Enough, Already With This Anti-Smoking MPAA Crusade

I smoke. There, I said it. Not often, and in as much isolation as possible, far from everyone, where I don't have to hear/see/feel the loathing in the act. I know how bad it is for me, I know the risks it entails (how can you not in smoker-hostile NYC), and how disgusting you likely think it is, but it's my only vice, and I enjoy it. And in all sincerity, I can swear my inclination to smoke was never influenced by anything but stress, compulsion and curiosity. Which makes this whole crusade to vilify cigarettes -- and, ultimately, those who smoke them -- in movies totally baffling to me. More than baffling, really -- it pisses me off. Light up with me, and I'll tell you why.

I haven't even smoked as long as I've listened to activists complain about tobacco in films targeted anywhere beyond adult demographics. They made their biggest impact in 2007, when the MPAA acknowledged it would add smoking as a consideration during the ratings process. Newly empowered, shrill and entitled as ever, the American Medical Association Alliance came back a little over a year later to tear into the makers of The Incredible Hulk for always placing a cigar in the mouth of William Hurt's mean Army colonel.

"Shame on The Incredible Hulk for unnecessarily adding smoking to a sequel [sic] that would have been just as exciting and believable without it," former Alliance president Dianne Fenyk said in a statement at the time. "Universal Studios and the other Hollywood studios should be especially embarrassed for using comic book movies, which they market to children and know youth will want to see, to promote tobacco."

Of course that's bullshit. Tim Roth did not take any radioactive shots to turn into Joe Camel. Hulk no more promoted cigarette smoking than did than any of the other five PG/PG-13 comics adaptations (including Speed Racer and Superman Returns) cited elsewhere in Fenyk's statement. In fact, Universal was the first studio I recall ever listing a related disclaimer on a poster: "This film contains depictions of tobacco use." It even took up more real estate in the design than the PG-13 rating itself, which still didn't stop the Alliance from issuing its own distortions and unattributed stats such as, "Studies also prove that 35 percent of new smoking in children ages 9-12 can be attributed to exposure to smoking in movies."

What? What studies? And once I see those, tell me what movies those 9- to 12-year-old smokers were exposed to. Because I have a study around here somewhere that proves it probably wasn't Speed Racer.

Anyway, that was then. Today I picked up the NY Times and read that the Alliance -- no doubt an essential, constructive organization with a batshit fringe like any other -- has now established a Movie Smoking Scorecard on Facebook. Naturally the rhetoric is the same: "It's incomprehensible for studios to defend their promotion of tobacco products in youth-rated films when you hear from teenagers directly that they are taking notice -- and offense -- to this on-screen promotion," Alliance president Sandi Frost told the paper. Indeed, there they are on Facebook, all, like, half-dozen of them, in a poorly shot video protesting the appearance of a cigar in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (Memo to AMAA: How about not promoting crappy cameraphone usage? Kids are impressionable!)

Now, with this scorecard, the Alliance intends to tally smoking infractions in PG/PG-13 films this summer and post a billboard near the most offensive studio. Among the other early front-runners mentioned in the news was Angels & Demons, in which a trapped Robert Langdon promises to buy a cig-addicted Swiss Guard officer a pack of smokes if they can break out of captivity in the Vatican Archives. SPOILER ALERT: They do, and he does, with the frazzled guard lighting up as Langdon speeds away from the scene. I know the feeling, pal.

The shot lasts 48 frames at most. In these people's perfect world, that transgression would automatically require an R-rating. At least that would establish one objective standard for the MPAA in the fluid rush of others that no one can make heads or tails of. Come to think of it, how does the Alliance plan to counteract the psychological influence of graphic violence in PG-13 films like Angels & Demons? Why isn't there a Cardinal-Murder Scorecard prompting the MPAA to action? Are we so inured to (SPOILERS AGAIN) a rat on a dead priest's eye, or a cardinal's punctured lungs spattering blood on Tom Hanks's face, or two of the most graphic, close-up human immolations ever put to film that two fucking seconds of smoking take precedence in our appeals to the ratings board? Isn't that perhaps the bigger problem plaguing children 9-12: Hollywood trafficks in human suffering, the bloodier, the better, and that it's actually easier to get into a Hostel film than it is to buy a pack of cigarettes?

Of course, the truest sign of both the Alliance's and the MPAA's hypocrisy and cynicism is that just when they give kids all the credit in the world to not replicate scenes of torture, abuse, mutilation and gunplay -- especially gunplay, that other devastating social ill -- simply no youngster can possibly resist tobacco. It's like sex you can inhale -- irresistible, calming, beautiful and even erotic from the right mouth in the right light. And we all know how the MPAA ratings board feels about sex.

And sure, it's deadly as hell. Point taken. But it stills boils down to censorship, just like every other ratings hassle in Hollywood. And censorship always boils down to asking how much these freaks will deny kids any semblance of agency in their lives, all while absolving adults of any responsibility as parents. A Movie Smoking Scorecard? Are you serious? Who's the real bad guy here?

· Cigarettes in Popular Films Are Target of Health Groups [NYT]

· Movie Smoking Scorecard [Facebook]