Navigation, Contact Info, and Legend for the OSH Website
• View By Topic
• Quick Links
• About this Office
Contact Info
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Office on Smoking and Health
Tel: 1-800-CDC-INFO
(1-800-232-4636)
TTY: 1-888-232-6348
E-mail: tobaccoinfo@cdc.gov
Legend
= Link to a PDF document
(Adobe Acrobat™ Reader needs to be installed on your computer in order to read PDF documents.)
Download the Reader
= Link to nonfederal Web site
Disclaimer on nonfederal Web sites
Scene Smoking: Cigarettes, Cinema & the Myth of Cool
Instructor’s Guide for College
Pre-Viewing Activities
Pretest: Administer
Scene Smoking—Your Opinions to assess students’
knowledge, attitudes, and opinions about artists’
rights, the First Amendment, social responsibility, and tobacco use in films
and on television. Have students discuss their responses.
Post-Viewing Activities
I. Discussion Questions
- Does the First Amendment protect filmmakers’ and actors’ freedom to
depict anything they choose?
- What might be some constraints on artists’ rights (e.g., Motion
Picture Association of American [MPAA] ratings, Broadcast Standards &
Practices)?
- What role does social responsibility play in tobacco use depiction in
films? Censorship?
- What is accurate, appropriate depiction of tobacco use; what is
inaccurate, inappropriate depiction of tobacco use?
- Would on-screen tobacco use create any health issues on the set?
- If a tobacco company offered funding for a film project that you were
working on, would you take the money offered? Why?
- In general, if smoking were removed from a scene in a movie, would the
scene be the same or different? If different, how? Give an example.
- What is your opinion of actors being paid to use a particular brand of
cigarette in a film?
- What characteristics does smoking create on-screen? What other ways
could they be shown?
II. Situations to Consider
- In My Best Friend’s Wedding, Julia Roberts portrays a food critic who
chain-smokes throughout the film. The film is a PG-rated family comedy.
Discuss other choices the actress could have made to demonstrate tension.
Is smoking a necessary choice in this film? Does the actress have the
right to make this choice despite the intended audience?
- Director Michael Bay consistently makes blockbuster films that have no
tobacco portrayals. Pearl Harbor was widely criticized for having no
smoking in it despite the era featured. However, smoking rates were lower
before the United States entered WWII than they are today. Discuss the
director’s right to make such choices and the need for accurate research
when depicting tobacco historically.
- In the film Volcano, John Carol Lynch decided NOT to smoke even though
his character was written as a smoker. Discuss the acting choice to resist
smoking rather than to light up and the benefits and downfalls associated
with such a choice.
III. Follow-up Evalution
Administer Scene Smoking—Your Opinions again during a later class
session. Have students discuss how their opinions, knowledge, and attitudes
changed after viewing the documentary.
Page last reviewed 02/28/2007
Page last modified 02/28/2007