Next time you are at the movies, brace yourself for a special treat: Your favorite star lecturing you on the perils of smoking. “It was decided to advise filmmakers to give a 20-second anti-smoking message as approved by the ministry of health with voiceover of one of the actors who is seen smoking in the film to be displayed at the beginning and in the middle (after interval) of the film and a static anti-smoking message to be displayed for the duration of the smoking scene in the film,” additional solicitor-general Mohan Parasaran informed the Supreme Court.
That’s right. You smoke it, you better preach against it. The non-logic behind this move is presumably the hope that a 20-second bhashan will undo the evil effects of watching movie stars looking uber-cool while they blow sexy smoke circles in the air. So the next time we see Kareena smoking on screen, we won’t just be subjected to the running statutory warning each time she lights up — which was 30 percent of Heroine — but also her husky voiceover telling us to do as she says, not as she does.
Doesn’t that make you want to quit? Like right now? It isn’t clear what Bollywood will make of these new rules given that filmmakers are not pleased with the current statutory warning rule — it pops up at the bottom of the screen during each smoking scene. Madhur Bhandarkar unsuccessfully challenged the requirement in the Supreme Court, arguing that the intrusive banner would “distract” the audience. To which an unnamed source at the Censor Board of Film Certification retorted, “After a while the audience wouldn’t even notice it.”
Umm, so the CBFC is insisting on its presence why? There’s no doubting the claim that far too many people, especially the young, take to smoking because cigarettes are packaged as “cool.” I, for example, was a victim of the Virginia Slims ads. The image of pretty young women declaring they’d come a long way, baby, was irresistible for a rebellious Indian teenage girl yearning to make a statement, albeit of the muddled kind. And yes, Helen lounging in her sexy gowns, with an equally sexy, long cigarette in hand, didn’t help either.
Re-framing tobacco as a “filthy” habit helps curb the creation of new smokers (though it does little to discourage the die-hard kind). But measures like these are just silly, ineffective sops. The only law that would work is an outright ban on smoking on-screen. But that provision of the The Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement) Act was overturned by the Supreme Court. So what we’re left with are flashing banners we learn to ignore, and audio spots we will inevitably tune out. Maybe if we are serious about discouraging kids from smoking, we ought to consider the gross-out solution embraced by Australia:
New government standards set out the images and health warnings that must cover 75 percent of the front of cigarette packs. Among them: a gangrenous foot, a tongue cancer, a toilet stained with bloody urine, and a skeletal man named Bryan who is dying of lung cancer. Further warnings must appear on the sides and cover 90 percent of the back. There’s no way anyone can look sexy pulling one of those uglies out of his or her pocket. And all you’d need to do to discourage filmmakers is to make a new rule: show the cigarette, show the packaging. Our stars will be scrambling to have those cigarettes written right out of the script.
