime he slams back another one. I mean, I'm working on this material and I don't know how the guy stands up and solves anything. It would be different if the material were LEAVING LAS VEGAS, right? Or would it?
Do writers get carte blanche or do we have to bear in mind that this thing we do is bread and circus? We are selling our stories, right? To buyers. Who turn around and sell the story to the public. Who will have judgments and reactions to our material.
It's a complex issue and a slippery slope. Maybe the writer who wrote BUT I'M JUST A CHEERLEADER (wonderful movie by the way) should not have written it. It did feature homosexuality, after all. That's not a bad habit though - that's the way you're born. Right. But not to a conservative it isn't. It's a bad lifestyle choice. Which really shouldn't be depicted. That's an argument that I cannot get behind.
For my money, writers create art which is inspired by life. Messy, heartbreaking, funny, imperfect life. In in real life, people have bad habits and flaws. That's what makes us human.
Recently, the MPAA decided to warn audiences about movies with a great deal of smoking, particularly smoking that is not contextualized historically. This decision seems strange when movies likE CAPTIVITY, depicting women getting tortured and killed are splashed across huge billboards across major US cities for us all to see and be horrified by. Now that's offensive. Values are skewed when smoking is a worse offense than torture and mayhem. Don't get me wrong - smoking is bad. I'm glad I quit; it's a terrible habit. But surely we have bigger fish to fry as a viewing public. And as we inch toward a 1984-esque scenario, with the MPAA (i.e.the 5 major corporations that own the movie studios) deciding for us what we can and cannot see, it is crucial that writers be honest about what they depict rather than succumb to pressure to whitewash. We owe it to our readers and viewers to tell the truth about what we see.
Copyright (c) 2007 Julie Gray
Julie Gray is a screenwriter and story analyst living in Los Angeles.
http://www.thescriptwhisperer.com
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