Chest
Clinical InvestigationsSmoking in Contemporary American Cinema
Section snippets
Hypothesis
The null hypothesis is that the prevalence of cigarette smoking is the same among the leading characters in contemporary American movies and in the general US population.
Materials and Methods
Contemporary American movies released after 1990 were included. Only movies rated as parental guidance suggested (PG), parental guidance suggested for children < 13 years of age (PG13), and restricted (R) [ie, children < 17 years of age must be accompanied by an adult] were included. G-rated and science fiction movies were excluded as they may not portray real life. The majority of the story in the movie had to occur in the 1990s. Movies that did not take place in the 1990s were excluded
Results
A total of 447 movies were reviewed (R-rated, 193; PG13-rated, 131; and PG-rated, 123). Of the 447 movies, 68 (15%) had been reviewed by more than one reviewer. Of those 68 movies, 23 (one third) were reviewed by more than two reviewers. There was complete concordance among different reviewers as to whether or not the top five characters smoked cigarettes at any time during these movies.
Discussion
This is the first study to objectively quantify the prevalence of smoking in contemporary American movies. This methodology can be applied to study smoking in other art forms, such as video, television shows, or theater. Equally as important, this study challenges many of the myths about smoking in the movies.
The number of movies released theatrically in the United States each year has varied from a high of 491 in 1988 to a low of 370 in 1995.15 Only 6% of these movies are rated G 16 (ie,
Conclusion
The scientific study of an art form such as motion pictures is fraught with difficulty. As such, previous studies have used arbitrary means to quantify the prevalence of smoking in the movies. This article introduced a methodology that can be applied to quantitatively study such notions such as prevalence, objectively.
We demonstrated that, although the smoking prevalence is not higher in movies than in the general population overall, it is higher in movies that are targeted at youth (ie, the
References (25)
- et al.
The incidence and context of tobacco use in popular movies from 1988 to 1997
Prev Med
(2002) - et al.
Do movie stars encourage adolescents to start smoking?
Prev Med
(1999) - et al.
Viewing tobacco use in movies: does it shape attitudes that mediate adolescent smoking?
Am J Prev Med
(2002) - et al.
Tobacco use is increasing in popular films
Tob Control
(1997) - Mekemson C, Glantz SA. How the tobacco industry built its relationship with Hollywood. Tob Control 2002; 11(suppl):...
- et al.
Hollywood on tobacco: how the entertainment industry understands tobacco portrayal
Tob Control
(1999) - et al.
Health-relevant behaviors in media
J Appl Soc Psychol
(1991) - et al.
Popular films do not reflect current tobacco use
Am J Public Health
(1994) - et al.
Adolescents’ risky behavior and mass media use
Pediatrics
(1993) Youth tobacco surveillance: United States, 2000
MMWR CDC Surveill Summ
(2001)
The frequency and nature of alcohol and tobacco advertising in televised sports, 1990 through 1992
Am J Public Health
Cited by (15)
Portrayals of character smoking and drinking in Argentine-, Mexican- and US-produced films
2016, Preventive MedicineCitation Excerpt :The association between film character smoking and multiple risk behaviors and other substance use is consistent with published literature on the association between smoking and use of multiple substances in the population (Everett et al., 1998b; Lewinsohn et al., 1999). Finally, smoking was also associated with being a negative as opposed to a positive character, again consistent with prior research (Dalton et al., 2002; Omidvari et al., 2005). In this way, it appears that smoking is being used as a plot device to communicate negative, or bad guy personality traits.
Smoking in movies [5]
2006, ChestSmoking in movies [6]
2006, ChestNormalization and denormalization in different legal contexts: Comparing cannabis and tobacco
2016, Drugs: Education, Prevention and PolicyWhat is learned from longitudinal studies of advertising and youth drinking and smoking? a critical assessment
2010, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Reproduction of this article is prohibited without written permission from the American College of Chest Physicians (www.chestjournal.org/misc/reprints.shtml)