Threesome Si, Cigar No

Note: Originally written July 2011

of you who know me recall that while I have a penchant for anti-licentious jeremiads, I am hardly the embodiment of Pat Robertson (thank God). However, there are certain cultural instances that…well, get my goat, if you will forgive the philistine idiom.

In the last few decades, we have seen in children and young adult films a sharp decrease in tobacco usage on screen. In fact, several companies with under-18 oriented audiences, including Disney, have banned tobacco outright from ever gracing their films.

Gone are the days of Cruella DeVil’s inseparable cheroot twittling in her fingers, the Indian chief calumet, and most regrettably, Cap’n Hook’s magnificent double-cigar holder. Roger no longer angrily puffs away at his pipe. And to the chagrin of the ‘alternative medicine’ crowd, no more will the hookah-smoking caterpillar give poor Alice the call.

Now of course these moves are not without reason. Smoking, as anyone who has engaged at all in American society knows, is harmful, especially in excess and habit.  But I would like to simply point out a growing hypocrisy, not only in the world of childrens film, but in society at large as well.

Not a day goes by without another minor social outcry, albeit usually meek, concerning yet another sexual boundary pushed in the under-18 market. Or one could merely flip through channels one evening to see the cultural inundation that a free and active sex life as a teen is without consequence.  

Yet for the producer, introducing sexual topics to a more malleable audience is not met with ignominy; indeed, it is more often than not seen as a demonstration of expression or openness. Sections of the culture deride the “neo-Puritanism” of the Religious Right, condescendingly pooh-poohing any concerns that displays of frank sexuality among teens may contribute to poor sexual choices being made.

And, by golly, there’s the rub. While adamant in the belief that tobacco usage must cease in films because it contributes to teen smoking, the dominant culture resists with sound and fury that the “pornification” over-sexualization of a culture that creeps into lower and lower age demographics could possibly have an adverse affect.

The new mantra is as such. Children and young adults, under the siren song of Big Tobacco, must be whisked from its clutches through ommision and editing of classic films. However, in terms of sexuality, children and teens will be edified by more frank and casual displays, and are fully capable of understanding the risks (if any, mind you) of rank license.

This hypocrisy highlights yet another chapter in a culture whose moral compass is increasingly not defined by integrity and individual empowerment sans objectification, but by the berserkir anti-tobacco moralisms of acultural elite.