subliminal advertising smoke gets in your eyes


Uma Thurman lights up in Pulp Fiction.


Seeing film stars puffing away on the big screen affects young people more than we may think. That’s according to a University of Bristol study which shows that young people still associate smoking and Hollywood as ‘cool’.


DESPITE MANY FORMS of tobacco advertising being banned in the UK, ‘soft’ promotion of smoking through films has led to experts recommending age limits for films that glamorise smoking; much in the way there are recommendations for films with violent or sexual content. Te research, which used


data from over 5,000 15-year-olds, showed that young people who watch lots of films that include characters who smoke are


italian cinema Leading man


Male roles in Italian cinema are on the rise, says Catherine O’Rawe, from the University’s Department of Italian.


THE LAST 10 YEARS or so have seen an extraordinary flourishing of parts for male actors in mainstream Italian cinema, many of them in films set in the turbulent period that followed the upheaval of 1968 in Italy. One of the most successful, 2005’s Romanzo Criminale, glamorised the activities of the criminal band that it depicts, the real-life Banda della Magliana in Rome in the 1970s. Te film also spawned a hugely successful TV series in Italy, which ran for two seasons between 2008-10 and made cult stars of the little-known actors who played the gang. I look at the reasons for the prevalence of this ‘retro masculinity’ on Italian


screens, and look at the marginalisation of female characters in these narratives. Like Romanzo Criminale, successful films about the 1970s, for example La Meglio Gioventù (Te Best of Youth, 2003), Mio Fratello è Figlio Unico (My Brother is an Only Child, 2007) and Il Grande Sogno (Te Big Dream, 2009), depict the political struggle, criminality and terrorism that dominated Italian society in the 1970s as a male affair, even as an exercise in male bonding, in a way that I find very intriguing. By analysing the stars and the


performances that are so visible in selling these versions of Italian history to a mainstream audience, I believe we can illuminate some of the reasons that these events still preoccupy Italians today.


•


Right: Scene from Mio Fratello è Figlio Unico (My Brother is an Only Child, 2007).


discover more


73 per cent more likely to have tried a cigarette than those who watched the least number of films. Tey were also nearly 50 per cent more likely to be a current smoker that those least exposed. One of the three University of Bristol


researchers involved with the study, Dr Waylen, from the School of Oral and Dental Sciences, says: “More than half the films shown in the UK that contain smoking are rated UK15 or below, so children and young teenagers are clearly exposed. “Our results confirm an association


between this exposure and youth smoking in this country, which indicates that raising the certification to 18 in the UK is likely to lower smoking rates among youth.” Te study has formed part of an article


that was published in the International Journal of Respiratory Medicine, which calls for the British Board of Film Classification, the national regulator, to reclassify films depicting smoking.


• 15


Photos: Kobal


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24