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Should YouTube play the censor and sentinel?
November 9, 2007 -
Hollywood's YouTube frustration grows
June 11, 2007
Like it or not, the YouTube phenomenon empowers folks with ideas, both good and bad, and the clueless alike. Video re-edits--Goofy as a sex-drugs maniac or the Hamas-ripoff of Mickey Mouse teaching Palestinian kids to blow up people--cause Disney much heartburn.
But technology empowers in both directions, as 2007 proved. Disney, joined by Universal, promised to ban smoking scenes from "youth rated films." Those films include older, even classic, products stashed away in the Disney Vault. Yes, smoking is in disrepute, but should we fear tobacco-as-entertainment?
In July 2007, when Disney promised a smoking ban for its "G" and "PG" products, the news was yawn-producing. What's a little revisionism if it satisfies today's sociopolitical climate? Stalin's helpers got rid of inconvenient Trotsky-photographs with the wave of an icepick (low tech works, too). Much easier for Disney to ensure that smoking won't be seen by impressionable audiences. A noble cause if you find the (usually) perfectly legal act of smoking a cigarette more disturbing than, say, the gratuitous spraying of bullets in an action movie or the law-trashing car chases that even Herbie: Fully Loaded displays.
Tobacco-censors may have an easy time with The Shaggy Dog, The Santa Clause 3--The Escape Clause (no pipe for the old man, though!), and The Chronicles of Narnia--films where neither cigarettes nor smoldering bodies do much smoking. It will be tougher for Disney to extend the ban to its Touchstone and Miramax subsidiaries. Can't not smoke in Hollywoodland or Renaissance (heck, it's set in Paris!). No wonder Disney gave itself a "best efforts"-type loophole for adult fare.
Any company can define its market niche, and Disney's Bob Iger was pandering to antismoking calls-to-action from Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), key video industry overseer, and the Motion Picture Association of America. Yet the social and political tendencies driving a company to promote the increasingly belligerent "correctification" of modern life--from prescribing whether or where people may smoke or eat trans fats or drive, or how they raise their children (and how not!) is troubling. It asserts that straitjackets lead to a better life, but more often they bring not the "perfect society," but a stultifying and oppressing civil order that sacrifices its freedoms, agility, and inner resilience to the moral imperative du jour.
For truly healthy societies there needs to be room for human stupidity.
Can't 21st century folks make their own decisions? The idea of a film studio contributing to a better world by not showing the deviant act of smoking on the screen is an absurd, yet frightening step into a dark, absurdist fantasy. Never mind that we might get a censored Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with a 100 percent smoke-free caterpillar, or Cruella DeVille with a patch, instead of a deliciously evil cigarette.
This is not hypothetical: Goofy already had his cigarette edited out of El Gaucho Goofy in Saludos Amigos, a U.S.-backed exercise in cultural diplomacy designed to counter Nazi influence in South America. Yet Jose Carioca, in the same film, kept his cigar--so far--and gets Donald Duck roaring drunk. American-ish cartoon characters set a bad smoking example, but not Portuguese-speaking parrots? The cultural contrast shows the impossibility of endless cinematic self-censorship--it inspires new, more radical forms of censorship.
Older technologies, too, have been instruments of censorship or suppression of historical truth, book-burning being the classic example. Should we not also care about deliberately-falsified history when a film made or set in the 1950s shows a clinically clean nonsmoking environment according to today's cultural mores? What would Disney do to AMC's hit Mad Men? Are Disney, Universal, and friends trying to protect us from health risks, or from historical realities that, today, make some uncomfortable?
The political underbelly to all this does not reassure. Markey holds a hearing calling for film industry censorship of smoking; the MPAA and its Washington, D.C., head, Dan Glickman, agree to consider smoking scenes in rating a films' age-appropriateness; and Disney's Iger rushes to lead the pack. No legislation needed, just propaganda.
Hollywood should choose. Do we believe in preserving the original "artist's vision," warts and all? Not incidentally, there's a profound albeit subtle racial undertone in Disney taking Goofy's smokes away while letting "ethnically different" cartoon characters smoke. It's a particularly noxious case of political correctness and lifestyle prescriptions intruding into the lives of citizens, armored by impenetrable righteousness.
Yet there's a fun follow-up: Chronological Donald Volume 3 was just released, with scenes of juvenile smoking (Huey, Dewey, Louie) pristinely intact. Disney, which actually made a similar no-tobacco pledge in 2004 but kept right on smoking, may be having the last laugh.
They probably deserve applause for this inconsistency: Promising to censor and then forgetting to actually do it may well be a surreal yet pragmatic answer to the whole problem.
Biography
Jens F. Laurson is editor-in-chief of the International Affairs Forum. George A. Pieler is a senior fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation.
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Disney Corp., film, Rep., video
"The Firehat"(Norm Liebman) One point is missed.
Communism taught the blues to Russian musicians.
And, the jokes about the KGB and Commissars were
not only good, they can now be used in the U.S.
Have computer. Have 3 radios. No (misinfotainment)
TV.
This is the "Hey, watch this" generation.
nanny state where the government does all the thinking for us.
Oh, you spilled your coffee. Did bad old McDonald's expect a
fully grown adult to know that hot coffee is served . . . Hot?
What? People smoke in bars? Everyone knows that bars have
always been places to indulge one's vices like drinking and
smoking, but don't worry the Department of Homeland
Irresponsibility will save you. We'll make them snuff out those
nasty old cigs.
Nevermind the fact that many will still drink themselves into a
stupor and attempt to drive home. It's not their fault that their
mother didn't breast feed them until they were twenty and thus
contributed to their total lack of personal responsibility.
Come on folks, it's time to "man up" and take responsibility for
our own actions - and tell the government and overly sensitive
corporations to get their hands off our cigarettes, or salt
shakers, or whatever else they are trying to protect us from.
- I'm a non-smoker and I approved this message
Now, I'm all for protecting the art of yesterday, and not altering it to fit into today's socio-political views, as such a practice is dangerous. What's next after that, revising our history books to remove any mention of genocide or war, for fear that children will be more prone to violence? I'm TOTALLY AGAINST efforts to revise prior works to remove something that doesn't fit with today's views.
However, that is starkly different from removing them from CURRENT works, and working to prevent their introduction to the especially influenced youth of today and tomorrow. According to the American Lung Association, there are 6,000 children EACH DAY that start smoking, and that 90% of smokers start before age 21. Is it naive to think that seeing people smoke on their favorite entertainment media (television and movies) has some influence over their decision to begin smoking?
Also, another poster commented about banning smoking from bars, restaurants, and other indoor establishments. As a non-smoker, I say BRAVO to those efforts. Do I occasionally like to imbibe at the local watering hole with some friends? Yes, absolutely! Do I come out staggeringly drunk, not able to control my bodily functions, and then get into a car and drive? Absolutely NOT! Do I want to go into a bar, have a nice social drink with my friends, and not come out smelling like an industrial smelter, having inhaled the toxic fumes that some OTHER idiot wanted to ingest? Yes. By your logic (of bars being the dens of indulgence), we should all be stripping naked, screwing our brains out, eating till we puke, drinking until we do the same, and smoking until we're all dead every night.
Finally, this whole article (and the subsequent comments) have an air that the public is supremely conscious of what they're doing and the effects it has on them and others. Most of the time, WE DON'T CARE what the effects are, as long as we get what we want. And who tells us what we want? That's right...the media and entertainment companies. I applaud any efforts to keep them in check, and to protect us from ourselves.
I am also a non smoker. I also appreciate being able to go "most anywhere these days" and enjoy a smokefree environment. But will an occasional cigarette onscreen, create a floodgate of new smokers? ... Unlikely. The REALITY is that socio-economics play a larger role in smoking addiction and cessation than the film industry might generate with an entire release season in which an occasional character smokes.
One of the things that the article strikes only a glancing blow toward is the reality that smoking is legal... to choose to ingest the carcinogens created by the chemical reaction of burning the leaves and inhaling... is perfectly within the right of well, anyone frankly that is old enough. Murder, extorsion, rape and drugs (the principle subjects in a large laundry list of past, present and likely future, Hollywood topliners)
We seem aimed at snuffing out more and more rights daily through misdirected good intent, when there are much larger issues at stake for our youth and our society.
And frankly, movies are an art form, and art mimics life. Should we cloth DAVID or remove classic nudes from the worlds greatest museums?
No. And it should be enough to teach our children the differences.
By the way, "...smoking until we're dead every night..." could be a good solution to the smoking problem, don't you think? It would only take that first night...
I must say, censorship for the sake of political correctness is one of the worst things I can think to do to a society. Freedom of speech and choice should be inalienable - even if we don't like what the 'other guy' says or puts on the screen, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and decide whether to watch or listen to them... we can easily turn off the TV, stay away from the theater, or simply walk away with our fingers in our ears. It really IS just that easy.
I witnessed too many of my close older relatives succumb at an early age to this gripping addiction all to the benefit of the tobacco industry.
The influence that pop culture has on society is immense. We owe it to ourselves to keep these influences on society in check.
So I ask you.. have you ever participated in the vile, sickening habbit of drinking alchool?
First they'll extend the current indecency regs to privately owned cable and satellite -- "for the children!" -- and then they'll look to stretch the regs to include "violence," whatever that means.("Hamlet," with eight violent deaths and a ninth re-enacted, will surely not pass regulatory muster.) And then they'll expand their endeavors to the Internet, where all that unfettered, unfiltered democracy is driving the politicians nuts.
Smoking is just a wedge here, since nobody -- not even smokers -- actually supports it or wants kids to take it up. But this is just one sign of ambitions that lie very, very much higher.
Smoking in a kids movie is a good thing. It just needs to make the person smoking look like an idiot.
PS. It should not be a law limiting smoking in movies, it should be the free choice of the movie industry and the free choice of viewers to punish film makers who do not put smoking in a bad light.
I told my cousin and one-time girlfriend who smokes that. It does make her look 'more mature', it just makes her look like an idiot in my eyes and the eyes of most other people.
What about all the ruff-and tumble "this is a gruffy bad guy" characters from cartoons? Doesn't that kind of help say "smoking it bad" when it's always with a BAD character?
"For truly healthy societies there needs to be room for human stupidity."
Wow... that sentence needs to be tattooed on a whole lot of people.
- Capitalism should work
- by t14na27 January 12, 2008 9:42 AM PST
- We should not try to eliminate choice from an individual. Society should do a minimal job from protecting people from themselves.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(46 Comments)Create action groups to pressure corporations, get your message out, have education commercials, seminars, etc.; and, if one corporation caves into lobbyists demands, then that should open up a niche opportunity for another to step in a provide a product to fill the hole, if it exists. Legislation is not the answer.
Smoking in a restaurant or bar is legislated? If I am the owner of the establishment and want to allow toxic fumes that endanger the health of others because people find more enjoyment in a smoke filled evening and/or life compared to a longer healthier life, then I should be able to provide that opportunity for those that make this choice. And, if the smoke-free bar or restaurant down the street or next door puts me out of business, then the free market works.
What about children though, what choices do they make? Well, the ills of smoking are well covered in most schools and most parents - even smokers - discuss the ills of smoking with children.
But, if goofy, or donald, or mickey, or whatever character decides to smoke, then people can protest, and consumers can refuse to buy the product and the corporation - which is just trying to reach a target demographic and return money to shareholders - can decide what is profitable and what is not. But lets not try to pass laws that take away the rights of citizens to make these choices.
I mean, I cannot even decide whether or not to wear my seat belt? Should not I be able to make the decision concerning this risk?
Besides, the more taboo, the more underground smoking is made out to be, the cooler they become when teens decides to rebel.
The government should never be involved in moral authority. Laws are meant to protect rights, and make sure that all share the same rights.
So, as this is a slippery slope, you could say that smoking should be illegal in restaurants to protect others. But, as a I remember it, many restaurants, esp. fast food ones, starting banning smoking long before it was legislated.
Capitalism working.
Why can there not be both?
Sometimes children's content is portrayed in a realistic manner where there is smoking and divorce and unhappy endings . . .and sometimes it is flowery meadows and sunshine and smiles and happily ever after, which of course is smoke free.
Then parents can decide what their children are allowed to watch.
And, if smoking and violence, or whatever else is not purchased and there is no market for it, then people will stop making it . . . except for maybe on YouTube.