Hollywood's images of smoking encourage teens to light up
[ 2007-05-15 09:31 ]
每每看到電影中的偶像明星吸煙時的“酷酷”模樣，實在難忍來一根的沖動。都是“明星效應”惹的禍！面對青少年“模仿型”吸煙不斷增長的問題，好萊塢在行動——
Filmmakers
in Hollywood produce hundreds of films each year and audiences around the world
watch them. In many films, characters smoke cigarettes and other forms of
tobacco. In the past, researchers have documented how adolescents in
the United States are influenced by watching those images of smoking on the
screen.They found that kids who watch many movies where characters smoke
are more likely to try smoking themselves.
Dr. James Sargent, a researcher with Dartmouth University Medical School in
New Hampshire, says those research findings are strong and consistent, but he
says that many people are skeptical when they hear that movies might contribute
to adolescent smoking. "How can movies be responsible for a third of adolescent
smoking when there's only, you know, 30 seconds to a minute of smoking in every
movie? So what we wanted to do with this study was really scale the exposure for
people so that they understood how much exposure kids really get when it comes
to seeing these actors modeling smoking on the big screen."
Sargent and some international colleagues counted how often images of smoking
were seen by adolescents. They watched about 500 popular movies and counted the
images of smoking in each. Then they multiplied that number of images by the
number of adolescents estimated to have seen the films. They estimate that
billions of images of smoking in American films that are seen by kids around the
world.
"So it is a big international problem to the extent that American movie
companies are exporting smoking in youth-rated movies, the kids in other
countries are seeing the smoking, and it's positioning smoking as something they
want to do," he concludes.
Sargent says almost nothing else compares with smoking in terms of public
health problems around the world. Millions of people die annually of diseases
caused by smoking: lung and other cancers, heart disease and respiratory
diseases. Sargent says many of those people started smoking during their
adolescent years.
"We've already shown pretty convincingly that seeing
smoking in movies is delivering kids to the tobacco industry," he says."So the
movie industry has some responsibility here.The movie industry could
do something that would eliminate smoking in youth-rated movies, they could rate
smoking R (for restricted)." He notes that's what public health activists are
trying to get filmmakers to do. And if they did that, it would eliminate 60
percent of growth of impressions the kids in his sample had seen.
Sargent notes that's that public health activists are trying to get
filmmakers to do.He said that if Hollywood did that,it could eliminate 60
percent of impressions in his sample had seen.
Sargent's research was published in the most recent issue of the journal
Pediatrics.
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