DosViolines
far from home...
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source: nytimes.com
Do you think that celebs influence teenagers to smoke?
I'm still on the fence about it. I myself have never thought that smoking was cool, but my views stem from various factors (My dad's a physician, so I knew from a very young age about the hazards of smoking. I have asthma.), so I can't imagine what would compel people to pick up a cigarette.
Where There's Smoke, There's a Star
By MIREYA NAVARRO
Published: September 18, 2005
LOS ANGELES
ANYONE following the goings-on of Mary-Kate Olsen in the weekly glossies knows that she is 19, that she attends New York University, that she has battled anorexia and that she dates a Greek shipping heir.
Marc Andrew Deley/FilmMagic, left; Aaron St. Clair/Splash News HOLLYWOOD VICE: Kate Hudson and Leonardo DiCaprio have recently been caught in public smoking. She appeared in Us Weekly, he in People. Antismoking activists worry about the message sent to young people.
They also know that she smokes, thanks to the fact that this month alone she has appeared in at least three celebrity magazines fishing for a cigarette or holding a Marlboro pack in one hand and a cigarette in another while shopping in Los Angeles.
Such images of stars smoking off-screen were relatively rare five years ago, but with the proliferation of celebrity magazines and the competition for candid pictures, more shots of celebrities smoking are being published, magazine editors, photographers and stars' publicists say. And with smoking bans pushing smokers outdoors, "if you're going to smoke, you're going to get caught," said Gary Morgan, a founder of the photo agency Splash News.
It is too early to document whether this kind of exposure can influence young readers to light up, but some antismoking groups have voiced concern. While overall smoking rates have been down since the mid-90's, existing research has shown a direct correlation between on-screen smoking and the onset of smoking in teenagers. Antismoking experts say that seeing celebrities smoking off-screen would have the same effect. One study, by researchers at Dartmouth College, found that adolescents who viewed the most smoking in movies were almost three times more likely to take up smoking than those who viewed the least.
Antismoking groups that track the entertainment industry say the incidence of smoking scenes in movies, including those aimed at young people, was the highest in the year ending in April than it has been since 1994, and the increasingly common depiction of movie stars smoking in real life can only make things worse.
"It says, 'Cool people smoke,' " said John P. Pierce, director of the cancer prevention program at the cancer center at the University of California, San Diego.
While paparazzi pictures of celebrities smoking are still the exception to the rule, they are becoming almost as routine as shots of actors walking around with cups of coffee or cuddling toy Chihuahuas. In addition to the photos of Ms. Olsen (Star, In Touch, Us Weekly), recent depictions have included Leonardo DiCaprio inhaling as he squints from a balcony (People), Kate Hudson contemplatively holding a butt at one of her husband's concerts (Us Weekly) and Kevin Federline taking a drag while holding hands with his pregnant wife, Britney Spears (In Touch), who gave birth last week.
Cigarettes are an indelible part of the Hollywood culture, on and off the screen. On-screen, actors use cigarettes to shape a character; off-screen, if they smoke, sometimes it's their own image they're embellishing.
"Whether it hurts or helps, it's largely pegged to your cinematic persona," said Steven Ross, a professor of history at the University of Southern California who has written books on Hollywood and its influence on society.
"If you have Clint Eastwood smoking, everybody will think he's manly," he said. "Or a femme fatale, Sharon Stone, people would think it's sexy. But if you have a clean and wholesome image, smoking makes you less wholesome."
Many celebrities would rather keep their smoking to themselves. Some stars who are caught with a cigarette plead with the photographer not to use the image, sometimes offering other shots in return. Mr. Morgan, of Splash, said teenagers in particular worry about getting in trouble with a studio or a network.
"A few times people say, 'Please don't use a picture of me smoking' because their core audience is teenagers," he said. "Teenage girls are not supposed to be smoking."
But those who represent celebrities seem resigned that their clients are going to be seen smoking because of the relentless pursuit of photographers and the celebrity news media.
"It's part and parcel of this insane celebrity infatuation," said the publicist Ken Sunshine, whose clients include Mr. DiCaprio and Ben Affleck, a favorite paparazzi target who most recently was described in Us Weekly as stopping "for two cigarettes while his pregnant wife hit the restroom" at a Wendy's.
But he added: "Nobody I represent is pretending to be the pope or a role model for young people. People have to live their lives. They have the right to smoke if they want."
Michael Pagnotta, a spokesman for Ms. Olsen and her twin sister, Ashley, said smoking was a private choice, and "you have to respect that."
"The fans who have grown up with them are not affected by this kind of coverage because they have a relationship with them," he said.
Stanton A. Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said celebrities should be aware of the negative influence they can have on young fans, adding that magazines are culpable, too. "There's also an editorial decision made to show the picture of people smoking," he said. "They're all playing a role."
Editors and photographers, however, said that pictures of famous smokers is not something they set out to get or show. One reason for the higher profile of cigarettes, some suggested, is that many newsmakers - the ubiquitous Lindsay Lohan, for instance - belong to a young, partying Hollywood that also happens to fall in the college age group, with one of the highest proportions of smokers (24 percent).
Joe Dolce, the editor in chief of Star, said that 70 percent of the photos that run in the magazine are street shots, and "I only show people doing what they do."
Of his responsibility to his readers, who he said tend to be women in their late 20's and early 30's, "I'm not a moral arbiter," he said. "The readers are smart enough. If they choose to smoke, they understand the consequences."
But Larry Hackett, deputy managing editor at People magazine, said his publication has run only three such pictures so far this year because "we do try to avoid it at all costs."
"We're sensitive to the notion that it might encourage some people to do it," he said.
Brittain Stone, the photo editor of Us Weekly, said he tries to avoid them because smoking "doesn't make them too attractive, especially women."
But he said he hears no complaints when the pictures run, and he said many of the stars themselves seem relaxed about their smoking.
"No one seems to be thinking that this is a horrible thing," he said, "because that's their private time."
But whether they want it or not, antismoking advocates note, movie stars influence young people. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control say the prevalence of cigarette smoking among middle- and high-school students has not changed much from 2002 to 2004 after previous dramatic drops - it stands at 8 percent for middle-school students and 22 percent for high schoolers - and they cite among the factors slowing the rate of decline the frequency of smoking in film.
The higher profile of famous smokers is only one of several disturbing trends, antismoking groups that track smoking in the industry said. The Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! project of the American Lung Association of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails notes that 65 percent of on-screen smoking is being done by the leading actor in the movie, and that smoking scenes are now found in more than two-thirds of PG-13 movies.
Various efforts are afoot to counter smoking in movies. Mr. Glantz at U.C., San Francisco, has led a project, Smoke Free Movies, that won the support of the American Medical Association and public health advocates in seeking that any movie that shows tobacco use get an automatic R rating and for antismoking ads to run beforehand. The group also wants to prevent tobacco companies from benefiting from product identification by banning the showing of cigarette brands on films. (Under a 1998 agreement that limits how tobacco companies can market cigarettes, product placement in movies is no longer allowed.)
So far the efforts have gained no traction in Hollywood because of censorship concerns. "As artists, people need to be able to create pictures that represent real life," said Kori Bernards, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America. She added that some research has found that smoking in movies tends to be associated with villains.
Directors and writers said smoking usually fits the needs of the character and film. But in "Scene Smoking: Cigarettes, Cinema & the Myth of Cool," a 2001 American Lung Association documentary about smoking in film and television, Rob Reiner, the director and actor, noted that much of the on-screen smoking stems from the fact that the actors in the film smoke themselves. "Usually what it is, is that the actor in real life smokes, so he finds a way of utilizing his addiction," he said.
In the documentary Jack Klugman, who portrayed cigar-smoker Oscar Madison in "The Odd Couple" and was a smoker himself who suffered from oral cancer, spoke of the unintended powers of fame.
He said he got hooked after seeing his idol, the actor John Garfield, smoke. He mimicked him to the point that, he said, "I took the drags like he did, I threw away the cigarette like he did, I held it in the way he did."
"He not only influenced me," Mr. Klugman said in a raspy, barely audible voice. "I smoked like him."
Do you think that celebs influence teenagers to smoke?
I'm still on the fence about it. I myself have never thought that smoking was cool, but my views stem from various factors (My dad's a physician, so I knew from a very young age about the hazards of smoking. I have asthma.), so I can't imagine what would compel people to pick up a cigarette.
