Hollywood movies have undergone a lot of changes over the years, and there is one in particular that some people may not have thought of comparing or looking into: screen-time devoted to smoking.
A feature on Time.com shared the contents of a report released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which showed that there has been a significant reduction in the number of scenes that involved cigarettes and smoking over the past five years.
The downward trend has been attributed in part to three major motion picture companies, which have enforced polices to limit the use of tobacco products onscreen in movies that are aimed at young audiences.
The study, published in the CDC regular bulletin Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report, revealed that the top-grossing movies of 2010 contained less than half as many scenes involving tobacco, when compared against those of 2005. The difference is even more pronounced among movies classified as youth-rated – encompassing movies that receive G, PG, or PG-13 ratings – which saw a 71.6 percent decline in “tobacco incidents,” from 2,093 in 2005 to 595 in 2010.
The term “tobacco incident” was defined as any onscreen “use or implied use of a tobacco product by an actor,” while a new “incident” begins any time the camera cuts to, or back to, an actor who is using a tobacco product, or any time a tobacco product is lit onscreen.
These incidents are counted by “Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!”, a California group. The group counts these incidents in any movie that is ranked as among the top-grossing movies in the U.S. in a single calendar week.
Most actors/actresses who are seen smoking on movies or on TV somehow play part in the formation of people’s beliefs about smoking, especially the kids who are still too young to have formed a solid sense of right and wrong. After watching a movie with their children, parents should discuss the good and the bad points about the movie, like the action scenes, the language and specially the smoking scenes.
ReplyDeleteShala Ohms