I can kind of sympathize with Eric Alterman's rage in this post on Media Matters. He's pissed because he took his two 9-year-olds to see "Definitely, Maybe" which, according to him, wound up being cigarette porn instead of a nice father-daughter family flick.
He says the movie glamorized smoking, especially for young females, and also made it appear to be easy to kick the habit.
Also:
It was a two hour cancer commercial.
It was morally indefensible and disgusting, since the movie is
being marketed to teens and tweens. I wonder if the cigarette companies paid
for this kind of loving attention, and I wonder how many people will die of
lung cancer to put money in the pockets of the Hollywood
moguls who made it.
Strong language, but I get his point. Incidentally, the fact that smoking would be part of the movie was no secret.
Still, here's my question. How DO we bring up smoking with the kids. I live in a part of the country where smoking is banned practically everywhere. You barely even see butts on the ground and it's not terribly common to smell second-hand smoke. (But of course I make a big deal out of gagging when I do.) Would such a movie have been an opportunity to talk about smoking, point it out, say "see, they made smoking look great, didn't they?"
The main smoker in our lives, my mother-in-law, keeps it a big ol' secret from the kids and there are all these euphemisms (lies?) everybody uses to explain why she has to go to the garage but, no, you can't go with her. Isn't that kind of making it interesting by making it secretive and worth lying about too?
So what is it with smoking: should kids see it or not? What do you tell your kids about smoking -- especially if you're a smoker?
