Last week it was reported that the ratings board of the motion picture industry is now going to factor in cigarette smoking as part of the overall rating of a film.  Films with excessive smoking will now certainly get a PG-13, if not an R rating.  The goal is to cut down on the influence on teen smoking behavior.  There is clear correlation between the glamorization of cigarette smoking on screen and people smoking.

While this development is certainly to be applauded from a public health point of view, it does seem to be off the mark if the goal is to lessen unhealthy behavior in young Americans. Excessive drinking, use of guns, corporate theft and deceit, physical and sexual violence are also bad for this country’s health and they are also widely depicted on the big screen.  It is absurd to think that a scene depicting gun violence or a robbery might get a less restrictive rating if the actors are not smoking. There is no need for me to dwell on this aspect of the topic, as Marshall Herskovitz, the accomplished Hollywood producer, has written a great piece on this development.

This news story did get me to thinking about cigarette smoking, but from a more historical point of view. It could be argued that, in the United States, cigarette smoking is a habit largely contained in a single century.  At the beginning of the 20th century, cigarette smoking was not widespread.  In the middle of the century it …

Last week it was announced that Life magazine would cease publication, again. This is the third death of the magazine since it was founded in 1936. Life was a weekly from 1936 to 1972, when it first stopped publication. It was revived as a monthly in 1978 but then shut down again in 2000. It was resurrected as a newspaper insert in 2004 but never really took hold in that iteration which was an incredibly misguided strategy to begin with.

Life was, simply put, the greatest showcase of quality and historically important photographs in the middle part of the 20th century in America. Many of the greatest photographers in the country dreamed of being a Life photographer, and in fact became great because, in part their photographs appeared in the magazine. I remember as a young boy the thrill of coming home from school on the day that Life magazine was delivered by the mail man. It was a thrill to sit down and spend an hour looking at every photograph and reading every caption. At a time when there were only 5 TV stations coming into the home and newscasts were 15 minutes with no video, Life magazine was truly the window to the world. Why write about this in a place with a tag line “A Future Look at Today”? Well the story of Life magazine is a story about the last 75 years of media and also a story …

Recently I have been thinking about the cultural process whereby something that initially is perceived as dangerous to society ultimately becomes a part of the cultural mainstream. New is often perceived as threatening.  Its newness is not understood, so if it can’t be understood and fit into the status quo then it must be bad. 

This thinking was triggered several weeks ago when reading an editorial in The Economist about the need for an age-rating for video games similar to the age ratings of the motion picture industry.  The thrust of the article was that something new is not necessarily bad and in need of banning, it just might need some social rating system.    The article mentioned some past cultural innovations that were initially regarded as bad or even evil.

In the 18th century there was something that began to get wide acceptance that alarmed those that populate the status quo.  It was thought that it would poison the mind, corrupt the morals of the young, letting them immerse themselves in dangerous worlds of fantasy.  What was it?  The novel. 

In the early part of the 19th century, waltzing was condemned as a cultural phenomenon that encouraged promiscuity.  In the early 20th century motion pictures were called evil and destructive of social interchange.  Those of us who are baby boomers can vaguely remember when Rock and Roll was something that would turn young people into “devil worshippers”.

As a parent I remembered all of this as my son grew up through his teen age …