Monday, July 14, 2008

Hollywood adds smoking warnings on DVD's


From filmstalker, Six major Hollywood studios are going to be adding anti-smoking announcements on DVD's that carry scenes of using tobacco products.

Apparently it's Hollywood's fault that people are smoking, not the advertising, peer pressure, boredom, seeing their parents doing it, poor parenting, etc, etc. Oh no, it's DVD's.

According to the story in Yahoo News, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros are all going to start showing these public service announcements on films that have G, PG and PG-13 ratings.

Presumably the fact that they're looking to hit only these rated films is that everyone under eighteen because they are all the ones who are influenced by these films and no one else.

It always strikes me as insane that in this society we head after the symptoms instead of the cause. Why aren't we just stopping the sale of tobacco?

Now I am against smoking, especially now my mother has inoperable lung cancer, but I do think we go over the top with these announcements. They're randomly thrown at disconnected parts of issues that really aren't the important ones.

Next we'll be seeing messages about drinking, not driving too fast, using knives, guns, explosives, engaging in unjustified wars, and on and on.

Isn't all this a bit much in today's society? Haven't we got a bit more to worry about than DVD's influencing people to smoke?

Arnold Schwarzenegger meanwhile is calling these moves ludicrous, from Digital Spy:

“I personally don't believe that we should erase cigarettes in movies. I don't believe that we should erase it when someone smokes a cigar in a movie. I think that we should remind people and kids all the time about the dangers of smoking...

...To suddenly tell actors not to smoke a cigarette in a movie when they portray a character is ludicrous. I think this is going too far.”

Makes complete sense, and I'm with him all the way, but remember what I said about parenting and examples? Here's how he deals with his smoking in front of his kids.

“Even though you see me every so often light up a cigar, I let them know not to ever try it.”

Is this really going to help? Are we just isolating films from reality and hiding problems in our society? Should we be issuing warnings about knives and guns considering the amount of films with these in them and the problems we have in society right now? Will these warnings really work?

1 comment:

Filmstalker said...

If you're going to copy and paste complete articles from other sites you should show it is a copy and paste and credit the original author with a link back.

Personally I would prefer it if you quoted and wrote something of your own around the story with a proper link to the original story.

It's honest and shows some writing capabilities.

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