THE TELEGRAPH: A council's plans to bar under-18s from films with smoking sets us on a dangerous path, says Gerald Warner.
Send for the Sanity Inspector – quickly. There is work for him among the denizens of Liverpool city council. The council is proposing to use its powers to upgrade to an 18-certificate the classification of films "if they depict images of tobacco smoking", in order to protect the vulnerable youth of Merseyside from exposure to such depravity.
Needless to say, the council is not embarking on this pioneering exercise without much conscientious preparation. A consultation exercise has been launched, with separate questionnaires for "stakeholder" organisations, community groups and businesses, members of the public aged 18 and above, and for under-age respondents. The clever money is on the nine-year-olds' being the most rational, coherent and jargon-free documents to have been seen in the council for many years.
Despite this elaborate exercise in democracy, which one can safely predict will be interpreted as endorsing the council's proposals, the question has to be asked: have the city fathers really thought through the implications of such a policy? As regards new releases, will Hollywood directors draw a blue pencil through every smoking scene out of dread it may be forbidden to under-18s in Liverpool? Is there not just a smidgin of megalomania about such a supposition?
As for existing films, if this policy caught on across the country, it would mean the demise of 101 Dalmatians, The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio and Peter Pan, unless there is a larger adult audience for those classics than is generally supposed. There is no point in objecting that Cruella de Vil, with her signature cigarette in a long holder, is a baddie: villainy is "cool" and therefore appealing.
Liverpool schoolboys may have watched their last classic James Bond film in a public theatre: the producers of Licence to Kill allegedly took a $350,000 payment to ensure 007 smoked Lark cigarettes. (In Tomorrow Never Dies, Pierce Brosnan denounced smoking as "a filthy habit", but appeared in Lark commercials in Japan.) Farewell, Superman II, with Lois Lane chain-smoking Marlboros. As for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Muppet Movie – they, too, would go up in smoke.
Then there are the older classics. Bogart? Mostly glimpsed through a fog of cigarette smoke, so a candidate for airbrushing out of cinematic history. Bette Davis? Ditto. Audrey Hepburn's outsize cigarette-holder in Breakfast at Tiffany's? Tantamount to pornography.
It should not be supposed, however, that such a wise body as Liverpool city council is impervious to certain objections. For example, portrayals of historical characters who smoked would be exempted. Churchill could still be shown with his trademark cigar – although if The Eagle Has Landed features an anonymous private soldier with cigarette hanging from lower lip, things might get a bit dicey. >>> | Thursday, August 13, 2009
