Posts by Emma Hart
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Hey guys, we are fine. Seriously, I lost a hyacinth forcing vase. Seeing the pictures this morning has been pretty sobering.
Also it appears we have a broken waterpipe - right under where our net cable comes in. So if I disappear, I aint'nt dead.
We are STILL having aftershocks, some of which would be significant had I not had the experience of not being physically capable of getting out of bed last night.
When I did get up, it was to check twitter to see if there was a tsunami warning, because we're pretty much right next to the estuary. We had one cat yowling to get out of the house and hte other desperate to get in.
And we'll be going out in a bit (I need groceries, will there be groceries? Will there be really CHEAP groceries?) and we will swing by the Haywoods and see what we can find out. Though it looks like we may have to walk some of the way up there because their road has tried to fall in the river.
Odd things. All those brick frontages falling down on Manchester St, but all that heritage Victorian Gothic? Pwned it.
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Just to change tack a bit, I'm now trying to think of any films/TV shows on before 9.30 (when alcohol advertising is allowed) that do regularly show tobacco use.
Outrageous Fortune is currently airing at 8:30. As Russell mentioned in the Media7 discussion last night, Robyn Malcolm insisted that Cheryl smoke, because Cheryl smokes.
And yet no annoying busybody ever comes up to me and tells me to remove my 'cancer wagon' from the road, as they do to my outside-smoking mother.
I would like some way of getting all the people who are rudely confrontational to outdoor smokers in Christchurch to walk around the city at night in winter with someone white tied over their mouths. (This is where the 'did it once, was so revolted I needed a cigarette' joke goes.)
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In the book "Remake" by Connie Willis
Andrew, in early draft I removed a paragraph from this column about Connie Willis's Bellwether, a book I like to push with an almost missionary zeal. Read Bellwether, it's awesome.
It's mostly about a woman who researches trends, trying to find out what causes hula hoops or bobbed hair to suddenly and briefly become madly popular. But it's also about a woman who, for spoilery reasons, goes into workplaces and makes herself a pariah in whatever way works best in the society. She smokes, as the easiest and clearest way to get her co-workers to treat her like shit.
- all on-screen tobacco use normalises smoking;
Surely it only normalises smoking if you see more of it in movies than you do wandering around the streets. Otherwise it's just showing something people actually do.
Also, having every incidence of smoking followed by a negative consequence of smoking would be completely unrealistic. There was a Jack Nicholson movie that I can't now remember the name of which received an R rating for showing two middle-aged people having a joint, and then giggling. No negative consequences shown for drug use. And who's ever had a joint and giggled, that's ridiculous. They should be... actually, I can't remember what the negative consequences of marijuana are. Is that one of them?
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(also the image of David Tennant in red velvet is going to linger behind my eyelids for a while)
That is a smoking jacket.
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Is anyone saying depiction of smoking should be banned? I understand the push to be toward R rating it, in much the same way as graphic violence and sex.
The WHO guidelines I quoted in the article re: internet depictions of smoking are about totally preventing access, which would create an interesting situation where you could legally watch somethng on television but not on the net.
I honestly don't think an R rating is reasonable. That is, as you say, for graphic sex and violence. A PG13, or a warning before a program plays that it contains smoking wouldn't bother me too much.
I thought that too until a careful reread of Lucy's words.
That is pretty much why I asked Lucy to re-state, so we could get a clearer idea there. Product placement is endemic in US TV particularly ("Oh my god, is that the new Porsche Cayenne?") so I'd be very surprised if tobacco companies weren't doing it too. I'd just struggle to believe that anything like Mad Men or Outrageous Fortune which depicts a smoking culture is only, or indeed primarily, doing it because of pressure from the tobacco industry. Of course, I still regularly see people saying that Mad Men "glamourises drinking" which is... something I can't really understand, unless "glamourises" means "shows".
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Tobacco use in film and TV is not just there for verisimilitude, or characterisation, or artistic reasons. It is paid product placement by tobacco companies. They pay for it, as a form of advertising, because it works.
Lucy, are you saying that there would be no cigarette smoking in film and TV unless the tobacco industry directly pay for it to be there? Would you like to take that up with the makers of Outrageous Fortune?
Also, Ross's definition of "polite" is... interesting.
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Well. About 20 something % (low end) smoke. So they tell us.
This link suggests that movies are still portraying smoking in 49% of them.
That's 49% of movies, not 49% of characters. Those numbers don't, in fact, say that movies are depicting smoking at a higher rate than in the real world. Would you be happy with media where one in five people smoked?
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I don't have corroboration of the figures, so I didn't mention it, but an old episode of QI (yes, appeal to Stephen Fry) said that smoking shortens your life span by five years, but being castrated lengthens it by thirteen...
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Not to mention make many subject look like they're giving the fingers to the viewer...
I was speculating that the next generation are going to think a hand with the first two fingers extended and slightly parted is some kind of covert symbol for something.
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How many times is Holmes' cocaine use referred to in the Conan Doyle books anyway?
After having a very civil drinking disagreement with someone recently over Holmes's cocaine use, I came home and picked up my copy of Adventures, flipped it open, and the cocaine is mentioned on the first page (A Scandal in Bohemia):
Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.
That I think indicates that, however often the word is mentioned, the drug use is habitual.