Smoking & the Neuropsychology of the Subconscious

A lot of people, often smokers themselves, dismiss the claims that smoking onscreen influences the decision of viewers (especially young ones) to smoke, saying, “I didn’t walk out of a movie and decide to start smoking.” This is probably true enough, but to say that means the movies didn’t at all influence them to smoke is probably understating the matter. The movies may have just done it subconsciously.

While usually we can put up a veil of “the viewer’s actions are completely their own choices and we are not responsible,” we as a society don’t tend to hold people accountable for their subconscious impulses; we accept the separation between the conscious mind where decisions are made and the subconscious mind where actions are unknowingly influenced. So we as filmmakers are in a uniquely manipulative position; we have the conscious power to influence the subconscious—by showing certain elements in our films, even if they’re not focused on, we can be making a statement that the viewer doesn’t even know he or she is perceiving.

I think in this way, smoking onscreen can be held accountable for some people—especially the younger demographic—taking up smoking. Characters smoke off-handedly because it’s just a normal part of their day, characters smoke when stressed, characters smoke as a social ritual: without even delving into the issue of characters who sexualize smoking, it’s evident that viewers are often presented with images of smoking as part of a character’s normal life. No one has to say, “Look how cool cigarettes are” for there to be an impact—if we like a character, we may subconsciously accept their habits as well. And if you’re at all like me, and let’s assume some people are, you often want to, at least to some extent, model yourself after people and characters that you like. Consciously. What’s going on below the surface is anybody’s bet, but I’d bet some serious opinion-shaping and modeling is going on as well.

For these reasons, I think it’s important to acknowledge that showing smoking onscreen does influence people’s decisions of smoking off-screen. People are going to make their own choices about whether or not to smoke and need to be held accountable for them, no doubt. But since we are in a position of power where we potentially can show positive effects of smoking (i.e. stress-relief) without having to have the viewer experience any negative effects (i.e. the smell) there should at least be an ethical twinge when we realize we may be showing a skewed appearance of smoking that can become embedded in a viewer’s subconscious. As Sean Penn points out in the documentary we watched in class, some films necessitate showing smoking onscreen because of things like time period and historical accuracy. Here the justification is clear. If it’s just because an actor smokes and wants to smoke in his scene, solid justification is much harder to come by.

It isn’t necessarily our job to posit the morality of smoking itself; as Steven Pinker notes, smoking only recently switched from being simply a lifestyle choice to a perceived immoral act. But I think we would be remiss as filmmakers if we didn’t ponder the ethics of depicting a known health hazard in unspoken positive light without justification. Yes, smokers can continue to say, “I didn’t walk out of a movie and decide to start smoking;” but wouldn’t it be tough if one day yours was the film that broke the smoking camel’s back?

The Art of Manipulation?

I think that in terms of purposefully manipulating the truth in filmmaking, one of the questions we have to ask is, “Do the ends justify the means?” If we knowingly misrepresent facts—of historical events, people’s lives, etc.—and something good comes out of it, does that mean the misrepresentation was ethically sound?

For a question as general as that, my answer would be no, and I’d be done. But delving into specifics complicates things and makes it harder to accept a blanket rule. For instance, JFK misrepresents the life and theories of real-world character Jim Garrison. It also misrepresents the JFK assassination as seen through the Zapruder film. Two concrete examples of manipulating the truth (can we just call it lying?). But JFK’s message and controversy led to the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board. The public was finally allowed to see previously classified documents. Light (at least a little light) was shed on JFK’s death—and that’s a good thing, right?

A film lies in order to reveal the truth; this is an ethically complicated mess.

It’s also a question of your intent in manipulating the truth/your intent with the film. To change historical facts for a narrative whose purpose is to serve strictly as a piece of entertainment is a much less sketchy territory than manipulating facts for a piece whose purpose is clearly a political thesis with implications reaching farther than the subject matter itself. Even though Oliver Stone says his film is fiction, it’s undoubtedly fiction aimed at influencing the way people view a controversial subject. To deliberately distort the truth in order to guide people to see things the way Stone wants them surely can’t be right. And if your point rides on changing the facts, how accurate can we really trust that point to be?

For my money, it’s unethical to manipulate the truth so unabashedly. To meld fact and fiction into a confabulated tale that obviously enters the collective consciousness as a certain kind of truth because it’s veiled in so many other truths (the text at the end of JFK describing the outcome of the case, etc.). Taking a creative liberty is one thing; quite literally rewriting history is another.

For Your Consideration: Virtue Theory as a Means of Evaluating On-Screen Violence

Many of the ethical dilemmas brought up in filmmaking are consequence-based: will people smoke because my characters do? will my film inspire criminal activity? will someone harm themselves or others because of what my film says? and so on. Consequentialism is undoubtedly a valid means of evaluating ethical dilemmas, but I’m coming to realize that because the consequences of on-screen actions are so often so far removed from the films themselves, it’s hard to judge the ethics of any particular film based on a consequentialist mindset.

I’m considering virtue theory, which emphasizes being over doing. It emphasizes the morality of character, the creation of exceptional human beings who do good and avoid bad not because of consequences but because they know intrinsically it’s right. The virtues are things like honesty, benevolence, fairness, nonmalevolence, etc. So maybe filmmakers should consider the ethical implications of their films in terms of whether or not they promote the virtues that will inspire viewers to be…well, virtuous. I think that F. Miguel Valenti may have had something similar in his mind when he wrote, “There is now really no question that we are helping to shape the world in which we live, not simply entertaining it. It sounds both anticreative freedom and a bit wet-blanket-ish, but we should consider what sort of world we want it to be.”

So, let’s talk about violence.

I think the ethics of violence is all about how it’s portrayed. The issue I find with a lot of films is the glorification of it, the use of it as a symbol of status, power, and for lack of a better word, badassness. Violence is often stylized—and when we find aesthetic value in things like literally slicing people’s faces off (to reference Equilibrium, just the first thing that came to mind), I think we’re running into sketchy territory. I don’t think a scene like that necessarily runs the risk of inspiring copycat violence, but it makes viewers think violence is really cool. The Mediascope report about media violence released after the Columbine shooting states that “when violence is rewarded or goes unpunished, imitation is more likely to occur.” I think “made to look really, really cool” can be squished into that sentence, too. If we are inspiring people to believe violence is cool, I think that’s promoting something like malevolence, which is not an ethical virtue. And so our dilemma has an answer.

Violence, then, that doesn’t promote itself as a good thing to do falls into safe territory. In Set It Off, the shooting of the bank customer at the beginning of the film is not glorifying; it is horrifying. The moment is uncomfortably graphic and harsh, the results detrimental to the character of Frankie. It isn’t saying though, “Shooting people in the head is a good thing to do;” in fact, I think it makes the point that shooting people in the head is very, very wrong. So I think according to virtue theory, because of the way the violence is dealt with there, that case of portraying violence is not unethical.

Virtue theory is obviously only one option for the way to approach evaluating the ethics of violence in films (or any other ethical dilemmas in films), and it is no doubt still subjective; however, if we want one theory by which to evaluate our choices, virtue theory seems a better one than some others. I’m going to keep it in mind for the time being when I watch movies. Considering not the direct consequences but the implications on the character of the viewers as a guideline for morality is something I as a writer am happy to do.