As we’ve reported before, there has been immense pressure on Hollywood to automatically assign “R” ratings to movies if they contain any smoking in them at all. (Guess they’d have to slap “R” ratings on bus stops and benches outside shopping malls too – with cops enforcing a perimeter to make sure that no one under 17 passed by without their parents.)
At any rate, Hollywood has apparently given in, but not ALL the way.
What we find more offensive than the action itself, is the declaration by the MPAA chairman that “Clearly, smoking is increasingly an unacceptable behavior in our society” – as if it’s his, or any other individual’s role to decide what is an unacceptable behavior in society (hello there, Stanton Glantz, Henry Waxman and Rob Reiner).
But we did take a little solace in one statement that the MPAA chairman made – which flies directly in the face of the anti-smoking zealots who just spew the falsehood that there’s more smoking in film than ever before – propaganda that those of us who look for smoking in movies know to be untrue.
“From July 2004-July 2006, the percentage of films that included “even a fleeting glimpse of smoking” dropped from 60% to 52%.”
Needless to say, the zealots are happy to take the increased censorship and run (at least for now), with no compulsion to correct their claims of increased smoking in film.
What a shock.