RESTRICTED!

WARNING: Quitting Smoking In Movies Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Ratings.

No showing smoking in movies.

No accidental nipple exposure on TV.

No Simulated sex on stage on an island 2000 miles away.

Maybe I am the only one who sees these prohibitions as absurd.

Honestly though, the irony is killing me.

So the ratings system of the Motion Picture Association of American is going to consider showing smoking in movies in the same way it now considers showing violence, sex, and the use of coarse language. From what I have read on the subject, this has made no one happy. Filmmakers don’t like the restriction, and they don’t want to worry about how much smoking, or in what context showing smoking will earn them a rating for their film that will cause them financial harm. Those advocating for removing all smoking from films are not happy either because they were advocating a total ban.

Personally I don’t really care if I am treated to scenes of smoking in my movies or not, so long as the movie “works,” but I can see real problems arising for filmmakers and their craft.

I suppose a good example of a movie that “needs” smoking is Good Night, and Good Luck, a film that recently came out that was about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow in which smoking was pervasive in the film. Murrow was a heavy smoker, and was constantly smoking while he was reading the news on TV. Murrow also died of lung cancer, most likely because he was a heavy smoker. I thought this film was an excellent movie, and I also think it was important for the film to show how smoking was so socially acceptable at that time. In this way, I thought that the film was a highly effective in showing how terrible smoking can be, but also to show how just because something is socially acceptable now, does not mean that it can fall from grace, in the same way smoking has in our society. To offer a contemporary example, today cell phone use is pretty much totally socially acceptable. People whip out their phones all the time, and nobody really thinks twice about it. Try looking around some time, as I do, at the people using cell phones in public places, and how attached people are to their phones, how as soon as they are finished with something they can’t wait to get out their phones. When I see this it reminds me of the way smoking used to be, except that smoking was always about smoking with people, and with cell phones it is about doing something with people, just not the ones that are standing next to you. So now imagine that cell phones turn out to be hazardous, and within say 50 years there is a near total ban on cell phones, the only people who use cell phones are pretty much the ones who can’t quit, or don’t want to quit. Now imagine that showing cell phones in movies is being restricted, because children might see cell phones as glamorous. If a filmmaker were making a film about SFSU at the turn of this century, don’t you think the film would be incomplete without showing students on cell phones?

Back to Good Night, and Good Luck, I really don’t think that movie could be made now, and that would be a shame, because it tells a really important story, not just about Edward R. Murrow, and how news programs were made at that time, but also about McCarthyism, and how a form of McCarthyism is sprouting in our society today, in the form of anti-terrorism.

I don’t think this film could be made today because even if I see this film as an anti-smoking movie, I am sure that others would disagree and say that the film glamorizes smoking. And Good Night, and Good Luck was pretty much a marginal film, the type that might not be made if the smoking in the film would bump it from a PG to an R rating, marginalizing it even more.

I think that adding smoking to the rating criteria is a mistake, but I don’t expect many to agree with me. As for the irony I mentioned earlier, I decided to bury it in the last paragraph, because I doubt anyone will finish reading this. For me the irony is living in a society that is restricting the items mentioned above, including showing images of smoking in movies, while publicly and seriously discussing when torture is acceptable. Talk about Koyaanisqatsi.


MSNBC- Smoking affects ratings
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18601051/

New York Times- Puffing could cost PG rating
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/business/media/11smoking.htmlWashington post-

Would Casablanca be rated XXX
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051001347.html